Ceylan Scott — The Everyday

Author and online advocate for mental health awareness, Ceylan Scott, opens up about her experience in a Psych Ward.

Clock On A Psych Ward

Time on a psych ward is awry and askew,

It gets stuck on 11:23 for an hour or two,

Like like hands of the clock have been halted with glue.

Then when times catches up, a whole two seconds of chaos ensue.

There’s breakfast in the ‘morning’ but it feels like lunch,

But the sky say it’s 8am which is too early for even brunch,

And by the time you’re ready, there’s nothing left to munch.

Then at midnight your stomach awakens like you’ve done crunch after crunch.

There is no good time to leave your bed because the time here doesn’t change,

Hours stumble into days with slowness that’s sluggish and strange,

Hospitals shake up the concept of time and leave it confused and rearranged.

You know that 15 minutes have past when your viewing slat slides open with a clink.

Time goes too groggily and it keeps you out of sync.

There are alarms that start and stop in the second (or maybe hour?) it takes to blink.

There’s nothing but empty, crawling hours to chain smoke and sit and think.

It’s impossible to keep up with the outside world because “real” time is just too fast,

You’re stuck in one small moment that’s actually in the past.

You’re trapped and snared for a million years whilst your existence is bypassed.

There’s nothing to do but ponder and brood,

And notice every tilt and shift and shuffle of your mood,

Your thoughts become more deep and more intense and more shrewd.

Then you spend 3.5 minutes telling a nurse what you’ve concluded,

And they disappear into their office and type up that you’re deluded.

But if everyone had to live through crawling,

100 hour days,

Everyone’s world would be covered by a glaze,

And everyone’s existence would flurry by in a medicated haze.

In lucid moments that you can’t clutch because they’re lighter than air.

Because on a psych ward you just sit and stare,

Whilst being watched by a nurse in an NHS chair,

And the ticking passage of time isn’t tangible because it isn’t really there.

In A Pscyh Ward

There’s a lot of oddness on a psychiatric ward.

There’s someone crouching in the laundry room serenading the Lord,

And someone else is stealing bathroom plugs and collecting them in a hoard,

And someone smashing up the lounge because the wrong football team has scored,

Until they remember that it’s the right football team so instead they applaud,

Whilst another patient is booking a thousand different trips abroad,

And first class plane tickets that they can’t afford,

Psychiatric wards are all hustle and bustle: locked windows, locked doors, white walled, linoleum floored,

And bras hanging in trees by their strap and their cord,

And a nurse scribbling everything down on a musty clipboard.

Someone’s got a speaker and it blares out a bass heavy record,

Whilst the dude over there tries to shave a plastic knife into a sword,

And split milk and shards of glass where it’s been thrown and shattered and poured.

Someone’s lost their brain so they’ve made a poster offering a reward,

For the person who could find the place it’s been either stolen, hidden or stored.

Then there’s alarms and someone banging against their headboard,

And late night rants about “that nurse over there who’s actually a spy or a warlord,”

And someone smashes up the donated musical keyboard.

I’m part of the madness and stuck in it like an abandoned boat left knotted and moored,

Chain smoking and smoking till my sanity is restored,

Mute, jumbled, lock-jawed.

Brain is twitching and itching because I shouldn’t be a patient: I’m a fraud,

But I’m stuck in this shit ship till I get chucked overboard,

Out of the void that is a psychiatric ward, Into the outside world where I feel lonely and confused and abhorred,

Because being in hospital won’t win me a life or a trophy or a reward,

I’m just bored.

And flawed.

But still getting slowly closer to the goals I aim toward,

Because they can’t be found on a psychiatric ward.

Written by Ceylan Scott

“I’m an author of young adult fiction and an online advocate for mental health awareness. When I’m not writing, I’m spending time with my three dogs and doing photography.”

Ceylan is also an online advocate for mental health awareness at @redefining_normal on Instagram.