I craved a cigarette, but knew that the time would likely never come when I'd get even six per day to inhale rapturously. One particularly dismal day, as I sat on the floor washing baseboards and listening to one nurse say to another that she'd rather be dead than be like me, I was called to the front of the dayroom. Mrs. Samuels informed me that I was to go directly to Mr. Walters's office.

I was curious, because I had no privileges to see him, or anyone else off the ward. Stephen escorted me to the third floor where Mr. Walters's office was. I walked in and Mr. Walters stood up, extended his right hand and said, somewhat cheerily, "Hello, Jane. I have someone here who really wants to see you."

I looked sideways and was happily shocked to see Mom sitting there opposite the man's desk. "Mom!" I rushed to her and threw my quaking arms around her waist, kissing her forcefully and saying through choked sobs, "How did you get her? How is this happening? They kept telling me I couldn't have any visitors! Oh, God it's been so long!!"

Mom was as overcome as I, and cried openly. It seemed that Grandma had contacted her friend Selene, and then the O.T. instructor had pulled some strings to get Mom to be able to meet with me, under Walters' supervision.

I was so ecstatic that I couldn't speak very clearly for a few minutes, and tried desperately to catch up on months of separation and silence. That was the beginning of a gradual upswing on H2 for me.

By June, Dr. Harrington had significantly lowered my dose of Nozinan, and, seemingly coincidentally, my traumatic symptoms decreased markedly. I was also on Ludiomil, and Dilantin for my seizures. For the first time in over a year, I wasn't plagued with those severe, frightening and emotionally wracking sessions, at least not to the extent I had been.

The decrease wasn't noticeable at first, but within a few days, the writhing, moaning and unbridled physical anxiety had abated enough to allow me to sit in a chair for several hours and only rock slightly back and forth.

My eyes still drifted to the side, which pissed the other patients off, but it wasn't accompanied by those noisy outbursts. When I lay in bed, next to mouthy old Mildred, I enjoyed the sensation of feeling calm and still, with no frantic, obsessive movements keeping me awake for hours. It seemed like some kind of miracle.

Within three weeks, I'd gotten my sessions and staring spells under enough control to actually be transferred to G2. I couldn't believe that suddenly, I was sprung from the terrible Purgatory and back with the vital and the alive segment of the population.

Mom came to visit me during my last two weeks on H2, as well as Dad and his girlfriend. Even Jim came and was intensely relieved that I was able to see everyone again. He hadn't known what was going on all those awful months and I tried to tell him. It came out sounding stilted and wooden, and I gave up after awhile. I sat and looked at my dear brother long and hard, thanking God that he hadn't been lost to me along with the rest of the family.

Then he gave me the ghastly news that he was moving to Vancouver right after graduation from Western. I was heartbroken, thinking of Jim being three thousand miles away, but he'd fallen in love with the West coast during the past two summers when he went to the British Columbia interior to plant trees. I cried bitterly and was told by Sheila that at least now I had something legitimate to be upset about.

I lay in bed and wept for the loss of the only solid force in my screwed-up life. Jim had taken on the role of the "older," more stable sibling during our years at university. He no longer was my "little brother," but rather, the person I went to for comfort and guidance.

Fortunately, he wasn't leaving until September, which was still three months away. I was afraid, though, that I wouldn't be out of the hospital before he took off.

It was a banner day when I got to light up a cigarette for the first time in a year. It would have been wise just not to start up again at all, but my abstinence had been forced and was not my choice, so I felt justified to be puffing away once more. I took that first puff with all the relish and exuberance of someone drawing a deep breath of victory, and I knew that another part of my life was now once more in my control and not somebody else's.

When I arrived on G2, I found some familiar faces: Lisa, Rita, Shane, Harriet and a group of others I had spoken to on several occasions. Unfortunately, I came down with the flu a week later and was sent to bed for three days with clear fluids and no cigarettes.

My roommate was a fourteen-year-old named Patti who seemed normal enough, and we got along quite well. By the end of my third day in exile I was starving, so she sneaked me in some chips and pop.

I got a huge shock one afternoon, as I finished up in the shower, when one of my old familiar staring spells occurred again. Before I knew it, my eyes had slid off to the side and I was lying on the bathroom floor banging the metal garbage can and writhing about. Luckily, it stopped before anyone came in, and I managed to pull myself together and get dressed. I couldn't figure out why that had happened after a month of no incidents, and it worried me. There was no way in hell I could endure another year like that last one. It would be preferable to be dead.

I soon got weekend passes and spent the time with my mom. She was going out with a pleasant, but complex man named Jim Kilpatrick, ten years her junior, and she was very happy. She went out every Saturday night, but I didn't mind spending some time alone. it was great not to be besieged by thirty-five other patients and a contingency of staff members. I played records, watched television, and wrote, mostly short stories. Maybe there was a future for me after all, and I could finally leave my sordid past behind.

On G2, I met a twenty-two-year-old named Sam who had been admitted to H2 a month earlier when he slashed his arms with a knife. He looked a lot like Jim Kerr of Simple Minds, although that's a reference from the present and not 1980, as the band hadn't been formed yet. He was kind, sensitive and I was extremely attracted to him. He spoke softly and explained to me that he had been trying to kill himself when he used the blade, but that he was not certain exactly why he wanted to die.

We became fast friends, tied together by fate, it seemed, and each struggling with the negative components of our personalities that drove us to self- destruction and despair.

I had not abandoned my own demons, as I was to learn. Even as my quality of life improved on G2 with the increase in freedom and privileges and though I was no longer being persecuted by staff members, I felt despondent a great deal of the time.

As the weeks progressed, this deadening sensation developed into strong urges to harm myself and I began to formulate plans to begin cutting again. It's still difficult to try to explain this need to camouflage emotional pain with a physical one. Something crucial was missing in my life, and not only that, I felt as though I was constantly grieving for something that was lost to me. This feeling had been with me for twenty-one years, since I was four.

I talked to Sam about it and he said he understood perfectly, as he experienced a similar, mysterious sadness and that may have been the catalyst for his suicide attempt.

We became friends with a girl named Cassandra, who, at eighteen, was extremely angry and bitter at being shunned by her family and dumped in the L.P.H. I was drawn to her self- destructive nature, and when we decided to become blood sisters and cut our wrists together, Sam balked angrily.

"That's a really stupid thing to do. I thought you had more class than that".

I retorted that he had cut himself multiple times and had the scars to prove it, but he simply got up and stalked furiously out of the games room.

Cassandra and I decided against the bloodletting ceremony, but the seed had been planted. I needed to slash, to feel the icy cold steel of a razor blade sliding into my skin and producing a warm rush of blood.

My brother had been visiting Mom and I a great deal on the weekends, since He was leaving soon for Vancouver. He was even more protective of me than he'd been in the past, ever since I was kept on H2 for so long.

Sam and I went out drinking a lot on our weekend passes and one night I returned home quite inebriated. Jim looked up from his book and asked, with a look of genuine concern, "Are you okay? What have you been up to?"

I sat down awkwardly, then replied through rubberized lips, "Oh, nothing much. Had a few beers with Sam. No big deal."

Jim frowned for a minute or two, then relaxed his expression and smiled slightly, "You should take better care of yourself. You're just getting over all your problems, so don't create more of them. Anything you want to talk about?"

I thought it was sweet of him to care as much as he did. I would certainly miss him when he moved thousands of miles away. Who was going to look out for me then?

Unfortunately, Mom's relationship with Jim Kilpatrick fizzled after he broke it off unexpectedly. The poor woman was devastated, and cried for days. I tried to console her, but it was futile. I even played Burton Cummings' "Stand Tall" for her, but that made matters worse. Then, on top of that, she got the awful news that she had uterine cancer and had to have a hysterectomy, with no guarantee that she would make a full recovery.

I didn't take this very well at all and was completely unhinged when she told me. She had the surgery and spent a week in Texas with Aunt Elizabeth recuperating in the hot, southern sun and floating around in the Holtz's pool.

Somewhere during this time, I pulled something that caused the relationship between my brother and I to rip wide open and made festering sores that would take years to heal.

I was home for the weekend and Mom had gone out to her singles club on a Saturday night. I sat at home watching "East of Eden" and was overwhelmed by the urge to cut myself. I just felt that I couldn't deal with my sordid past, my mother's problems and facing more time in that horrible hospital. I needed to anaesthetize some of the pain, so I devised a plan. I would put a razor blade in my purse, walk down to a pub downtown that Sam and I frequented, have a few beers, then hide in the washroom until everyone left.

Then after the staff had gone home, I'd slash my wrists and arms to pieces, and by the time someone found me, perhaps I'd get lucky and it would be too late. I wasn't afraid of dying; I'd suffered worse insults than that in the past year. I just couldn't handle my life anymore. I had grown weary of pushing my depression down into the pit of my stomach and shuddering everytime it surfaced again.

My eyes still occasionally rolled off to the side and I greatly feared regressing to the point where I'd been on H2 once more. It was just a matter of time before my freedom expired and I was once again emotionally tortured on that despicable ward. Now it appeared that Mom could die and I'd have no support system left. Jim was moving away, and Dad wouldn't be able to deal with me.

On top of all this was that nebulous sense of despair that gnawed at my soul and chewed my confidence, well- being and zest for life into tiny fragments.

"I can't do this anymore," I thought, walking down King Street toward Richmond, "Enough is enough."

I got slightly drunk at the pub and waited until last call. Then, a half hour later, after all the patrons were leaving, I slipped into the washroom, closed myself into a stall, and produced the blade from my wallet. After staring numbly at it for a moment, I slashed repeatedly, making certain to cut as deep as I could, all up and down my arms and violently into my wrists.

I didn't feel any pain, even as the blood oozed out of the multiple lacerations and spilled onto the floor and into my lap, running in rivulets over my blue suede shoes. (I certainly could have done a chillingly Apocalyptic version of that old Presley tune).

I watched with morbid fascination as the cuts gaped open, revealing veins, muscle and yellowish fatty tissue.

The next thing I knew, I was sprawled on the floor and conscious of two large feet at my head. Then everything went black.

I awakened in the emergency room at St. Joseph's Hospital, where an intern, looking somewhat green and nauseated, began asking me questions. He wanted to know if I'd been drinking, had I taken any pills If I'd been trying to kill myself and who could be notified as to my whereabouts.

I explained that I hadn't taken an overdose, but he didn't believe me and made me swallow two doses of Ipecac. That was absolutely horrendous, and I puked my guts out for a half hour, feeling sicker than I ever had in my life.

He said that I shouldn't make decisions about my life when intoxicated, and then added somewhat sadly, "Some of these cuts are really deep." I said nothing, just turned my head to the side and looked away from his judgmental eyes.

I didn't want my mother to be called, terrified of her discovering what I had done. This was a very bad mistake, for she was at home worried sick and wondering where I was.

After getting stitched up, with over one hundred thirty sutures, I was made to stay in the emergency room for the remainder of the night, after which an ambulance took me back to the L.P.H. Naturally, I was put back on H2, and this completely blew me away. I lay in the observation room, crying bitterly and loudly for hours. I couldn't have any visitors or privileges and was told curtly to stop making such a racket and disturbing the other patients.

When I finally staggered out into the dayroom, I was met by a small, bespeckled fifteen-year-old boy named Percy. He was very kind and soft-spoken, and I warmed up to him immediately. I was soon to discover that he was extremely sexually precocious. After telling me I had the body of Kristy McNichol, he asked if he could go to bed with me. I replied that he was far too young and to get his adolescent mind out of the gutter.

It turned out that he was on Behaviour Modification for molesting his nine-year-old foster brother, but I think that little Percy just craved affection and love that he didn't get from his foster parents. I felt sorry for him and his plight helped to draw me out of my own misery.

Mom came to see me a few days later, completely undone. She was sobbing uncontrollably, shaking violently and stoned on Librium which her doctor had prescribed for her frayed emotional state following my selfish antics.

I felt terrible and well I should have. She couldn't understand why I hadn't called her to let her know I was safe instead of putting her through such tremendous agony.

Jim was livid and wouldn't come to visit me.

Dad said little, but felt I was the most selfish and inconsiderate brat that ever lived. He was right on the money there, I had another rug to hook, and spent three weeks on H2, which was much less than I deserved.

I met a quiet, shyly handsome patient named Garon, who, at forty, had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He was intelligent, witty and laughed at my stupid jokes. We talked about literature and music and I was happy to have finally found an academic soulmate in the illiterate wasteland of the L.P.H.

I got back to G2 in September, and vowed finally to get my act together and get the hell out of that damned hospital. I had been seeing Mr. Walters on a weekly basis for quite awhile.

He told me that my staring spells and all the accompanying frenzy were the result of anxiety, which really frustrated me. They still would not admit that my symptoms might have been due to the medication.

Mr. Walters liked to discuss my sexuality, or rather, the lack thereof, and for the next couple of years I obligated him, oddly fascinated with the way in which he tried ambitiously to steer me away from my attraction to women. Once he found out that I had been to a gay bar and felt drawn toward my own sex, he donned his homophobic Baptist garb and figured he could "save me." It was a little game I played with him, although I don't think he knew I was doing it. I thought he needed to take a different approach to his therapy, and secretly laughed at him.

I had been assigned to work at I.T., or Industrial Therapy, a huge workshop on the hospital grounds where patients did absolutely fascinating and mind-expanding things like unwrapping bubblegum, packaging sandpaper and emptying packets of Lik-O-Maid into giant vats. I hated it, and to add insult to injury, we only got paid twenty cents per hour.

After several months of this idiocy, I was sent to a place called the Satellite Workshop, several miles up Dundas Street on Clarke Road. There we got sixty dollars a week and did piecework for companies like 3M. It involved packaging, collating and some carpentry, and I didn't mind it too much.

A woman named Donna McManus ran the place, along with someone named Betty and they were decent to us.

Garon worked there, along with a thin, intense young woman named Pearl, a tall, gangly kid with pale blond hair and large, myopic eyes named Ron, and a cheerful, effervescent woman of about twenty-eight named Sharon.

We worked well together, for seven hours, five days a week, and it offered a chance to be away from the L.P.H.

The workshop was small, clean, and we were treated fairly and with respect. During that time, I thought I was getting too chubby at one hundred ten pounds and went down to ninety-eight, subsisting on salads, coffee and cigarettes.

The G2 staff gave me a hard time about looking anorexic and Mom was definitely not pleased. But still, I couldn't let go of my eating disordered life, and it was forever coming back to haunt me, particularly when things were otherwise improving. It was like a security crutch, an old friend who was always waiting in the wings to let me feel virtuous and somewhat holy.

Sam continued to go out with me, even after my cutting episode. he'd gone to the pub the following Monday to ask questions about what had happened and some waitresses told him that the janitor had found me when he was cleaning up the washrooms.

I would go over to his basement apartment on the weekends and we'd drink, listen to music and engage in a lot of kissing and heavy petting. I wouldn't have intercourse with him, for fear of getting pregnant.

One night, we had a big fight about something so trivial that I've long since forgotten and the two of us broke up afterward. I just stopped seeing him. He'd been out of the hospital for a couple of months and I remember being extremely angry with him.

Lisa and Cassandra wouldn't speak to me after that, thinking I was a real bitch for treating Sam like I did. They were probably right, for all I know.

Finally, on November fourteenth, 1980, I got released from G2. I was incredulous; after two full years of being a patient in the L.P.H., I had my ticket to freedom. It hardly seemed possible that they were actually letting me out of that hellhole.

Although I still felt depressed and couldn't say for certain that I'd never cut again, the spells were under control and Dr. Sussman could see no reason to keep me any longer.

Mom met me at Mr. Walters's office on that Friday afternoon, and I remember actually feeling scared and panicky about leaving what had been my home for so very long.

I'd continue seeing Mr. Walters every Wednesday and Dr. Sussman would be in charge of my medication. I'd pick it up once a month at the out-patient pharmacy. As I packed my gigantic accumulation of stuff from G2, I knew in my heart that I would never be back there again.

Patients came up to say good-bye and the staff wished me luck, saying that I could come to the ward anytime to talk. I knew that would never happen, but I thanked them anyway. I walked off the ward and out of the L.P.H., feeling as though I'd been through one of those Turkish prisons.

My heart raced as I breathed in the sweet scent of freedom, and felt rather drunk with the knowledge that my life was now in my control.

That very night, I attended a Burton Cummings concert with Karen. I even met the man again after the show, when he thanked me enthusiastically for a book I'd sketched for him and planted a big, hearty kiss on my lips.

"Thank you for doing that picture of my mother! I'm sending the book to her in Winnipeg. We've been looking at it for the past half hour." Yes, I thought triumphantly, I had my life back. And what a life it was going to be from now on.