A little bit of history
Just for posterity, I decided to copy over part of an email to my parents (yes, we're finally talking again!) regarding what I'd been up to for the past two years. This particular part of the saga is the week that I spent in the mental hospital and the day or two after it.
Did you know that when I was arrested in NJ I had the option of going to jail or signing myself into the mental hospital (because of the scars from cuts on my arms) so I chose mental hospital. The officer who had to sit with me in the regular hospital (I had OD'd and had to be checked out before I could go to jail or anywhere else) and the 'nurse' in charge of discharge and placement conspired together to get me into the poshest and best mental hospital in all of newark. I apparently made a good impression. Sara decided to play damaged and try to follow me to the mental hospital, and they saw through it and didnt like her whining the whole time anyway, so they sent her to the worst mental hospital in newark. And that's saying something,
So I ended up in Clara Maas hospital, on the mental floor/wing. Leave it up to me to find a boy to have a crush on no matter where I am, I ended up totally bonding with this Paranoid Delusional named Michael Thomasetti. Also this really nice anxiety girl named Nichole who I got to be great friends with. We were the cheer of the ward, going around reminding people about groups and meal times and giving out snacks.
While Sara was kept in a dingy room and fed hospital crap food and deprived of cigarettes and TV, we had movies, games, CIGARETTE BREAKS, snack times, a fridge full of drinks for everyone, a drawer of crackers and stuff, coffee, a twice-daily janitor cleanup and bathrooms in our own rooms. We didnt have a bed time, really, only a lights-out and we could stay in the day room if we really wanted, if we were quiet. The best part, however, were the meals. With your morning meal you get this menu for the next day. You circle what you want from the gourmet choices or pencil in other options like cheeseburgers, pizza, chips, stuff like that. The meals were huge and incredibly tasty, you got to choose as many side dishes as you wanted, and could ask for extra desserts. I got lactaid, even. They put me on low salt and no dairy when I got there, and all i had to do was bring it up in group that i would like to be taken off low salt, and to have lactaid yes but also be able to have cheese and stuff like that. They had me switched by lunchtime. We had our own washer and dryer and you could wash your own clothes, which was good because i only had one set.
I was sad to leave, but minimum stay was 5-7 days and they only let me stay the 7 because i was homeless and had nowhere to go. When I got released they arranged for sarah to have a taxi pick her up and bring her to me, and then paid for a taxi to take us to a shelter. the shelter ended up being closed on thursdays (haha) so we ended up wandering around newark enjoying not being illegal. we talked to police officers for advice and ended up going to penn station. i met this cute boy and we decided to make puppy eyes at the bus driver and get free passage to follow the boy, who was going to florida. he turned out to be a member of the kkk and his friend wanted to kill sara because sara likes dark meat, so we left them at port authority changeover.
so there we were, stuck in port authority after a week of seclusion. it was madness. since we got there at midnight i didnt want to go outside because then you cant get back in until 6am or something, but sara had never been to NYC before. i went to sleep on the floor in a corner (im pretty good at homelessness, its my kinda style to sleep just about anywhere...i think it comes from you, dad) and at around 4:30am sara goes out into the city that never sleeps (and looks it)
she wakes me up waving a $50 bill in my face and says "we're going home". we've since learned that sara is good at making money and "friends" in big cities, while i am good at surviving in small towns. we purchased bus tickets back to eastburg, and while waiting for the bus time she convinces me to go outside. we meet some guys, who love her, and i guess what goes around comes around because this time its
so we get let off the bus at the martz lot by delaware water gap. i ask some guy who is getting into a car from dropping someone off if he'll give us a ride into town, and he does. sara says this is exactly the point where we switched back from her taking care of us to me taking care of us. small town life, whoohoo. so we ended up in town, and then under the bridge, and the rest is a story for another time. but youre one step closer to knowing what happened to me in the time we had apart. this, mind you, is only eight days of it.
and yes, it was always like that.
love,samantha"
Did you know that when I was arrested in NJ I had the option of going to jail or signing myself into the mental hospital (because of the scars from cuts on my arms) so I chose mental hospital. The officer who had to sit with me in the regular hospital (I had OD'd and had to be checked out before I could go to jail or anywhere else) and the 'nurse' in charge of discharge and placement conspired together to get me into the poshest and best mental hospital in all of newark. I apparently made a good impression. Sara decided to play damaged and try to follow me to the mental hospital, and they saw through it and didnt like her whining the whole time anyway, so they sent her to the worst mental hospital in newark. And that's saying something,
So I ended up in Clara Maas hospital, on the mental floor/wing. Leave it up to me to find a boy to have a crush on no matter where I am, I ended up totally bonding with this Paranoid Delusional named Michael Thomasetti. Also this really nice anxiety girl named Nichole who I got to be great friends with. We were the cheer of the ward, going around reminding people about groups and meal times and giving out snacks.
While Sara was kept in a dingy room and fed hospital crap food and deprived of cigarettes and TV, we had movies, games, CIGARETTE BREAKS, snack times, a fridge full of drinks for everyone, a drawer of crackers and stuff, coffee, a twice-daily janitor cleanup and bathrooms in our own rooms. We didnt have a bed time, really, only a lights-out and we could stay in the day room if we really wanted, if we were quiet. The best part, however, were the meals. With your morning meal you get this menu for the next day. You circle what you want from the gourmet choices or pencil in other options like cheeseburgers, pizza, chips, stuff like that. The meals were huge and incredibly tasty, you got to choose as many side dishes as you wanted, and could ask for extra desserts. I got lactaid, even. They put me on low salt and no dairy when I got there, and all i had to do was bring it up in group that i would like to be taken off low salt, and to have lactaid yes but also be able to have cheese and stuff like that. They had me switched by lunchtime. We had our own washer and dryer and you could wash your own clothes, which was good because i only had one set.
I was sad to leave, but minimum stay was 5-7 days and they only let me stay the 7 because i was homeless and had nowhere to go. When I got released they arranged for sarah to have a taxi pick her up and bring her to me, and then paid for a taxi to take us to a shelter. the shelter ended up being closed on thursdays (haha) so we ended up wandering around newark enjoying not being illegal. we talked to police officers for advice and ended up going to penn station. i met this cute boy and we decided to make puppy eyes at the bus driver and get free passage to follow the boy, who was going to florida. he turned out to be a member of the kkk and his friend wanted to kill sara because sara likes dark meat, so we left them at port authority changeover.
so there we were, stuck in port authority after a week of seclusion. it was madness. since we got there at midnight i didnt want to go outside because then you cant get back in until 6am or something, but sara had never been to NYC before. i went to sleep on the floor in a corner (im pretty good at homelessness, its my kinda style to sleep just about anywhere...i think it comes from you, dad) and at around 4:30am sara goes out into the city that never sleeps (and looks it)
she wakes me up waving a $50 bill in my face and says "we're going home". we've since learned that sara is good at making money and "friends" in big cities, while i am good at surviving in small towns. we purchased bus tickets back to eastburg, and while waiting for the bus time she convinces me to go outside. we meet some guys, who love her, and i guess what goes around comes around because this time its
so we get let off the bus at the martz lot by delaware water gap. i ask some guy who is getting into a car from dropping someone off if he'll give us a ride into town, and he does. sara says this is exactly the point where we switched back from her taking care of us to me taking care of us. small town life, whoohoo. so we ended up in town, and then under the bridge, and the rest is a story for another time. but youre one step closer to knowing what happened to me in the time we had apart. this, mind you, is only eight days of it.
and yes, it was always like that.
love,samantha"