Birthday.
You can smell the sadness from a mile away before even looking at that place. It boasts to be able to heal our body and minds, but also our spirits. Like all non-profit organizations, anyone that can't pay is thrown out while at the same time its efforts to avoid anyone from escaping make it an interesting paradox.
In the outer walls, graffiti hides a little sign that politely requests that people don't write anything on the wall. Other than that, all you can find is trees beside parking spaces.
Inside, you can find just about anything. A cop that has threatened his superior with his gun and thinks only of his children. He recalls that moment where he was ready to shoot another officer before shooting himself in the head with regret. Another cop, another nervous breakdown. Clinical depression and a hint of psychosis. The third -- yet another cop -- has been away from the force for the last six years of his life and dreads being released. It's either that or an early retirement that will probably end up saving some lives. The fourth cop doesn't have any issues with work, even though he really does like to mix up booze with his coffee. Tragic story: his father shot his mother and then shot himself right before him and his brothers. Many foster homes later, he is a shell of a man.
The others are not policemen. There's one that has been there for one week. Lost his soul after a breakup. Clinical depression. Doesn't speak and barely eats and only walks backwards. Another has developed schizophrenia while searching for his real parents when he was 16. He's 26 now and shuts down whenever spoken to. Another was hospitalized after collapsing before heading to Argentina to become... well, nothing. The plan was to work for food and travel the country on foot. While not the most ordinary and safe decision, it did get worse with the persecutory fantasies and the lack of eating. He's better now and has asked us to help him overcome his shyness. In a similar vein we have this guy that drank everything. He'd buy deodorants and chug it down. Buy a gallon of alcohol in the gas station. Steal his mother's perfumes. In the end, he disappeared for a couple of weeks, living as a bum on the streets. When he arrived, he could barely remember who he was.
Then we have the most common cases. A guy there will try to tell you the story of his life as a rockstar. Another has lost his frontal lobe in a car accident, kind of like Phineas Gage, but instead of cussing and being an asshole, he enjoys going to whorehouses for a drink. He secretly believes that his wife is ashamed and disgusted with him and can only think of getting her back, despite his scars and new found taste for expensive beers served by semi-nude ugly women. There's also this guy that has been put there because his family, allegedly made up of entirely slightly insane people, is ashamed of him. They hate him and make sure he stays just like they want him to be -- a vegetable. The last of the "veterans" is a christian fundamentalist who seriously believes he has been cured of leukemia by his church's reverend. With no exams made or even symptoms of leukemia, he has remained away from the other patients, refusing to listen to anything else other than christian gospel music on the radio.
There are some new guys too, admitted over the weekend. One smacked his father and mother in a delirious episode, or so they say. He thought the police was after him. Another found his way there after pawning his sister's car to pay for the drugs he took over the course of two days. The cops know him as he's been arrested by the exact same people a few times. His only luck is that he's probably been arrested so many times that he doesn't quite remember the faces of everyone that sent him to jail.
All the four cops are listed as being at 'risk of committing suicide'. Most are hopeless and will probably be back in the hospital in a few months after release. Some will probably die of drug related violence or overdose and others will simply wither away forgotten by everyone who should give a damn.
This is the birthday gift I gave myself 6 days ago: a puff of clonazepam to the face and the sad realization that what might makes us human is the ability to hurt ourselves like nothing else. Learning is always good, but meeting despair face-to-face only proves a few hated Philosophers right and seriously makes one consider the substitution of palliatives as the ultimate therapeutical tool.
In the outer walls, graffiti hides a little sign that politely requests that people don't write anything on the wall. Other than that, all you can find is trees beside parking spaces.
Inside, you can find just about anything. A cop that has threatened his superior with his gun and thinks only of his children. He recalls that moment where he was ready to shoot another officer before shooting himself in the head with regret. Another cop, another nervous breakdown. Clinical depression and a hint of psychosis. The third -- yet another cop -- has been away from the force for the last six years of his life and dreads being released. It's either that or an early retirement that will probably end up saving some lives. The fourth cop doesn't have any issues with work, even though he really does like to mix up booze with his coffee. Tragic story: his father shot his mother and then shot himself right before him and his brothers. Many foster homes later, he is a shell of a man.
The others are not policemen. There's one that has been there for one week. Lost his soul after a breakup. Clinical depression. Doesn't speak and barely eats and only walks backwards. Another has developed schizophrenia while searching for his real parents when he was 16. He's 26 now and shuts down whenever spoken to. Another was hospitalized after collapsing before heading to Argentina to become... well, nothing. The plan was to work for food and travel the country on foot. While not the most ordinary and safe decision, it did get worse with the persecutory fantasies and the lack of eating. He's better now and has asked us to help him overcome his shyness. In a similar vein we have this guy that drank everything. He'd buy deodorants and chug it down. Buy a gallon of alcohol in the gas station. Steal his mother's perfumes. In the end, he disappeared for a couple of weeks, living as a bum on the streets. When he arrived, he could barely remember who he was.
Then we have the most common cases. A guy there will try to tell you the story of his life as a rockstar. Another has lost his frontal lobe in a car accident, kind of like Phineas Gage, but instead of cussing and being an asshole, he enjoys going to whorehouses for a drink. He secretly believes that his wife is ashamed and disgusted with him and can only think of getting her back, despite his scars and new found taste for expensive beers served by semi-nude ugly women. There's also this guy that has been put there because his family, allegedly made up of entirely slightly insane people, is ashamed of him. They hate him and make sure he stays just like they want him to be -- a vegetable. The last of the "veterans" is a christian fundamentalist who seriously believes he has been cured of leukemia by his church's reverend. With no exams made or even symptoms of leukemia, he has remained away from the other patients, refusing to listen to anything else other than christian gospel music on the radio.
There are some new guys too, admitted over the weekend. One smacked his father and mother in a delirious episode, or so they say. He thought the police was after him. Another found his way there after pawning his sister's car to pay for the drugs he took over the course of two days. The cops know him as he's been arrested by the exact same people a few times. His only luck is that he's probably been arrested so many times that he doesn't quite remember the faces of everyone that sent him to jail.
All the four cops are listed as being at 'risk of committing suicide'. Most are hopeless and will probably be back in the hospital in a few months after release. Some will probably die of drug related violence or overdose and others will simply wither away forgotten by everyone who should give a damn.
This is the birthday gift I gave myself 6 days ago: a puff of clonazepam to the face and the sad realization that what might makes us human is the ability to hurt ourselves like nothing else. Learning is always good, but meeting despair face-to-face only proves a few hated Philosophers right and seriously makes one consider the substitution of palliatives as the ultimate therapeutical tool.