Sanctuary Tea

Walking into the hospital, it all looked so familiar. Though I had walked down that corridor on a few occasions, escorted by the nurses, I had gone in voluntary this time. If I hadn’t, they would have taken me by force. I was admitted under a Section 3 of the Mental Health Act for treatment. Life had been difficult which had made me go hyper manic. The kids had said, “Mum, it is kind of strange that Janet gets ill, then you get ill, then Janet gets ill, and you get ill”.

This time was different though as we were both going to be in the Wedgewood Unit at the same time. As I approached the security doors, I was quite looking forward to seeing a familiar face. When I entered, I saw Janet straight away through the large perplex windows of the Occupational Therapy room. She thought that I had come to visit her and came running out to greet me. When I told Janet that I wasn’t there to visit her and had been admitted, she was so excited.

There was a hot drinks machine in the cafeteria, but the drinks weren’t that great. Thankfully, she had a way with the staff and soon had them making us a drink. Nothing beats a freshly brewed cup of tea; especially when you are celebrating.

Janet and I had met through a mutual friend named Linda and we were complete opposites at the time. I was deeply depressed going through a bad marriage and Janet had a very ‘happy go lucky’ personality. When I left Lindas that day, Janet had asked her, “what is wrong with your friend?”.

When I finally found the courage to break up with my husband, Janet and I started to spend more time together. Her son David was the same age as my son Logan, and they hit it off immediately. Every time we got together, the first thing that happened was the kettle being switched on. Janet was very kind and enjoyed entertaining her guests. She lived in a cosy farm cottage with a with an open fire.

Janet would invite me, Logan age 9 and my daughter Kirsty age 5 round to visit. Her son David was an only child and always had his cousin or a friend round to stay over at weekends and when we got to know each other, David asked if Logan could stay over.

Logan had always been a difficult child, and I never had a break from him. But he was always well behaved around Janet and got on great with David. Janet had a golden labrador dog named Zack and we all had a great time going for nature walks. My husband and I were going through a messy divorce, he made it very difficult for me emotionally and financially. Janet’s boyfriend worked away, so we ended up spending a lot of time together. She would cook dinner for us all and the children would settle down for the evening to watch videos and play games.

After they were settled in their rooms, it was time for us to relax and on went the kettle. ‘Time for a brew’ she would say. We both smoked cigarettes but one night Janet rolled a cannabis stick. Though I had only smoked them occasionally when I was a teenager and when my first husband had passed away, that soon became our favourite way to relax – a cup of tea and a spliff. But Janet’s dream home came to an end when the guy she was renting from decided to sell up. The next house she moved to was small, and very noisy from the constant traffic zooming past on the busy adjacent main road, not as cosy as her farm cottage.

Janet loved her music and dancing and really wanted to go to a music festival in Glastonbury, Somerset. She had planned to go with her boyfriend Paul, but I had my reservations about him as he often upset her, and I didn’t trust him. Surprise, surprise Paul ended up going with his friends and left Janet behind. But she found out some people she knew, although not very well, were going and she asked if she could go with them instead.

On the way there one of them passed her a drink. They said to her, “you should be careful who you take drinks from”. She laughed it off, took the drink, and spent the evening dancing her heart out at the festival. Little did she know, they had given her unknown drugs because it turned out that they were friends of a man who had sexually abused his daughter, a friend of Janets, and her evidence had landed him a jail sentence. Janet had a very bad experience at Glastonbury, and she was a different person when she came back.

Upon her return, I had popped over hers for a cuppa, but she started acting very strange. For example, when she was having a conversation with me, she would begin having a conversation with an imaginary Prince Charles. She then became fixated on Prince Andrew and Paul McCartney. She also began to tell me that when she was a child the sky had cracked open, and she had seen God. She would disappear into the kitchen, and I would find her listening to the noises her fridge was making. She would tell me that she was communicating with it and seemed to go in and out of reality. Thankfully, having that cup of tea and a spiff seemed to bring back some normality.

I had been having problems with Logan’s behaviour, especially since the breakup with my ex-husband, but it started long before that. Mark was a typical wicked stepfather to Logan, and Logan had inherited Mark’s anger issues. This had led to problems at nursery and then school. When Logan was about 8 years old, I had taken him to Child and Adolescent Mental Health because I had researched ADHD. He ticked all the boxes, and I was desperate to get help and support for him, only to be told that he was a naughty boy who would learn things the hard way.

Even though Janet was a bit weird at times, Logan was always perfectly behaved around her and David, so we continued to spend a lot of time at their house. I think I have a sensitive nature and seem to soak in other peoples’ issues, so with the pressure of coping with Logan being excluded from school and him getting involved with criminals, I cracked and had a nervous breakdown. The ambulance came to take me off to the hospital. Kirsty went to stay with my parents as she was well balanced and easy to look after, but they refused to take Logan, so he ended up in the care of Child Services.

I was under Section 2 of the Mental Health Act for assessment, and I was there for 28 days. I made friends in there and looked forward to those cups of tea, especially when Janet came to visit me. I missed the children desperately; I had never been separated from them. Things didn’t change when I came out, Logan was just angrier because Kirsty had gone to Nana and Grandads, and he hadn’t. He had felt rejected and alone. I was advised by my mental health social worker that it would be detrimental to my mental health to have Logan home. My heart was breaking because I couldn’t live with him but I couldn’t live without him.

He was brought to our town a few days a week to go to a Pupil Referral Unit for his education but would abscond and disappear until it was too late for them to take him back to the children’s home. I would be worried sick all day after being told he had disappeared but eventually he would turn up at home to stay the night.

When Logan was 16, he was about to be shipped off to the other side of the country and placed in foster care. This would mean that I would not be able to see him, so I told the authorities that I wanted him home. By this time, I had been diagnosed with Bi-polar Affective Disorder. Things were very difficult with Logan; he was a lot bigger than me and could be intimidating at times. He and all his friends smoked cannabis, but he was a nicer calmer person when he had been smoking it. Eventually he sorted his life out, took a step back from the friends that were leading him into crime, and started to attend college to learn plumbing. But he was still very controlling and aggressive.

Janet had moved right around the corner from us so Kirsty and I would go round to her house often just to get away from Logan. The first thing Janet always did was put the kettle on and roll a spliff while we sat in the kitchen chatting. Janet’s house was my sanctuary. But her mental health gradually got worse, and she was diagnosed with schizophrenia. We had both had several admissions to the Wedgewood unit over the years. I’d had some psychotic episodes in the earlier year due mainly to being hyper manic and on the top of the scale of my Bi-polar. Janet was hanging around with doggy people and began taking heavier drugs. I didn’t go around to visit her very often as I was afraid of her friends, and she just wasn’t the same person anymore. She was also abusing her prescription medication.

Fast forward 10 years and Logan had discovered that he had a half-brother in Wales, so he decided to move away to get to know him. Then Kirsty met someone from Wales and was planning on moving there the following year. It seemed like fate that they were both relocating to the same place and I had to be close to my children. Janet had meant the world to me, but I felt that this was the opportunity that I needed to get away from her and her new friends because I felt like my life was in danger.

I am at peace now and I am a volunteer at a coffee shop in the converted basement of my local church because nothing beats a freshly brewed cup of tea.