AMOS YEE: MY SUICIDAL EXPERIENCE IN CHANGI PRISON

So last week I had an interview with CNN, at my own house, and in typical fashion, with my sloppy dressing and, messy uncombed hair, this is going to go international people.

I know I expressed reluctance to go on interviews before, but I had always liked and wanted to experience the dynamic of an interviewer-interviewee relationship, and at that time I was in the mood, satisfied after completing my ‘A Scintillating Introduction To The Singapore elections’ video. I didn’t want to start with anyone local because it’s my first time, and I think I’d feel more comfortable knowing that someone is interviewing me not solely for the sake of digging out something bad about me, so they can portray me in the worst possible light.

The main reason why I never wanted to have an interview before is because all the ideas I wanted to present in an interview, I thought I could present better in a blog post or a video. But after thinking about it I realised, there is a unique dynamic to an interviewer-interviewee relationship and part of it is the spontaneity, one you most likely get less off if everything were scripted. And I also eventually felt confident about my creative abilities to know that if I tackled an idea in an interview that I wanted to do in a future video, I’d still be able to present that same idea with more detail, and still in a different, unique way, so it won’t seem like I’m repeating myself. And plus it’ll be extremely tiresome if I were constantly conscious about presenting ideas to other people simply because I wanted to talk about it in my video, then I’d probably be unable to say anything, which would be make my social life worst than it already is.

Additionally, the Amazing Atheist I’m assuming, discovered my news from CNN, an international news broadcast, so to satisfy my quasi-vicarious desires of letting more artists in America whom I love, know about me, and all the aforementioned reasons above, I accepted the interview.

Anyways, the interview went horribly, visioned in my head, I thought I would be much more comfortable and confident in that scenario, but it’s one thing to assume, it’s another to actually experience it.

I was nervous, stuttered several times, didn’t portray my ideas with as much depth and clarity as I had hoped (And that’s probably due to being overly-accustomed to portraying my ideas mostly after meticulous planning, something I couldn’t get in that interview, but though I planned the time and location for the interview, I didn’t bother to find out what questions they were going to ask or even what the interview was about. I could have asked beforehand and planned my answers to achieve more clarity, but I was too busy making that video. I managed to include include some verbal quips here and there, though not as much as I hoped.

However the interviewers said it was ‘wonderful’. I’m not sure if they were just trying to be nice, though they did seem sincere, but I definitely wasn’t satisfied with it. Though maybe even at what I consider my most boring state, people are still able to find something insightful or fascinating about me. If you can, great, but do realize there’s much more.

And if any people from CNN reads this, since you told me that the interview would be shown in around 3 weeks, do feel free and I encourage you, to use the information presented in this blog post, it’s presented much clearer and accurately here.

The questions which I hesitated and struggled answering the most were the ones concerning my experiences in prison and IMH, and how I felt about it. And thus I realised that I had been insecure about that past experience all this while.

And this interview did remind me that people are extremely curious on the specifics of what actually happened while I was in prison, and more importantly, how I felt. Of course you have bits and pieces of that information from the news, but it’s obviously much more interesting and accurate when it’s coming from the person himself.

So you know what, fine, I’m going to share my experience on the time I contemplated suicide, to the time I was released from IMH. I’m going to do it both to curb your curiosity and for me personally, I hope it can be liberating in a way, and perhaps after writing this, I would feel less insecure to talk about this incident whenever it is brought up.

Sorry it took so long, it does take awhile to recover from the emotional scars brought about by both prison and IMH. But after almost 2 months, and 4 videos later, I think I’m a-ok, so let’s begin.

In Changi Prison

When I broke the terms of my bail and was sent to Changi Prison for the first few times, some of my prison mates, like people who committed theft more than 3 times, loan sharks and murderers, either lamented or expressed fear about going to RTC.

RTC, the reformative training centre had a minimum term of 18 months, and a maximum of 4 years, and were for people ages 16-21, who’ve committed extremely serious crimes.

Now when my cell mates was fearful about RTC, I didn’t take much notice at least in relation to my sentence because I thought no matter how unremorseful I was, there was no way the judge would even consider RTC, and the only two types of punishment I could have were probation or a jail term.

So if I refused the probation report, I could then get a jail term. I preferred having a jail term instead of going on probation because probation was a minimum of 6 months whereas if I had a jail term, it would definitely be lower than my time my probation period because jail was considered worst. I was getting really sick of the entire incident and just wanted a punishment where I could get everything over with as quickly as possible, and was willing to stay awhile in prison to end the whole experience faster.

Furthermore, the things I had to do in probation I also hated. I had to serve community service for up to 100 hours, which was basically picking up trash from the sidewalk or beaches. They were boring, repetitive, and I had to do it every day. And I’d probably have to do it in public, where people would be able to snap pictures of me and post it online which would be very embarrassing.

There was also a curfew where I could only go out from 6am to 10pm and that was a really big problem because the few social gatherings I had usually lasted way past 10pm. And also I have really weird body clocks and that time my body clock was sleeping at 7am and waking up at 3pm, I’m a big fan of outdoor walks to relieve stress so if there was such a curfew, I’d never be able to do that.

And finally I was also early fearful what other conditions the probation officers could put along add on to my probation, if I accepted it, where in prison it’s pretty much set and stone how it’s going to be, for probation I was really skeptical. I recall the probation officer went up to my house one night at 11pm and urged my mother to sign a form of consent that allowed me to go for treatment in IMH. My mother knowing that I did not like assessments in IMH, refused to do so. Why would a probation officer do that? And that really struck fear in me that if I went under probation, they might be able to put any extra conditions I had to follow and if I didn’t abide by them, they could say that I wasn’t abiding by the conditions of the probation and could either extend the hours I had to work in community service or my probation period.

So preferring a jail term, I refused the probation report. Then on 28th May, the prosecutor actually recommended RTC.

Now I thought that the prosecutor was either just trying to frighten me or they were simply fucked up, but there was no way the actual judge, for the type of crime, I committed, would pend an RTC report. And since I had refused probation, the judge would just give me my desired jail term. But I was completely wrong, she did ask for an RTC report, she thought that my internet video was worth 18 months of prison, and thus I was sent to Changi Prison for 3 weeks, to pend an RTC report.

Why the fuck do you have to be in remand for 3 weeks to pend an RTC report? Why couldn’t I go out on bail? Why couldn’t I do it outside? Why not you let me out on bail and if I refused to go to those meetings with the psychiatrists, then send me to remand? I definitely would have complied while I was out on bail. You didn’t need to put me in remand, then there would not be the risk of putting me in remand longer than my actual jail term! I’ve heard so many stories where cellmates were remanded for more than a year in Changi Prison because their trial went on for so long, and then could immediately go out after their trial was over because they only received a sentence of one month!

So I was sent back to Changi Prison for the 3rd time and once again the same harsh prison conditions still bothered: Having to strip completely nude, in full view of the prison mates and the police as they examined me before I was put into my cell. A dog sniffing me while I was bare nude (I’m really scared of dogs), food that I don’t like (1 meal they served 2 packets of completely plain instant noodles), food that’s insufficient. Limited things to do. The police looking at me with that condescending, sadistic face, as if they felt absolutely joyous that I was being sent to prison. The CCTV observing my cell, invading my privacy even while I was taking a shit. Cellmates shocking me out of my sleep from a loud scream after a nightmare (They must feel really stressed, I wouldn’t blame them). Prison mates from the other cells loudly singing at night causing me to be unable to sleep. Lights still on at night (They dimmed the light when it reaches 9pm, but there’s still a fucking light, and it’s very hard to sleep). Threats from cellmates that don’t like me, and probably many other things too numerous to count.

And the worst of all was the looming fear of RTC, fearful of being locked inside for more than 18 months,agitated by constantly recollecting the sadistic comments and threats I had on my Facebook, laughing that I was going to suffer in RTC. And prison mates would talk about RTC, say they were fearful about going to RTC, say that in RTC the police would strip you bare nude and they’d point a shotgun at you while they examined you, say that I’m going to experience hell in RTC, say that I would be beaten, cut, raped and completely tortured in RTC,

The police would try to calm me and tell me ‘don’t listen to what your cellmates say about RTC’, ‘they’re just trying to scare you’, but ironically the ones who scared me the most about RTC were the police, because they were actually credible, and completely convinced me, that the rehabilitation centre for youths, was far worst than actual prison.

In contrast to the cellmates I had who were caught for theft, overstaying or running away from National Service, the cellmates that I would have in RTC were drug addicts, rapists and murderers. There would be tedious foot drills and regimentation every morning, in the afternoon I would have to sit through tedious counselling every single day.

And they also told me that fights indeed break out in RTC easily, on a daily basis, so due to my small frame, and the futility of having 2 years of lessons in a taekwondo club and attaining a brown belt that was completely ineffective in gaining actual self-defense skills, and my fear of violence in general because you see, I had been physically abused several times in Primary school, scratched, punched in the stomach, hit in the face pushed on the floor, and like every other kid, I didn’t dare to tell the teacher, and now I would have to experience that again during RTC.

I also heard that from my cellmates who had friends that went to RTC, that if somebody punched you in the face, and even if you didn’t punch back, both of you would have said to have ‘engaged in a fight’ and would both be punished by having to extend your time in RTC for another 3 months! So most of them just punch back.

And I knew that before those 18 months ended (assuming that if I were to be sent to RTC, I would just get the absolute minimum and not anything more) and from what my cellmates told me, that someone, either having violent tendencies (after all most of the people in RTC are violent gangsters, drug addicts and murderers), don’t like my video or don’t like me in general, would beat me up, and I don’t think I’d only be there for 18 months. And from these frequent fights in RTC, you can tell that the police in RTC would probably be even more irresponsible and sadistic than they already are now!

So for all the reasons I mentioned above, and possibly more, I wanted to commit suicide.

The main reason I wanted to was simply being that the emotions and feelings of insecurity, sadness and anger were overwhelming, and all of that could be stopped, if I just ended my life. It’s fucking callous for people to say I was a pussy for thinking of committing suicide, honestly, if you were in my position, do you honestly feel you wouldn’t consider that? And then you can argue, well why didn’t all the people who went to RTC commit suicide then? Well they didn’t have 10s of thousands of people criticizing you online, wanting people to pay for me to get raped in prison.

Now the very first instant I had thoughts of suicide was the second time I was in Changi Prison after I broke my bail, that was just before the trial when the prosecutor and my lawyers presented their arguments in court.

At that time I was completely uncertain about how long the trial would take and how long I would be in remand, and listening to my cellmates talking about how overly long they have stayed in remand and how overly long their trials when it was just a simple theft, I thought that due to the complexity of my case and the fact that my case is both weird and new, my trial would take far longer than theirs, and I would have to stay in Changi Prison for another 7-8 months.

But quite surprisingly, (possibly due to pressure and condemnation from people from all over the country and the world), the trial ended with just one session and the judge said she would announce the verdict immediately next week, so that curbed any intents I had to commit suicide.

So I had a first meeting with a psychiatrist, he was black, and in retrospect I did not know why the hell he even assessed me, because his words and impressions of me didn’t show up at all in my suitability report for RTC provided to the judge.

He asked some basic questions like ‘How are you feeling?’, ‘Are you fearful about going to RTC?’. The first question I replied, sad, depressed, fearful, and my reply to the 2nd question, made the meeting the briefest of all the meetings I had with the psychiatrists I met in Changi Prison, where I revealed that I was very fearful, so much so that I am thinking about committing suicide.

Once I said that, their faces all turned pale and a man beside the psychiatrist asked how I intended to commit suicide, and I provided some examples from the top of my head, like banging my head on the wall, falling head first from the ledge of a barrier that was beside my toilet bowl, cutting my wrist with the surprisingly sharp potato chip wrapper.

So the meeting ceased and they sent me to one of the cells beside the hospital ward. I waited for about an hour, before a policeman sent me into a hospital ward where all the prisoners who had physical health problems, like a broken arm, high blood pressure, heart problems,and needed to be monitored by doctors were in, and from there, they used handcuffs and cuffed both my arms and my legs, on the railings below the bed.

I asked: ‘Why are you cuffing me on a bed?’ ‘I had suicidal thoughts, but I hadn’t acted upon them so why is it necessary to chain me on the bed?’ ‘Don’t you think that chaining me on a bed would make me more depressed and suicidal than I already am?!’

And I shit you not, the policeman replied, ‘think about it’? Think about what?! You should fucking think about it. You’re really fucking helping a person feel less suicidal by chaining him on a fucking bed! What the fuck is wrong with you?

So strapped with metal handcuffs, I was stuck lying down on that bed. They provided you with a roll of tissue papers, a plastic cup. a urine bottle and a plastic container shaped like a toilet bowl to take a shit in.

With one arm being strapped on the bed, whenever I had to drink water, and take the toilet paper to wipe my nose, I had to do all of that with one arm. If you wanted to pee, you had to stand up to be in the position to do so and with that arm and leg strapped on the bed, it was really hard to move myself down from the bed and stand up. It takes about 40 seconds to adjust yourself into the position where you can pee, before you actually pee, and I can never stand up fully because of the way I was strapped, and my back was always at a 45 degree angle.

So obviously, being strapped on the bed, I couldn’t ever move away from the bed. I wasn’t able to move around which was a stress reliever for me, something I didn’t have when I was strapped on a fucking bed! They also didn’t allow any books or magazines to be read in the hospital ward so I had nothing to help distract my thoughts. And at night in the hospital ward, they don’t even dim the lights, the bright blaring fluorescent lights are kept on all throughout the night.

Because I was overwhelmed with anxiety not only from the fear of RTC and my desire to commit suicide, but now, also anxiety from being strapped on a fucking bed, I started to sweat buckets and drank loads of water.

The cup they provided was a small cylindrical one you see in buffets. So I obviously could not go to a tap to refill that cup, and there was no hole beside my bed that I could turn on to spout out water. Whenever I wanted water, I needed to wait for a nurse to refill it and the nurse would only come every hour and I would finish that cup of water in the first ten minutes, so by the time the nurses refilled my cup, my lips would have dried up until they cracked!

It was also extremely difficult to eat because you only had one hand to eat, the box would be placed on the bed and I only had one hand to take the spoon, open the box, scoop the food, and there was no other hand to elevate the box, so I had to bend down in a very awkward angle that really hurt my back, just to be able to reach the food. Due to the difficulty of eating and my anxiety, I only managed to eat a few scoops of rice during dinner.

Somewhere around bed time I wanted to take a shit, but I didn’t do so because the shit would be stored in the plastic container, and I did not dare to take a shit because I was strapped in a way that my right hand would be unable to use the toilet paper to wipe my ass after I took a shit, so if I did take a shit, there would be an unease of an unwiped ass. And being a portable container, there was obviously no flush option, so I feared that if I did take a shit, the container would be ineffective in containing the smell, and the pervasive, lingering smell of shit would fill the whole hospital ward, and the other prison mates would start complaining.

And if all of that wasn’t horrible enough, after a few hours of being strapped on a bed, they put me in a small section, cordoned off from the rest of the hospital ward, other than a door that connected the 2 sections. And in that small section, I was placed between 2 people, also strapped onto a bed, and they were absolutely frightening.

The guy on my left kept on mumbling to himself as if he were talking to someone invisible and if other hospital mates tried to talk to him, he would completely ignore them. While the guy on my right who was suffering from anxiety, would shift around in his bed, make sudden jolts of movement, make lots of noise with his metal cuffs, would suddenly shout every 5 minutes, ‘Roti’, ‘Roti!’.

I was absolutely horrified, I was absolutely traumatized. Sleep time was 9pm but that night, I stayed up all the way until 3am. I kept on thinking about the injustice that I had faced, the anger that I felt, the torture I would face in RTC, how I should commit suicide. My depressed motions and anxiety peaked to such an extent that outside of IMH, it was the absolute worst that I ever felt while I was in Changi Prison

I exhausted myself with these thoughts all throughout the night, until eventually from complete exhaustion, I fell dead asleep on my bed.

However surprisingly, when I woke me up at 7am for breakfast, I felt much better, I felt kind of happy and I didn’t have a desire to commit suicide anymore. It was really strange.

And concerning that desire to take a shit before, I held it all throughout the night. Until morning, where under close surveillance by the police, they’d unstrap you only to take a shower. There was no barrier beside that shower so all the prison mates in the hospital ward, more than 20 of them, and several policemen, were able to see you naked taking a shower.

There was a functional toilet bowl beside that shower so I was finally able to relieve myself. The other prison mates in the hospital ward would tell me to just stay on the toilet bowl and act like you’re taking a really long shit, so that you don’t have to be strapped back onto the bed again.

The next meeting I had was with psychiatrist Dr Winslow, and he asked some basic psychiatry questions that I was very familiar with because they were the exact same questions they asked me back at IMH: How was your childhood? How was your relationship with your parents? How was school? What are your interests? How is your social life?

And he also said he heard that I had suicidal thoughts and then I told him, after that night of rest I didn’t have them anymore. I think after some time had passed and I thought it through, I now felt better, and those suicidal thoughts were probably just a passing thing. Though I did ask if he should exercise caution in sending me to RTC. And really, I was not faking suicide because I thought that if I did I would be less likely to go to RTC. No, I honestly did have suicidal thoughts and I was genuinely worried that if they actually sent me to RTC, that those suicidal thoughts might not only come back, but I would act upon them.

However he replied, regardless of whether or not I had suicidal thoughts,I would still be sent to RTC, there have been several prisoners who all said they wanted to commit suicide, but were still sent to RTC. Whether or not they eventually did commit suicide, I do not know.

And so with that, since my suicidal thoughts had subsided, after the meeting the policeman strapped me back onto the bed, and about 7 hours just before dinner, I was allowed to be unstrapped and sent back to my cell.

All was better for awhile, I read my books and managed to eat my dinner, however once it hit bedtime and my cellmates were all asleep, I suddenly became really depressed again, and started to become fearful about going to RTC, became angry about all the injustice I had faced, had the desire to commit suicide again, and stayed up all the way up till 3am.

When I woke up, I suddenly felt better, relieved, managed to eat my breakfast, then during the afternoon once I finished my lunch, I started to become really fucking depressed again. And then I remembered one of my friends who was gay, who said he was ‘bipolar’, I checked what that term meant after he said it, and apparently it means a mental disorder characterized by periods of elevated mood and periods of depression, basically you can become really happy one time and then suddenly become really sad in another. So then I realised, oh fuck, I was bipolar.

So in the subsequent days, my mood constantly fluctuated from happy to sad to happy again, I became suicidal, then the suicidal thoughts were suddenly gone, and then I became suicidal again, the change of emotions slowly became more frequent, and my desire to commit suicide heightened during each period when I was sad

What further aggravated my mental state was the meetings I had with psychiatrists and people from the rehabilitation centre to assess my suitability for RTC. Many of those assessments eventually didn’t even turn up in the RTC report. These assessments happened every day and could last up to 2 hours.

In those assessments, each psychiatrist literally just asked the same exact questions as all the other psychiatrists: How was your childhood? How was your relationship with your parents? How was school? What are your interests? How is your social life?

Sure some of those psychiatrists do ask a few questions exclusive to the other psychiatrists, but why couldn’t they just share the footnotes that they wrote with one another so that you don’t have to ask me the same fucking question that I have to answer the same fucking time for more than 5 times! Why couldn’t all of you just assess me at once?

I kept on telling them that answering the same question over and over again was tiring and aggravating,and I hoped that they would stop these meetings, and stop asking me questions. But they didn’t seem to care, and just continued asking their questions, and I had to answer them, and it became so repetitive and I became more and more frustrated with each session.

At first I wanted to hide the fact that I was having suicidal thoughts again because if I did reveal it to them, they might then tell the police and then the police would strap me back onto the bed again, but I found it very difficult to hide it whenever they asked the question ‘How do you feel about RTC?’. So eventually I told the psychiatrists that I was having suicidal thoughts again, and they were getting worst by the day.

And as expected, the psychiatrists did tell the police that I had suicidal thoughts again, so the police constantly told me to come out of my cell, to talk to me on a daily basis to ask how I was doing, and try to calm me down, which only further reminded me of my fear of going to RTC, and when I told them that meeting me every day was not helpful and further aggravated me, they just said ‘we’re just trying to help’ or ‘I’m appointed to look out for you and we need to follow protocol’.

So in Changi Prison, after each meal, 3 times a day when the bell rang, we would have what is called a muster check, that lasted about 5 seconds, where the police would check our cell through the glass panel on the door, and we would have to stand at attention and say either ‘good morning’, ‘good afternoon or ‘good evening’ sir. And though on the door there’s a paper that says we have to keep all our books, mats and items into the provided plastic box and put it at the side of the cell during muster checks, every prisoner wouldn’t do it, and just leave their items on the floor during muster checks, because it would be a complete hassle to have to put everything back into the box every time there was a muster check.The police wouldn’t mind and would allow us to leave it so.

However one day, a policeman by the name of sergeant Poobalan, checked our cell and for the 1st time, demanded that my cellmates and I put all our items in the box. I was completely angered so when he turned his back, I gave him the finger which the CCTV caught, and I had to thumbprint a form that acknowledged my mistake.

Afterwards, in subsequent muster checks, it remained the same as before, we didn’t have to go through the trouble of putting our items back every time there was a muster check. A few days later however, sergeant Poobalan checked our cell again, and unlike every other policeman, wanted us to put all our items in the box.

Furthermore, once I put all my stuff in the box and looked upset, he then told me to smile, and I did, after that he smiled back and then he ended the muster check. This time I flipped the finger both at him when he turned back, and at the CCTV.

So since I repeated the offence, I was called into an interview room with some policemen and they told me that I would undergo what was known as ‘adjudication’, where some policemen would review my case and give out the appropriate punishment. He told me I could be put into a confinement cell where there were absolutely no cellmates or books available, and all they would provide were mats to sleep on and toilet paper.

They told me that to assist in the adjudication, I had to provide reasons on why I committed my crime, and so I wrote 1. I was angered that Sergeant Poobalan intimidated me, he obviously knew that I was upset over the muster check and then subsequently asked me to ‘smile’. 2. I was upset by the lack of consistency in the muster checks, what is commonly accepted by other policemen is not accepted by another, and giving the impression that one thing is accepted and then afterwards suddenly saying that it’s not alright, is confusing and needlessly gets us into trouble. and 3. Flipping that finger did provide temporary relief in relieving my suicidal thoughts, which was something I desperately needed at that point.

I wrote those down, and because I wrote slightly out of the margins, they provided me with a new sheet of paper and told me to write smaller, and I had to rewrite the reasons all over again.

A few days later, the adjudication took place in a small room that looked needlessly contrived in how it tried to needlessly imitate the look of a court. And the adjudicator said that they would leave me with a warning.

The uncertainty of whether or not I would go to RTC also aggravated me because I thought since they were only pending an RTC report, there just could be that slight chance that I eventually wouldn’t go there, and I was further aggravated by the uncertainty on whether I’d be sent there or not. My emotions kept on jumping from hope to fear to relief to absolute fury.

My mother visited me 2-3 times a week, and whenever she did, I always pleaded with her to try to expedite the trial. The assessments were said to have been completed, and there was no need to delay the trial, the uncertainty of whether I was going to RTC or not, was worsening my mental state, my suicidal thoughts were growing worse by the day. But she would just tell me that she tried her best, crying to the lawyers for help, sending letters and police reports to demand for my release, but she wasn’t able to do anything. And often in complete anger, I’d burst out into a fit of rage, screaming and hitting the table, until the police had to run over to stop me.

Why the fuck couldn’t the judge expedite the court date? You managed to do that before while I was out on bail. Especially since I did not have any other meetings with any psychiatrist after the 15th, why did you need to wait an additional 8 fucking days, especially since I was suicidal and my mental state was worsening with each fucking day! Why was it so important to be there for 3 weeks? You didn’t need 3 weeks to do that assessment, if you really tried you could have crammed all the assessments into 3 days, why do you need to allocate 3 weeks? Are you not concerned at all about the time people spend in jail even before their actual sentence? Why are people always in jail for such a long period of time before they actually receive their fucking sentence?! Just because you committed a crime does not mean you have to deserve this shit.

My list of potential methods of suicide also increased tremendously, and whenever a policeman would ask, I would pick out some from the long laundry list, which included but wasn’t limited to: Falling head first from the 2nd floor of the yard. Convincing a poverty-stricken remandee to commit an in-yard homicide, promising a huge sum of money to his family. Use the plastic from either the plastic cup or the packets of SPICE food items (The ones sent by visitors that were limited to 3 small packets of food (Biscuits, apricots, nuts and raisins) every week), to slit my wrist. Laminate my shit with soap for 4 days and then eat it (Hoped that had an immediate lethal effect). Drown myself by plunging my head inside the water of the toilet bowl. If I was handcuffed on that bed, then I’d bang my head on the wall beside the bed or bang my head repeatedly on the bed, which was not a bed, it was a plastic board and was extremely hard.

Now thinking back, some of those ideas probably wouldn’t work. But in that kind of emotional state, you think of all types of possibilities, no matter how silly they may be. I just wished that the police had a handgun or shotgun on their belt so that I could fucking blow my head off.

Every night, I would be unable to sleep. I would furiously pace back and forth from 9pm all the way till 4am. Once again, thinking repeatedly thinking about RTC, suicide, injustice, the hatred I received, all the horrible things that have happened to me, playing it back again and again and again over in my head.

Eventually my cellmates told me that they noticed at night, I was beginning to talk to myself. At first I was just mumbling to myself and didn’t notice, but once my cellmates told me about it and I became more consciously aware as I paced around at night, I realised I had started hallucinating.

I was talking to a voice and I started to call it ‘Bob’. So Bob’s voice was relatively similar to mine, only slightly more raspy, and in an energetic manner, he would waiver around me as he spoke his words. Bob would frequently hum the moonlight sonata. Bob hummed the moonlight sonata so many times that up till now I still fucking hate Beethoven.

But most of all, Bob would be the voice that continuously probed me to commit suicide, giving me more ways on how I could do it, and providing me reasons why I should do it, telling me ‘You could end all of this misery and pain if you just ended it all’, ‘even if you were released from prison, you still wouldn’t be happy anyways’’, ‘the world is too harsh for you Amos, they don’t deserve you’, ‘You don’t have to suffer any longer, just end it and all the pain will go away’.

My depression reached reached such a feverish pitch that I felt absolutely weakened and numbed.

But you know what’s surprising, although all the policemen and psychiatrists knew that my depression and suicidal thoughts were becoming worse by the day, they never strapped me back onto that bed again.

So I’m under the impression, that they had many prisoners that have come and said that they had desires to commit suicide, but they eventually never did so. However if you ever said you wanted to commit suicide, then they would have to take some form of action, otherwise you would be able to complain, and say that they were irresponsible, and didn’t take any action when you said you wanted to commit suicide.

And the fact that the policeman who strapped me on the bed told me to ‘think about it’, I’m interpreting it as if he were trying to say, you have to think about what’s really beneficial for you, even if you want to commit suicide, you have to ‘think about it’ and not tell us, otherwise you’re going to have to be strapped onto that bed again.

However, once I got unstrapped and told them I had suicidal thoughts, they didn’t want to strap me on that bed again, because they knew that the more they fucked with me, the more they would get into trouble. They probably didn’t even need to put me on that bed in the first place, it was probably like a warning sign, “Hi if you ever say you’re going to commit suicide again, we’re going to strap you back on that bed’, then when you actually do it, they won’t strap you back on the bed, especially if the international media is keeping an eye on them, those disgusting fucks.

People this has been an absolutely horrifying experience. But don’t worry, you might think it’s absolutely horrifying now, but wait till you hear about my experience in IMH. End of part 1, I’ll see you for part 2.