Why Have Your Forsaken Me? - Graham Morgan

Posted by See Me, 20 December 2018

Graham Morgan has previously spoken at our Human Rights, Equalities and Mental Health Event in December 2018. He has recently written a book called 'Start' and has kindly given us some extracts from it to share with you over the coming weeks. Graham has a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, has an MBE for services to mental health, helped to create the Mental Health Care and Treatment Act and has been on a compulsory treatment order under the act for the last 9 years.

Why Have Your Forsaken Me?

Christmas in hospital is not good. The nurses all had a Christmas breakfast in front of us, with the ones doing ‘constant obs’ being relieved from their duties long enough to have their fry up. We were not given anything exciting at breakfast. The kitchen was still open for us to have toast and butter and tea but that was it.

The ward was decorated and very quiet because anyone who could possibly go home had been sent home.

I would still have been on hunger strike at that time. It would have been my third week of not eating. The one good thing about it was that I no longer needed to go to the toilet so it was less embarrassing using the loo.

The day was boring. I think I spent the early hours feeling totally alone, sending desperate texts to friends I thought I had, who unsurprisingly, mainly didn’t reply at all and if they did, mostly didn’t reply until the morning. It would have been snowy, if I have the correct admission. The rooftops of the ward bulging with layers of whiteness, the courtyard piled high with snow and cigarette butts and I would walk round and round it, wearing my icy path in the snow while the nurse watched from just by the door.

Not long after I was admitted, one night, when that young nursing assistant was ‘specialling’ me, I was lying in my bed, the ward quiet, the lights in my room turned low when it grabbed me. My son, my son, my son. I cannot, cannot do this. Why have you done this? Why do you hate me? Why do you hate me? Why did your mum refuse to let me take away any photos of her or you? Saying that if I didn’t want to be with her anymore, I had no right to any image of either her or you? I want to hold you, I want to be teased by you. I want to see you, see your beautiful eyes, your thick curly hair, your olive skin.

I would even be ecstatic if you turned the corner and gave me another of those playful punches that leave dark bruises on my arm.

I would be over the moon if you would repeat your refrain of how you hate me because I am such a ‘weirdo’ and then laugh as if you half-do, half-don’t mean it.

My son. I am lying in my bed and I am alone and I am aching for you, just a glimpse, a sight of what you are doing with your life, an idea of what you look like now, a hint of where you live and what you do.

Ah, lost it there! Got lost in the memory, got lost in the stuff I do not say to myself. But I remember lying in bed, my wrist still in its bandage and I started to cry and I was all alone. And the more I cried the more I wanted to cry, until I was crying in a way I had never cried before, still trying to muffle my sobs but not succeeding, feeling my stomach filled with shudders and my breath ragged, the way a child’s is when it gets overwrought. Occasionally the person on the door would say something nice to me, something comforting, something that let me cry more without shame, until the rawness of my tears were flooding out of the bedroom and I was worried that I would wake and upset all the other patients.

The only good thing about all this was that I realised with such clarity what my anger and my blame had done to my mum and dad over the years. How horrible it must have been for them. In the years when I used to sit and get drunk with my dad and tell him how harsh I had found my upbringing, he would listen to me and I can’t really remember what I said to him, but I don’t remember him contradicting me. I don’t ever remember him saying, ‘Hold on a bit, that isn’t right. You’ve got that wrong, we never did that.’

Because I am sure I did. I am sure I did get it wrong. I am very fluid with memory and fact and history. And my dad never really said how hurt and damaged they were by the blame I piled high on them…