It’s that time of year again.  Time to decide, time to hope, time to dream.  I have refused to make any New Year’s Resolutions for the past three years but maybe this is the year to change that?

The last time I made a New Year’s Resolution it was 2010 and my first New Year’s Eve in hospital on a low secure ward.  As I describe in my memoir “Sectioned” it wasn’t a particularly festive occasion.  Early in the evening some of us tried having the “Where do you want to be this time next year?” conversation but it petered out after one lady said with total sincerity that she wanted to be six foot under.  After watching what I could of the fireworks in the valley through the window and two mesh fences I returned to my bedroom in the first hour of 2011.  My bedroom window was blanked out with opaque film because it looked out onto a courtyard which was also overlooked by the male ward opposite.  The only way to see anything was to open it and peer through the holes in the black metal grill that prevented anything but air going through.  With my nose pressed against this I looked up and saw many many flying lanterns floating over the hospital carrying people’s wishes and memories into the New Year.  Watching them float by I pushed my fears of failure to one side and promised myself that this time next year I would be out and living my life in the world again.

A year passed.  When New Year came I was still in the same hospital with the same team and mostly with the same fellow patients.  The male ward opposite had had many more referrals than we’d had so we had swapped wards with them.  We couldn’t see the fireworks because the building was now in the way but in many ways it was more festive.  Both staff and patients had worked hard to have Christmas and New Year as we wanted it rather than just as the hospital had designed it.  Our fornightly take away night (the only times we could order in food) also fell on New Year’s Eve that year.  As happened every time I had takeaway my blood sugar went sky high and I went to sleep for a while.  I woke up in time to see the New Year in and join the others in the smoking area.  Although I’ve never smoked this was a great treat as we could never normally go outside at all that late.

In the back of my mind was my promise of the previous year.  I hadn’t kept it but things had moved forward.  I was attending college one afternoon in a week in another town and had unescorted leave in the grounds of the hospital.  There seemed a real chance that it would happen this year.   I hardly dared think about it in case I jinxed things.

Within weeks I had been told that the ward I was on was closing and I was being moved to a sister hospital in another city.  All the relationships I’d built with other patients and staff, accept for the psychologist who drove a huge round trip to keep working with me, had to end. I had to drop out of my college course in the middle and when I reached the new place I found that all the leave I had worked so hard for was gone.

Despite it all New Year’s Eve 2012 found me in a locked rehabilitation unit.  In the weeks before I remember one of the therapy coordinators asking about our New Year’s Resolutions.  None of us were making any.  She said that she was surprised as surely we would all want to get out or be made informal.  I hid in my room writing for most of the night.

I was discharged from both my section and the hospital on 22^nd August 2013, then readmitted on 1^st December 2013.  By New Year’s Eve 2013 I’d been a patient on the PICU for several weeks.  Between Christmas and New Year I had been moved to the General Hospital to receive treatment for Diabetic keto acidosis and I returned to the PICU on New Year’s Eve.  I remember that they were short of staff and one of the deputy managers was all set to stay till midnight.  We were listening to music on her phone when they found someone to cover and she left taking it with her.  That was when the fact that once again it was New Year and I was trapped in a psychiatric hospital with no way to leave and little hope of that ever changing.  I went to bed and hid under my covers for several hours.  Later in the evening an older female support worker who I felt comfortable with coaxed me out.  Her friend and fellow support worker had got the night off and was out on the town.  I was wrapped in her big cardigan and we played at trying to sneak up the corridor towards the doors without being spotted to go and join her.  The young female nurse who was working that night called to us:

“Have you got any money? Have you got any shoes? You haven’t thought this through have you ladies!”

I kept the cardigan on for hours, it lived in the office and everyone who was cold wore it at one time or another!

A number of people asked me about New Year’s Resolutions in the early weeks of 2014 and mostly regretted it!  I said I didn’t do New Year’s Resolutions, that until I managed my last one I was not going to get involved.  I was too scared to admit to wanting anything and felt so split that my different parts couldn’t agree on anything anyway.

So now it’s New Year’s Eve 2014 and I am not in hospital so I’ve finally kept that promise from 2010.  Is it time for a new resolution?  I don’t know.

What did I learn from that one?  Mostly that it’s better to make New Year’s Resolutions about things I can do myself rather than things that I want to happen.  I’d been told repeatedly through my time in hospital that I was the only one that could get me out.  It was true that getting well enough to be allowed to leave was not something the team could do for me however getting off my section was not something I could do without help either.

What I’d set was a collaborative goal.  I’ve written a lot of them in the last few weeks as next week my care coordinator and I are updating the Recovery Care Plan we began in my last few months in hospital this summer to use in the community as part of a pilot there.  Lots of goals that are important to me and steps to move towards them but nothing that feels like a resolution for 2015.

It doesn’t help that I’ve been taking most of this week an hour at a time and some of it a minute at a time.  Some of them are painful and difficult and some of them are good but it was a big step to order a delivery to come the next day and thus commit to being in to receive it yesterday.  The wheel is always turning.

So what would be flying with my lantern if I released one tonight?

I certainly have hopes for the next year.  I spent much of today researching Folk festivals to attend and planning new lines for my business and new writing projects.  I have hopes of seeing old friends and meeting new.

Some of my memories maybe, both the painful ones that bring me up short and some of the good ones that pull me back to places where I can’t live and thrive.  Not all of them, if I try to forget the past completely the chances are it will repeat but some of them need to stay in 2014 while I go on.

And my resolution?  I’m going to spend at least 5 minutes each day focussing on my religion and spirituality be that through meditation, ritual, pathworking or reading.

I wish you all every blessing for 2015.