What Is It Like To Be Sectioned? My Experiences

Five days after I was raped I began planning to die. The images in my head were constant, the flashbacks almost as bad as the actual event.

I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror; from the neck down I was just a massive bruise. I was bleeding from what took place in both places; I was anally raped too. I still had bits of glass inside me I couldn’t get out.

My face was covered in cuts from the glass where he had held my face in it to make me scream. The physical pain was unbearable, and the mental pain, the disgust in myself. I had burns on my wrists from him tying my hands behind my back and I had begun to cut them.

Just little nicks, cutting myself became an option. I quickly found that the deeper I cut the more of “him” bled out of me. It became a daily thing, my arms and my legs, cuts over bruises. That soon wore off.

I could block out the pain and the more days passed I realised if I hated myself, more specifically my body I would need something more. I had to punish myself for his actions.

Fast forward to five weeks after.

I was still bleeding from my bottom, badly, it was infected. The pain was indescribable. I wanted to scream all day and night.

One morning I woke up after three hours sleep.

I went into town and I saw him. He saw me.

Something in my brain just pulled the shutters down. I walked into Wilkinson’s like a zombie. I bought some white spirit, some Paracetamol, some razor blades, a pad and a pen.

The man at the till behind me asked if I was ok seeing my stuff but I nodded mechanically, paid and walked home.

I wrote a letter to my mum, to him telling him he had won.

What Is It Like To Be Sectioned? My Experiences

I cut my arms till the blood was dripping on my carpet and I cut my legs red raw. I poured white spirit all over myself then picked up my razors, my Paracetamol pills and a can of coke, and my quilt.

It was night time, after midnight and I was walking the streets with my quilt, taking Paracetamol with my coke and cutting my stomach to shreds.

I don’t remember the next bit but I’m told CCTV tracked me walking through town at 3 am, still wrapped my quilt on the roads in front of cars who were beeping at me and I walked to a pitch black golf course.

The police pulled up just as I had poured the second bottle of white spirit over myself and had a match in my hand ready to set myself on fire.

The police spent a few minutes trying to talk to me but I just kept saying please let me die. Apparently I was crying because my cuts were burning from the white spirit.

I was tackled and handcuffed and taken to the station where a duty officer spent three hours sat with me. I just sat on the bench rocking. The doctor dressed my cuts and I was seen by two other doctors and my mum who identified me and then I was sectioned and taken to hospital.

I was taken to the psychiatric ward by three policemen and two ambulance men still in cuffs and with my head down crying. I begged them to let me go. If they had I would have run to the train tracks. I didn’t want to be sectioned I wanted to die.

The section was 48 hours in which I slept. They forced medication into me and I slept. I didn’t eat or drink and if they woke me to ask how I was, did I know where I was I would just look beyond them. Not registering them. The section was extended to 28 days. They thought they could cure me.

I let them think they had so a month later they released me. Two months later they found me on the motorway bridge. A fire truck had gone under it and seen me stood on the wrong side of the bridge and radioed it in. They grabbed me before I could see them and at the hospital I had my stomach pumped and was sectioned for 6 months.

The third time was nine months later when I stabbed myself. I tried to cut his poison out of me. The pain was nothing. I was too far gone. In hospital they treated me and sent me back to the ward. I tried to hang myself; I set the fire alarm off and put the dressing gown chord round my neck.

A member of staff found me blue. I was resuscitated and sent to the HDU intensive psych bit. Four staff were with me 24 hours a day. I had to shower in front of them, go toilet with them. They restrained me when I bit myself, scratched myself. Five months later I was back on the normal ward and released.

The fourth time I was sectioned was not long after. I was walking on a motorway hoping a car would hit me.

The fifth time I had taken 56 Paracetamol and cut my wrists and neck. Then I got some rope and put it tight around my neck like my binds were across my wrists when he raped me.

I then tried to hang myself but couldn’t do it. I don’t know why. Divine intervention. Who knows?

I must have given up and I collapsed outside and was taken to hospital where they kept me in intensive care for four days then it was the normal ward then psych ward. They sent me to Manchester and in Manchester I was sectioned for 12 months.

Away from him, what he did, what I did I got better. Thirteen months later after a month of voluntary incarceration I was released for the last time.

I’ve never hurt myself since.

This inspirational post was written anonymously by a mum who is a member of my Facebook mums group. I have full permission to share her story. If you can relate to this post and would like to share your own anonymous post please contact me.

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