Between Me and Myself by Sandra Willson

Author:Sandra Willson [Sandra Willson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2022-05-06T00:00:00+00:00

I believe I spent up to eighteen months there before the doctors proclaimed me sane enough to stand trial. The hospital doctors sent me back to the jail, where lawyers hired by my mother prepared their case. If Mum had consulted me about hiring lawyers, I would have told her to approach Legal Aid. So the lawyers visited me, asked a few questions, and then informed me what was going to happen when I pleaded guilty. I had hoped I would not have to serve a long sentence, because I was becoming just a little jack of the shit-arses around me. I had been coming alive again, feeling a little bit, which now included a little regret about having given myself up. I made the decision that, based on the average two to three years’ sentence that ‘insane’ prisoners served, I would plead ‘Not Guilty’ due to being insane at the time. My lawyers objected strenuously.

‘But you’re not insane!’

‘When the jury hears that I was in a mental hospital at the age of fifteen years, you’ll have no troubles!’

And so it was. When Dr Gilchrist got up and testified that I had suffered from a ‘personality disorder’, even I myself was confused and no longer understood what she was implying. This classification, for all I knew, could have merely been a euphemism for my homosexuality. This classification, however, carried weight. It meant something of some sort, and had substance—whatever it was. Dr McGeorge testified I was a schizophrenic, exhibiting emotional apathy and showing a complete indifference to the position in which I found myself. He then continued to repeat as fact certain rumours from the hospital, and played up the fact that I had been admitted to a mental hospital at age fourteen, having a ‘violent disposition’.

And the plea succeeded. I was found ‘Not Guilty Due to Insanity’, and was sentenced to be detained ‘At the Governor’s Pleasure’. Any medication I may have been taking was increased by the time of the trial, when I was doped up ‘for my own good’. As a consequence, the trial left me with few memories except these—the banner above the judge’s head and the effect of the police testimony when reporting my conversations. I reacted with horror when important and sensitive details were relayed in a police monotone. Apparently, the police were also forced to listen for six hours to every tape I had collected. My classical music they were virtually guaranteed not to enjoy.

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