38. MENTAL HEALTH HOSPITAL

ATTENTION PLEASE: THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS NAMES ABOUT DRUGS AND MEDICINES AS WELL AS PASSAGES ABOUT THEIR CONSUMPTION.

"Hello, youngster", the man said.

I stared at him and cracked a smile. "Hello, Ingrid", Vivian said silently.

"How did you know?", I said in terror.

"Dina informed me". She sat next to me and hugged me.

"I'm so sorry", I whispered. "You hate me, right?".

"What?", Vivian exclaimed. "How could I hate you about your feelings?".

"They inserted this....disgusting tube in my body", I said bitterly. "But now I'm clean".

"Ingrid, you have really frightened us. If you had talked to us about anything that has happened, we would be close to you".

I sighed and sat on the bed.

"I'd like to introduce you to Ingmar. He lives in a town towards Alta. Its name means salmon river. Oh, what's its name? Something like Len....Las....".

"Lakselv", Ingmar replied.

I knew where Lakselv was. Two hours away from Alta. I looked at him right in the eyes. They had a deep blue colour, which reminded me of my brother's, Daniel's, eyes.

"Have we met before?", I asked.

"I am Ingmar, Raglan Hundred's keyboardist".

I knew him! Of course, I knew this band. When we had stayed at Bryan's house, I'd been at a gig of theirs at the Blakey Ridge inn. I was highly impressed by the fact that their voices and their sound reminded me of us when we formed the band. There was this campfire atmosphere in the way they would mix their voices. However, in contrast with us, there was harmony. On the other hand, in our first album, we didn't get the correct sound in our voices, exactly because we didn't know how to sing. We were completely out-of-tune and uncoordinated when singing in unison. But then, we learnt from our mistakes and in our following albums, our voices became better and better. Raglan Hundred had the same style like us, but they weren't, of course, out-of-tune.

Raglan Hundred was the kind of band I had always been looking for. Even though I didn't know them in person, I was under the impression that they had been really carefree and they had strong bonds with each other, as if they were a family. Their music had nothing special, in the sense that there was nothing revolutionary in them, which had never appeared in the history of music again. But, then again, I was drawn towards that. I liked simple music, without complex riffs. I also liked the fact that they would fund their albums themselves and they had signed no contract, just like us.

I was gazing at Ingmar, smiling. But what I was feeling was no admiration towards a celebrity, just like in Pink Floyd's concert, when I was young. I was feeling as if I had known this band for my whole life. Because I was thinking that I was exactly like them. I wanted to be connected with others through music because this was the only way for me to communicate with people around me.

"I was in a live show of yours last year", I said.

"And why didn't you talk to us afterwards? Vivian and Bryan have been our long-term friends", Ingmar replied.

I blushed in embarrassment.

"You should talk to them", Vivian said. "Ingmar is the most easy-going person in the world".

"I see", I said with widely-opened eyes.

I was so embarrassed that I was introduced to a person, like Ingmar, in such an awful state. If I ever met Raglan Hundred normally, I'd like it to happen under completely different circumstances. In general, I don't like meeting celebrities, nor am I one of these people who crave meeting their idols. I would never like to meet my idol in real life. To start with, I believe that we have a completely different view about artists in our head. The fact that an artist might create an excellent work doesn't mean they are nice people. They might be the greatest pricks ever, just like Dali. Furthermore, I believe there's no point in meeting my idol because it's completely vain. I take great heed in human relations and meeting someone only to tell them how much I admire them, is completely meaningless, as long as we'll never become friends. On the other hand, Raglan Hundred didn't seem to be people who had distinguished their music from their character. That's why I wanted to meet them and become friends with them.

I was taken away from the hospital room and transferred to Alta's mental health hospital. I begged the nurses to keep the medical confidentiality so that people wouldn't learn about what happened to Ingrid Sorensen. I also asked to be discharged from the hospital in November, if everything was getting well so that I could spend Johanna's birthday with her. I was really taken care of at the mental health hospital, so that I was able to talk, without feeling any pressure. My psychiatrist was a rather sweet woman, whose name was Hanna. She asked me about several things and we tried to examine together the reasons that led me to try to commit suicide. I realised that my self-esteem and my vanity led me to that point. That's why I had to behave like a normal person and not like a celebrity, who's forced to do everything perfectly and impeccably.

I stayed at the hospital for a month. All this time, I was visited by several friends and my family. Vivian was staying at Ingmar's place in Lakselv and they would usually visit me together. Sometimes, though, Ingmar would come alone. He was sitting next to me, telling me stories and tales, usually of a romantic topic, just like these ones that I used to write before I came down with depression. It seemed to me that this man had a big heart and this made me get emotional. He didn't even know me at all, but he would come to the hospital, only to see if I'm getting better. And I can't justify his behaviour, saying that he was being polite with me, so he would join Vivian because he would often visit me alone and try to make me smile. But I was really astonished when he said he was twelve years older than me. And why should I care anyway? As if I was going to marry him. Dina, Eva, Jesikka and Sofia would also come. They would bring me food and Eva was joking around, as usually. She lately used to spend a lot of time with me, because she knew I wasn't feeling well. She would make my day with her jokes and she was always happy. I have literally never seen Eva grousing or being upset, so you could never really know about anything that she was going through. Even Monica and Daniel with Savinna came from Finland because my parents informed them about me. But at nights, it was my parents and Johanna the ones who would stay with me.

I went back home in mid-November. Hanna had prescribed me heavy antidepressant pills, such as Xanax, Lexotanil and Lyrica. In the beginning, I didn't want to take these at all. The first reason was because after trying to kill myself, pills made me sick and I couldn't stand even see them. This was a traumatic incident for me and if forced to take these, I would have this bitter taste in my mouth again, just like the time when I had swallowed the content of these ten boxes. I was also afraid that my ability of creativity would be reduced, but Hanna persuaded me in changing my mind and take those pills, if I didn't want to relapse again. Things started getting slightly better for the next three months. I was getting frequent phone calls by Ingmar, however I couldn't face him at all. These pills I would take, made me feel really stoned and my mind was completely numb. In early 2022, we released our live album with Dina, which was called That Marvellous Night in London - Live at Royal Albert Hall. Our friends slightly started forgetting the incident with Lydia, especially after we won the case.

During early 2022, I started working as a DJ in a club owned by a friend of mine, Kristian. I was playing psychedelic trance music, just like these songs I would also compose at this time. In this club, everybody was doing LSD and ecstasy. I wasn't doing drugs at all, even though Lyrica  sometimes caused me to have pseudo-hallucinations and intense lust for parties. And I didn't even hide it at all, at least in those circles of friends, who used to take hallucinogenic drugs. Very often, Kristian would ask me whether I was taking any substances and I would reply to him that I had tried to kill myself twice and that my psychiatrist had prescribed me Lyrica, Lexotanil and Xanax pills. So, my friends were coming in the club, seeing me with my black hat and my dark brown hair smoking, drinking gin and dancing around like there's no tomorrow. At some point, Kristian saw all these machines around me and asked what these switchboard things were about.

"These are synthesizers, not a switchboard", I answered. "You can make sounds with them".

"But they have no keys", he said.

"I said synthesizers, not keyboards. These are completely different instruments. A synthesizer might not have keys, so it's a pad synthesizer, like these ones."

In fact, there were thousand kinds of synths and their role was to create millions of sounds.

At the same time at home, I kept on composing music. Just like before, I would compose psychedelic and trance music. For the first time, I was using the Ableton programme and the tracks I was composing had really weird sounds. I had bought these synthesizer pads, with which I was working at Kristian's club and I was experiencing myself with these. I believe that it was the pills that were causing me this desire to create experimental music as well as giving me the lust for parties and my mind was so numb that nowadays my memory is failing me, concerning the composition of these tracks. Of course, another reason why my memory is still failing me is because this has been the darkest period of my life, so my mind doesn't want to remember what led me into composing these songs. They had neither lyrics nor a specific structure. I wasn't writing completely in random and there was always a story behind these songs, though it was expressed through the sounds I would use. However their structure showed how complicated my thoughts were.

Since I got out of the hospital, the girls were constantly at my place, because they were concerned about the state of my mental health. Jesikka suggested we started writing stories about Orchidea's Tales but I had no lust for that. Furthermore, I was so embarrassed to tell them about the pills I was taking, even though I had no problem to discuss about that with my friends at Kristian's club. One day, though, Dina saw some Lyrica pills on the table and said:

"Why are you taking these?".

"Hanna prescribed them to me", I replied.

"Hanna?".

"My psychotherapist at the hospital", I said.

"Watch out", she whispered. "They cause something.....like...."

"Hallucinations?", I interrupted her. "And they're also addictive. I know, because she warned me against that. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to write this kind of psychedelic music".

"Oh!", she exclaimed. "Alexandria's next album?".

"I don't know", I said coldly. "Probably something else but mine".

The four girls used to visit me every evening. However on the 7th of February, 2022, I was only visited by Jesikka, Sofia and Dina, who told me that Eva was coming later. However, at some point, we realised that it was nine o'clock already and Eva was nowhere. We finally called her at home and in her mobile phone, but she didn't either pick up. Sofia suggested:

"Maybe we should go to her place. Something might have happened to her".

"Sounds good", I replied. "I also need to buy cigarettes".

We went to the kiosk, where I bought my camels: I used to smoke Camel cigarettes, while this crazy girl, Sofia, was smoking unfiltered cigarettes! We reached Eva's place and knocked on her door. "Eva", I shouted. "Eva! Eva!". Then, Sofia shouted: "Eva, open the door! I know you're in!".

But then I said: "Sofia, the door is open".

We opened the door and found Eva lying flat on the floor with a sliced throat and next to her a blade of a knife full of blood.

Suicide!