William Manning

The Survivor’s Guide to Mental Hospital

Living Flashback

My room is infested with bedbugs

I’m covered in bites, not love bites

I have to spend the night on the low secure unit

That I’ve only just been discharged from.

The paranoid nurse who signs me in thinks I’ve been tricked

And that they’ll never let me leave

Strange, aggressive characters roam the halls

One spells out the word MURDER backwards and forwards aloud

Over and over.

I tell the people I know

That I’ve been recalled for getting pissed

Doesn’t hurt to try to fit in

The charge nurse makes me endless coffee

I’m not allowed my laptop, so am on

Pen and paper. This place isn’t how I remember it.

The smell of urine is very strong here.

All the bins are overflowing and some

Have been pissed in

Bogies decorate the walls alongside

Pictures of bridges done in the Art Therapy group.

The guy who spells MURDER keeps asking me to

Come and watch late night TV with him, alone in the lounge.

He comes knocking at my locked door a few times. In the end, I yell

FUCK OFF! really loudly and he scarpers

I’m given a chicken and bacon baguette

It tastes like a really nice chicken and bacon baguette would taste

If you smoked 40 a day.

The charge gives me leftover ASDA yoghurts from the staff fridge.

At 730AM I bang on the office door

‘Someone let me out of this hellhole!’

They sympathetically let me out and I go back to the shared house

Where I’ve never noticed the ivy growing over the porch;

Its the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,

I run my hands over it

I haven’t brushed my teeth in 24 hours

I’m dying for a cigarette.

I have to go back tonight.