Evidence for the case

So the story continues

I trained hard and got a job at a sports club with a pool in Wimbledon

Taught aqua aerobics, aerobics and took an Evergreens class

Training ladies over the age of seventy

I loved that generation so full of vigour and verve

The most qualified personal trainer on the floor

I built up my personal training clients

Kept an eye on the score

Working out holistic individual a programme

Including nutrition, cardio and weights

I certainly gave a damn

Making little tweaks to suit their individual bodies and metabolisms

Psychology plays a big part

There’s a sensitive key to that art

I helped one guy gain the weight and muscle tone he desired

And another American lady lose twenty pounds

Job satisfaction

With interaction

Shone through

I started doing massages

At the property company I used to work for on Fridays

I had come off the Olanzapine after six months of being prescribed

I felt like some part of me had died

But continued medication free

Completely free to be

Gaining my figure back, my selling tool

To do my job and what was required

No longer cloudy or mired

To be successful

Plentiful in numbers

I sorted my hours to be consistent every day

12-4pm

And trained my PT clients around that time

To be honest I felt fine

So as not to disrupt my sleep cycle

Fall off my bicycle

So to speak

No early starts or late nights

I ate six small meals a day

Little bites

Got my metabolism to work quick

Sped up my running, tick

So that went well

But then a friend of mine who can be up and down

Encouraged me to quit my job and travel through Africa

It was tempting and I should have carried on

But after a few years I was done to move on

I left all that I had created and worked for at the sports company

But never went to Africa to travel the land

I think the Gods had something else planned

I lost my way

Needed to pray

But the symptoms were returning

And my poor parents couldn’t cope

They tried everything and continued hope

But I fell to my feet with the illness

Needed confession and a church I remember saying

But little did I know the powers at be and what they were playing

So to my first voluntary admission

They tried to drug me and make a commission

Without diagnosis yet

Please don’t forget

You can’t leave these wards without a diagnosis

What a pathetic prognosis

But SchizoAffective Disorder seemed to fit

I didn’t like the bracket one little bit

I met a guy named Noel

Who is still a friend to this day

Just spoke to him on the phone

I learn from him

And he’s never one to moan

He was like a pharmaceutical dictionary

Knew every medication under the sun

I’d never quite come across a brain like this

Always drawn to scholarly intelligence

He was studious, academic

From the school of hard knocks

Known to his friends

As the come back kid

There’s a song in there

Just due to everything Noel did

So in Laurel ward, Queen Mary’s

They pinned me down for the first time

After spitting out their poison

Someone had reported my crime

So they told me to lie down and stay calm

I lay on the ground and said I imagine I’m on a beach

Something in an acting class that came later, the coach would teach

It wasn’t good enough for the nurses

I can see why they were riddled with curses

What came next is not for the faint hearted

Five of them holding me down

One on my left hand

And the other holding my right hand down

There was a metal chain around his wrist

I felt like using my fist

But with my inner Buddhism I would resist

On my delicate bodied stomach

I cherished like a crown

I’d worked hard for my health

What they didn’t understand

It was pure stealth

One on my left ankle and

The other on my right

One pulling my trousers down

The violation is explicit

A patient stayed in the room trying to show his support

What I didn’t realise is, it was Haliperidol

And boy it was foul

They injected me in my buttock and

I tried to pretend it hadn’t happened

I got up quick and ran to the outside space

Jumped on the bench with the patients around me

I went into full pace

I quoted Muhammad Ali

‘Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee’

Moving my feet back and forth

‘No one can touch me’

I declared

All these drugged zombied faces looking up at me

How could I help them?

What the fuck have they done to them?

It was truly plain to see

So I said, I’m gonna pretend that didn’t happen

Nothing went into me and nothing’s in my blood stream

But as the hours turned to minutes

I was losing control of my body and mind

Internally I wanted to scream

The side effects were a devastating mess

My parents came to see me

And couldn’t understand what I was saying no less

My speech was so bloody slurred

My head was to the left twitching

And I dribbled like a baby

‘What have you done to our daughter?’

They cried

Lamb to thy slaughter, I’d metaphorically died

‘She reacted badly to the medication’

They replied

Not seeming to care or be concerned

I learnt over time what needed to be learned

For another patient who had met Princess Diana

And dressed me in a Sari no less

Had been injected with Haliperidol when pregnant

She was permanently disfigured

With her neck to the left

Her lifetime flashed before me

And left me bereft

Over the following days the horrible drug left my body

I continued to spit out their poisonous medication

Practiced my stillness for I could not run

A kind of prisoned meditation

And while the minutes passed like hours

And the hours passed like a day

I continued to sleep and fall to my knees and pray

The psychosis or whatever it was, left me

And through time I came out the other side

I left the ward and the nurse said to me

‘See you’re better now because you’ve taken your medication’

As I did not lie and I could see I was free

I turned to her and I admitted the truth

‘I never took that medication

You’re not gonna steal my youth’

I walked out the ward

Into the freedom

What happened to me there was defining not healing

A bird burdened to flight I had lost my feeling

Damage had been born

And I’d witnessed the greatest tragedy I’d ever come across in my life

Maybe this was my purpose

But the visions told me

This was gonna cause strife

I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran

Gave up smoking which I had started on the ward

They’d taught me to roll

Not something you expect to learn in a hospital

NHS and all its glory

I knew this would be an important part of my story

A patient had also chipped my tooth with a swing

I could have pressed charges

But God knows what havoc that could bring

The two medications that had been in my system

Which I’d come off too quickly

The damage was done

Did I have an illness?

Or had they created a train wreck

After a year I got ill again

And the second admission entailed

Here we go again, completely derailed

A psychiatrist came to our house

And I started to explain the electro magnetic field

He decided I was ill

And against my will

Went back to Queen Mary’s

Rose, an all female ward

This time the only way they could get their drugs into my system

Was to section me

Take away my rights

They didn’t let me be

I quickly learnt about the tribunal

Spoke to my lawyer

And won my case

I could articulate my words

And slow down my pace

So I left again

Hard stopped the meds

A fatal mistake I would only learn at thirty eight

Thanks to my boyfriend and all his research

If you hard stop the meds

You’re bound to get ill

The dopamine blockers and what they do

Mean that if you hard stop them

The dopamine will surge

You’re bound to get psychosis and mania

From the imbalance in the brain

Another admission put me under so much strain

They pinned me down again

This time in my sleep

The laws they were breaking left my

Lithe body shaking

I saw the nurses laughing down the corridor

After injecting a violent patient

Who was carrying her child

I noted their expression

And wrote down the evidence

One day I’ll remind them of their chuckling faces

My word against yours but there are many a patient

Who will support these cases

I’ll finish this chapter there for this rap is long

I haven’t forgotten and I won’t prolong

Remember who you are

And why you’re here

I found my purpose

My story is dear