A brief occurrence of delusional psychosis laid me low in mid-December, returning on the 4th of January hours after me receiving a tranche of written documents from Dr Laker, the psychiatrist my lawyer hired (against my stated-in-writing will) to analyse me, with regard to providing a defence in court.
I found what he had written so insulting, so factually inaccurate, and so derogatory - and unhelpful, more like an honorary member of the prosecution than any empathetic defence - that it left me shaking in humiliated frustration, knowing that time had run out, and that he had effectively damned me, cursing the ignorant standoffishness of my lawyer also, an unforgiveable naivety in trusting this 'expert professional' over my own reported understanding of my health worries, ignoring the extensive background emails I sent him on the topic, and my lack of consent, and just powering ahead at his own pace, his client's wishes, insights, and contributions totally ignored. I would genuinely have preferred him to have formed his defence with an understanding that I was understandably stressed in what was a historically fearful situation, and argued instead for the absence of any malevolent motives, let alone the insignificance of the victimless 'crimes' themselves, as much as the prosecution's reliance on prejudicial evidence unrelated to the charges in question, designed only to provoke listeners, or to smear me with political clichés and character assassinations.
That my health has suffered markedly since the arrest of November 2021 is true enough, a fatalistic emotional collapse into terrible, empty melancholia, suicidally low, isolated, condemned by parents, relations and immediate family, scored and chided by social workers, family judges, police, and mental health workers, friends leaving, in terrible humiliation and a collapse of my self-esteem to rock bottom, Abby cold towards me, arguing and complaining, shrieking at me angrily, standoffish, impatient, and loveless, myself barred from seeing her children, or even contacting them by phone or letter, on account of my "dangerous terrorist extremism", missing them terribly.
Over unrelenting months of this I have repeatedly broken down, each new, unexpected week or so of episodic psychosis arriving out of the blue, by now on a monthly basis, opening me up to the condemnation of neighbours in my street, surrounded by hostile people, terribly ashamed and embarrassed, blurting out nonsensical and paranoic word salad to my friends by email, or muttering to myself in the back garden, or along the pavements outside down to the shore, as if in a desperate, deluded drive for interpersonal connection, as if there was a receptive audience to communicate with.
The best I can expect is to go uncaught, my only punishment being the mockery of Abby in the aftermath, jibing at me for going crazy, teasing me over all the stupid pronouncements I came out with in a bumbling daze, and the worst to be reported on by neighbours or passers-by for talking to myself and then a team of police arriving, sometimes armed, to drag me out and section me, forced repeatedly into month-long sectioning and held down and injected with drugs when I refuse to accept their pharmaceuticals, recovering within a few days or so regardless of pharmaceutical intervention, and then the long, boring wait, usually for about two weeks, as they hold onto me 'just in case' and whilst they build up their formal standard to-all steps to discharge, the various loops one is made to jump through to indicate that they are making progress, never once asked about any of this, or indeed given an opportunity to share it.
Invariably, upon discharge I am asked (and asked, and re-asked...) about my thoughts over my crossbow and air-rifle ownership, and "could you tell us more about your interactions with counterterrorism", and "what's this about manuals on bomb-making? Do you have any thoughts of violence?" It's the only thing I'm ever asked, in fact. It humiliates me more, and saddens me, compounding the distress and shame, as much as feeling their glares and hysteria and condemnation, reminding me again and again that, in all realism, I'm f**ked. I return to more sadness, ignored, and turned away from, in a silent house, everything of pleasure evaporated, ashamed before my family, and deeply wounded.
I am unable to process any more shame, finding myself a wretched embarrassment, and displeased at my ravages of my failing sanity. I've been distracted otherwise by my skin, a fierce bout of heavy psoriasis which I'd had since the early days of the hospital, announced to them, but left untreated, keeping me up at night for days on end, in sharp, stinging pain, my limbs, hips, legs, chest, and back coated in burning plaques, a dry, crackling sharpness present from waking until the end of the day, distracting me and causing me to cry out and to limp and stumble. clenched over rigidly, and then confined to bed altogether, finding movement too painful, every contact with the woollen sheets bringing more blazing needle-stabs of irritation. My order for treatment cream finally arrived today, after more than two weeks of physical misery.
At least in hospital I was able to get some reading done. I bought and read Brendan Simm's Hitler: A Global Biography. I found the style quite arid, and I wish more had been devoted to Hitler's early life. Whilst in hospital I also re-read a bound abridged edition of Memories and Reflections by Savitri Devi, moved by her devastated, righteous passion, and was glad to rediscover the anecdote about Hitler's late night hilltop revelation to his friend, that possessed visionary moment at 16, post-opera. I was glad at least that Simms emphasised the importance to Hitler of lebensraum and the extermination of Slavs in Ukraine and across Czechoslovakia, and covered the einsatzgruppen with more historical realism, I suspect, than could be found in the presentations of Jim Rizoli or the Christian apologists of the holocaust denial movement. I hadn't realised quite how much he doubted the genuine racial capabilities of much of his own German population, or indeed how fractured and degenerate so many of them were, and how prone to factionalism and in-fighting. I was surprised that he did not think more of Danes, or Norwegians.
To be honest, I did not find reading about his decisions once war had broken out to be as interesting. Narratives on the tactics and events of the Second World War have never been of great interest to me, and I prefer reading on the pre-war Third Reich, or the cruel aftermath, or indeed inspirations from the worldview of National Socialism itself, or German artistic examples and historical anthropology scholarship of the day.
Apart from those two, I read a few more, Arthur C. Clarke's history of global communications, How the World was One, very informative, but slightly too utopian for my tastes, as if technology could solve everything, and The Sigint Secrets by Nigel West, detailing the clandestine wartime activities of MI6 and GCHQ's signals intelligence operators and cryptographers, from Bletchley Park to the penultimate decade of the Cold War, and the intrigues of its spies, double agents, and defectors. I finished by refreshing myself over basic steganography and covert communication techniques, reading the technical manual Hiding in Plain Sight by Eric Cole.
I hang in there, but it's very lightless over here, much as I try my hardest. If they could all just leave me alone, and if the pressure could just be lifted - I'd be better within days!
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