It was after my 6th suicide attempt. There were no shoelaces, razors, nair, or makeup. Clothing was searched, even my bizarrely placed stash pockets. I was sent to a room, in pajamas and no shoes, to meet the rest of the patients. Children, 5 and 6, there for suicide attempts. Teenagers there for anger management, and also ones like me. We had bare rooms, mine next to the surveillance desk, and activities during the day.
Breakfast, mandatory, eight o’clock, cheerios and fruit and no forks or knives. TV, stereo system, points for participating in anger management and self esteem classes. I was level one, and I went to sleep at my designated bedtime, 9:30. In the four days spent there I sat crying alone in the corner, I woke up to wailing shrieks from room 382, and even learned how to cut with a stolen paperclip. They thought I used my nails and they were cut off with the supervision of two nurses and both my parents. I started talking to a kid named James in groups and during free time (it was coed, but the rule was no physical contact with anyone). My parents visited daily. Some of the other parents came weekly, or monthly, and James’ were attempting to give him, their only child, away for adoption. He joked sickly that it was because they had adopted a kitten and the kitten was jealous. They put me on Paxil, working me up to twenty milligrams. Blood tests daily to make sure there was enough of it in my bloodstream. Nicorette every four hours so I’d stop fidgeting. Counseling, the quiet room, a screaming, thrashing 6-year-old in the restraint room, the red umbrella emblazoned in lights on a building that it was rumored only the really crazy ones could see. And then it hit me why I was there.
I cried because I wasn’t dead, I cried because I was in a fucking institution… I was not a mental patient! But I was. After a few days I accepted it, and even enjoyed the fact that no matter how much I cut myself or banged my head against the wall, no one looked at me funny. There’s a strange but strong bond between mental patients, and we learned to entertain each other. If you can be happy in a hospital, you can be even happier at home, and after a while they told me that I was being discharged.
The End for now…there will be more.
>>The End for now…there will be more.
Please!
more!more!more!more!
and i know the story already, he he he.
Very nice job, Red.
Have you read any of Thomas Szasz’s fiction about labeling and those with mental illness? Similar vein, but more wankish…
shadowgod
beautiful and yet sad…i would love to hear more of it
Well, I would like to read more, maybe find out your reason for wanting to die…
I have thought about killing myself as well, but I lack the courage… I don’t really care for life, and as such, I don’t care what happens anymore… I go through life right now in a dream like state just waiting for that person to honestly understand what is going on in my life… to care for my feelings… to say with honesty that life is a grand thing worth living…
So yeah, I would like to read more…
You must have a part of her life in that “fiel-file”.
Actually you might be a person who “knows” someone more than any other one without knowing that person.
Why don’t you read it once again and read her soul…
She opened you her inner-world. It was/is not easy…uknow.
Thanku4beingtherefor2
well i dont know much about the juvenille mental institution but i have been to the adult institution i actually new years 2000 in the looney bin and i can tell you one thing you sure as hell dont want to end up in the adult institution my roommate thought he was Jesus and because i am an atheist he took me as a personal threat to his life and he tried to kill me because of my upside down cross tattoo if you think people are crazy in the kid looney bin try going to the adult one but in my personal experience its not worth it no matter how bad life gets you can rest assured that the looney bin is worse and shit if you end your life then what do you get … TOTAL NOTHINGNESS
This story reminds me a lot of someone I once knew. It almost made me cry…
I hope you write more, I’d love to read it.
^v^Azazel^v^
january of 2000 eh? *laughs some* i was in an adult institution a bit later in the month that year. i drank bleach a few weeks after my husband’s death and they locked me up for it. my roommate was okay, a druggie rehabber. we had one of the jesus freaks too… she wouldn’t come near me though… hehe. everytime i looked at her, i licked my lips and smiled.
I’ve been in two of them three times for the same reason…you described the relationship between patients really well. I almost miss my stays there because of the total exceptants, no one cares what you’ve done to yourself or others. The most important things that I’ve learned about people and myself took place behind those dead-bult doors.