Since curtains are a weapon, you wake up with the sunrise. You managed to sleep with the help of a few pharmaceuticals. You know that you will need help to sleep here, in this room, a space so white and plain you think that you’re not in a mental hospital at all, but in some 16th Century Presbyterian church.
There will certainly not be any idols in here, now will there?
You slide on your new Crocs, the only real physical comfort that feels real to you, and head out into the main area of the unit. Most of your peers are still in the rooms. One of your peers will remain in their room for almost the entirety of your stay. You will look on with a broken heart but never muster up the courage to say hello.
You are still scared, but better. At breakfast, a mass produced buffet made from pancakes, bacon, and cereal sits before you. You hear nothing about how bad the food is in the unit, but you don’t care. The woman serving each portion is sweet, perhaps so much so that you decide that you will like the food. She didn’t make it. She’s doing a good job, and you will, Nathan, like the food.
And like the food you do; it’s certainly not the substance of five star dining, but it is simple, consistent, and palatable. You are warmed by the idea that hospital systems can’t feed thousands of people without accounting for adults who still abide by pediatric, nutrient deficient diets. You eat the food, likely unmindful as to your habits and whether you really look human while munching, and suck down two cartons of milk.
You love milk, and you will drink a lot of it in here. You will only be bested in this department by another patient who drinks double your intake and switches to chocolate. You will be glad that this human loves milk, as the little things are suddenly adding up as true riches.
You finish breakfast. Your peers have mostly left their rooms. One patient colors an intricate design with a marker, while another journals with a pen. You notice that the pens are built into soft bodies so as to prevent stabbing incidents.
In this case, the pen is most certainly not mightier than the sword.
One patient approaches you and asks you your name. You smile and feel good inside, realizing that it can truly be an amazing thing for someone to approach you in good cheer and say hi, nice to meet you, please do tell me your name. You learn that this patient shares many interests in music with you, particularly heavy metal. You are wowed and floored by this human’s positivity. You have made another friend, and you are hardly into this trip.
Let us call this human Stacey.
Another face approaches. This patient has come in during the night. You learn that this is when the code 302’s tend to to happen. This is fancy speak for when someone is deemed a danger to themselves and others and brought in against their will at the time of admission. For the record, you are a 201, which means you sensed the same danger but did not want to try on a pair of handcuffs. Fair enough! Who wants that?
This new patient is passionate. Earnest. Charismatic. You learn that this soul is dealing with a cocktail of mental health conditions. The conversation reveals that this one, whom you will call Kelly, has made something of a hobby of going in and out of institutions. You learn that this soul has no place to call home at the moment, and your soul aches. You can see the pain in that face; behind the loud personality, you also hear something crying. There is nowhere for this person to go. Leaving is not an option right now for either of you.
You and Kelly and Stacey strike up a poker game, using pieces from a Connect Four setup as chips.
Kelly is delighted to learn a new game. You win in short order since 1) you catch a few lucky hands early and 2) there are not enough connect four pieces to go around between three poker players. Everyone disperses. You move from my favorite big blue chair to your second favorite big blue chair. You and Vanessa chat about the unit and literature and this and that until she announces she is not feeling well. This sort of encounter will happen several times between you and Vanessa. Your heart will break each time. You know what it is like to not feel well and be able to smile and talk and do the people things the way most people do them. It is a feeling that makes you feel positively defective.
You acquire some headphones and put on the classical station again. It is as clear as a radio signal as you have ever heard. You love radio, incidentally. You cannot wait to get home and waste hours in the evenings on a shortwave receiver, skipping through hosts that preach damnation, report alien sightings, or dive into hidden conspiracies. It is all nonsense but you love it and you won’t find that in here. That is ok. Classical will do for now.
You start walking up and down the hallway, aware, once again, of just how much of a cushion your new clogs give you. The first thing you tune into is one of Bach’s unaccompanied cello concertos. This seems like a sign of sorts, as these are probably your favorite classical movements ever.
There is something in your pocket. A piece of rubber. A fidget toy. It is in the shape of a piece of an ice cream cone. There are tiny rubber bubbles built into it. You press them all, one after another, to one side, your feet floating, the strings of the instruments clearing your mind. You are not a particularly graceful human but you feel graceful now. When all of the bubbles are pressed to one side, you flip over the ice cream and do it again, your motions carving out a figure 8 in the common area.
Minutes pass by, and you realize that you have found at least one means of coping with this madness. You resolve that you will listen to more classical music when you get home. You do not know this now, but you will eventually lose that ice cream cone and them immediately buy another one, just to have in your bag at all times.
Somewhere in the middle of your stroll you are summoned by your attending doctors. There are three of them. They sit patiently as you explain your mess of a life. You express your will to not be trapped in this prison forever. You are assured that this will not be the case. Satisfied that you have successfully sold your brand of crazy to the potential buyers, you return to your stroll.
The lunch cart arrives. Burgers. Good old fashioned burgers, just the right thing for your stunted palate. You see them all piled up like poker chips. They slosh around in a steel container, hot with water and steam. You know very well that this is the type of perfectly disgusting food can be a delicacy to you.
And it sure is, right along with that milk.
After lunch there is a DBT group. DBT stands for dialectical behavior therapy, a type of treatment commonly used in borderline personal disorder regimens (as well as many other conditions). The news of this excites you, as you are reasonably sure that you fit the profile for BPD, also known as emotional disregulation disorder.
Suddenly all of your emotions make sense to you.
The group therapist, Yolonda, spends several minutes herding a mix of eager, anxious, and disinterested patients into the room. The look in her eyes is sweet but tired. You can tell that she feels like she has a mountain to climb.
And boy does she ever. She passes out worksheets and more of the rubbery pens. Yay for rubbery pens. There is a discussion of some key terms about some clinical stuff that has to do with mental this and illness that. One patient interjects so repeatedly that you find yourself distracted, losing your temper, and wishing yourself home.
But you’re not mad. Not really. You know that person is sick too.
Group ends, sparing the services of Yolonda for a little awhile. You return to your room to find that your father has arrived to visit. You chat about all the things there are to chat about, stretching the conversation as long as possible to keep this moment, which feels so fresh and normal, from fading away. You think you can avoid this place as long as you keep talking.
But this is not reality. Visiting hours are for visitors, not patients. Visitors leave. You don’t. Not without a little paperwork and a certifiably safe, there is no way I will hurt myself or anyone else, your honor, kind of attitude. Your father leaves, but not without leaving two books behind for you: a memoir by Rick Bragg and a history book on the American Revolution, by Woody Holton. The latter book is the size of a couple of Holy Bibles.
You immediately resolve to make yourself an expert on the American Revolution. You have always wanted to be well-read in one important military conflict or another. Why not. You read, and since there is not much else to do unless you like reruns of network action shows that you can’t hear anyway because everyone is talking, you read with a surprising level of focus.
There is dinner, followed by the customary complaints about the food. You joke along with everyone else, but inside you know you won’t mind again. This hospital is positively working off of the kid’s menu, crayons included!
The amazing thing about a crayon is that it is non-lethal on the inside, too. You don’t need a squiggly apparatus to use one. You can just have as many crayons as you want, and nobody will complain one bit.
After dinner you rinse and repeat much of the earlier moments of the day, tossing more cards and more connect four chips, gliding around the room with classical music and unreasonable volumes. At 8:30, a floor attendant comes for your headphones. You frown like a puppy dog. They do too, but they still ask for the music. Rules are rules.
Soon the phone is free. You call your wife. You are happy to just hear her voice. As she talks you feel this desire, this ferocious need to put together a few things that can stitch it all up. Her voice is lovely but it is also a reminder of the wreckage. You say some nice things but there is no miracle in them.
You can’t babble your way out of everything, Nathan.
You are emotional now. Not quite in the moment. Dissociating because everything inside feels impossibly heavy to carry. You zone out after hearing the voices of your children, promising that you will be home soon, and hanging up. This is not a garden variety kind of upset. This is emotional disregulation land, and you’re the star. All you can do is find your favorite blue chair and sob. You rock back and forth, trying to shake off the excess stress and energy, trying to squeeze your mind out of your body.
Soon you are given an anti-psychotic. It dissolves under your tongue and tells your emotions to relax. You add an anti-anxiety pill of some kind of on top of it. It’s kind of like a build our own Sundae, but for your brain. You wonder what bottled intervention will be there to save you next.
There is a snack, and then much quiet. Everyone is in their rooms now, and it is 10:29. The floor attendant gently gives you the “off to bed now,” smile, and you return to your room.
You do not think you will fall asleep this early, but you do. You have never had Zyprexa before, and you are not yet aware that it can also act as a sedative.
You fall asleep, a history book under your arms. In your mind all you can hear is the last thing you told your children:
Daddy will be home soon. I promise.
Yours Mentally,
Nathan
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