After about 6 months at Long Grove they started to encourage me to find work. Great! This would give me good excuses to be out all day.
I did eventually get a job. I got a job as a store man at a fruit and vegetable wholesalers in Epsom. I had told them that I could drive a forklift which probably sealed the job for me. I was told I would probably never have to drive one because they had a regular forklift driver, but the job was mine.
I worked there for a month or so until a little mishap. The forklift driver was off sick and I had to step into his shoes, or his forklift. Well I thought, maybe I could bluff it. I jumped on the machine and got it moving within the warehouse with no problem. I even managed to move a few pallets around. I was then asked to unload a lorry out in the yard. I took the machine outside.
The yard was a mess of craters and potholes, I lost control and put the forks right through the side of a car. Not just a car unfortunately. The managers Mark 5 Cortina. Ooooops! I was chased off the premises very quickly.
Life seems so unfair sometimes. All the feelings of anger, rejection and resentment came flooding back to me. I went back to the hospital, wandering around the grounds. I brewed my anger for days. Until a Sunday morning actually. I was wandering around the grounds trying to work out some plan of action when I came across the Occupational Therapy Unit. It was a factory that used to pack plastic model kits. There were a heap of cardboard boxes piled outside the back door. I put a match to them. The building was an old wooden one, and within an hour or two it was razed to the ground. This terrified me. I had never seen such swift destruction.
I was questioned by the police and hospital staff about the fire but denied all knowledge of it. Such was the ferocity of this fire, and the impact it had upon me, I never set another one. Despite the drugs and therapy they had me on, it was seeing the effect of my handiwork that cured me for all time of fire-raising.
It was after this fire that I decided I was out of control, and I didn't like it. I gathered up a cocktail of drugs and medicines and took the lot as a deliberate overdose. I really didn't want anymore of this world. I was mad, I was not nice, and I really wanted to end it all.
That night I took the overdose as I went to bed. As I fell asleep I had no regrets. I really didn't care less. I slept for 3 days. No one woke me. I was just left in my room to sleep. When I awoke I got out of bed and went into the day room. Everyone commented that I had had a long sleep. No one suspected why though. The nurses obviously hadn't cared. But I felt so good. I felt so rested and ready to take on life again.