"A Brief Layover into Insanity, and the Right to Endlessly Complain Therein"
Note: This is a work of fiction.
Warning: Possibly triggering material, including vague references to suicide, bullying, and mental illness, in a work that by and large takes place on a psych ward.
Also, use of the second person.
You are surprised when your first time on a psych ward isn't as you'd pictured it. You're also surprised to learn that at times it's not all that bad.
You don't need to name any specifics in the retelling, not for obvious reasons of privacy, but because it honestly doesn't really matter. Most places like that are very much alike. You could swap the details of your account with others in different states, with different circumstances and different "maladies," and the story would still be roughly the same. It's not the specifics that make the experience True, but the impression and feelings left behind afterward. The shreds of yourself you're left with after "your stay" are what let you know it wasn't all just another nightmare.
You're there in the first place because you tried to kill yourself, tried being the operative word there. To be perfectly honest, you thought you were ambivalent about dying. If it happened, then it happened. And if it didn't, well, you had tried not to think too much about what would happen if you didn't die.
So, you gave yourself the opportunity to die, and you didn't.
You vaguely recall your father finding you. The first time you really come to, you're in the emergency room. People are everywhere, bustling about, chattering animatedly. An air of purpose and even a little desperation permeates the room. They ask you if you took anything, and you laugh because you've just realized that this really isn't Heaven, and it certainly isn't any kind of Hell you've ever heard of. But, then again, at least it isn't your Hell, the one you only occasionally let yourself think on. They ask you again, "Did you take anything?" You shake your head, and in that moment you're finally able put it together that you're on a table in the hospital, and that the world's flattest, most pathetic pillow is under your head. Needless to say, the people asking you the question don't believe you. So, they get a urine sample to make sure. That wasn't in The Plan. You're slowly realizing that none of what you thought would happen when you finally picked up that kitchen knife is actually happening or going to happen. It's all out of your control, and that's what really terrifies you. Here you thought you were exercising the ultimate form of control over your life (or at least that's what you'd been telling yourself up to this point), and now it is completely out of your bloody, cut-up hands.
The next time you come to you're being sewn up. It doesn't hurt, and you actually find it mesmerizing, the graceful movement of the doctor's hands as he pulls your skin together again. Gradually, you realize there are only four other people in the room: the doctor, a nurse, your mother, and your father. Two are right in front of you, where you can see them. Two are in back, where you can only kind of sense their presence. It's unnerving, and your only wish at that moment, sent out to anything listening, is that those two people who don't know anything about you and have never cared enough to try would just leave. But, your parents stay there anyway. Their God has never done anything for you before, why should He now, you figure.
Eighty-seven stitches later, you're allowed to sit up. They'd cut up your favorite shirt when they'd brought you in. (You'd thought that if you were going to die at least you'd die wearing something you liked.) So now you're given a dark green scrub top to wear to the "facility" into which your parents are forcing you. You know you're going to miss that shirt. It was the only piece of clothing you'd owned that cheered you up just on sight. Now it's in the trash, along with the rest of your life hereafter, your mother is telling you.
You don't like your mother, and you're pretty sure you haven't for awhile. Right now, you don't even know what love means, so you can't honestly say you love her, either (or anyone else really, yourself included).
Your father is nice. He's nice to the point of being weak. You like his taste in music, though, and he has always said he likes yours, but you don't know if that's the truth or only him being nice.
But, it's too easy blaming everything on your parents, too cliché. It's your own fault you're "messed up," as your mother so eloquently puts it, and you are now told you have to take responsibility for your actions. So they're sending you to the nuthouse, so that you can do that-take responsibility. However that works.
Two hours later, you and your loving parents begin waiting for you to be checked in. Two hours after that, you are still waiting. Finally, some shrink-type comes in and commences quizzing you, asking, "What's going on now? What's the problem?" Less than an hour after he's done, you're officially a patient. Your parents, after having a long conversation with said shrink, leave, and you wonder if that which you're feeling at that precise moment is resignation. Surely, it can't be relief.
You have a roommate. She's asleep when you're "assisted" into the room. You ask what time it is and the woman tightly gripping your upper arm tells you it's after three. You wonder if it's worth garnering another death-glare from the "orderly," or whatever she is, to ask her to be more specific and also look at the big hand on that cheap K-mart watch of hers. You decide it really isn't. The door is left wide open and the nurses at their "station" have a clear, unobstructed view into the room. (The plastic trash bin doubles as a doorstop, standard issue, no doubt.) You're tired, and right now all you want to do is sleep.
Unfortunately, the pillow that now rests under your head is just as pathetically flat as the ER's, and your "roomie" snores so loud it sounds like Air Force One is continually taking off next to your ear.
After staring at the ceiling for what seems like ten whole days, a man comes into the room. Thank the gods it's not death-glare-giving-can't-read-a-watch-woman. This orderly-guy directs you to get up and go have your blood pressure and temperature checked. So you get up and walk into the hallway, now clothed in your stylish lavender scrubs, complete with floral print jacket. There's quite the line, and while you wait you set out counting the number of people in the vicinity also half-awake, also garbed in hopelessly cheery doctor/patient-wear. The final count consists of fifteen patients, and six people who seem not to be strictly nurses, or doctors, or orderlies, but some unholy combination thereof. This tally doesn't include your roommate, who you can still hear snoring down the hall, or the male orderly-type desperately trying to get her to wake up by shaking and repeatedly calling her name.
After all that waiting (which you guess is about 20 minutes' worth), for less than two minutes of "tests," you start back towards the room. On the way, you pass your roommate as she's steered toward the nurses' station by a firm grip on the arm, courtesy of the frazzled-looking attendant. That was at six in the morning.
Your next wake-up call comes at eight. You are informed that breakfast's here, and it's time to start the day. All this is said in a sickly-sweet tone of voice, the kind that's used on naughty children when they surprisingly act even remotely decent. It's the kind of voice that doesn't quite manage to hide the weariness and pessimism of its owner. But, you're feeling too weird to acknowledge that this seemingly happy person might in fact be human too.
You get up and notice that your roommate, who had no problem resuming "take-off" after "cabin-pressure and fuel check," reaches the door before you. This you find especially amusing, considering her bed is farthest from the door and she has a pronounced limp.
What you are then expected to consume can't really, in your honest opinion, be called "food." Whatever it's called, you quickly come to the conclusion that what you are in fact looking at is standard-issue, crazy-person gruel. And, of course, caffeine and sugar are definitely not dining options. You're stuck with horrible orange juice that tastes like something scraped off the bottom of a trash can and mixed with water, and the scrumptious gruel which your roommate is now digging into with enviable gusto. When you get up to leave after five minutes of staring at your tray, the nurse/orderly/whatever standing guard at the tray drop-off tells you to finish your "meal." So you promptly head back to your seat and begin the task of choking down said meal because frankly that woman scares you. She's like a middle-aged Amazon woman looking for a fight. And you're still pretty out of it, not to mention the tough time you'd have defending yourself with the limited use you have of your hands.
When you endeavor to use the spoon to shovel the mush into your mouth, your hand shakes, and you have a difficult time accurately reaching your target. Your motor skills are pretty much shot, and you think you must have cut pretty deep if your nerves and muscles are affected. Or more likely you're just in shock. Honestly, you don't really care.
When you've swallowed enough tasteless ooze to satisfy your Amazon taskmaster, you stand up and firmly cradle your tray to the drop-off area. Then one of the nurses/orderlies tells you that you need to be "wrapped up" before your shower. She tells you to wait in your room and someone will be in shortly to help you. You end up waiting about half an hour from what you can figure. Then, the same Amazon nurse from "breakfast" comes in with trash bags and duct tape in hand. Duct tape? Wow. You wonder if that's standard issue too.
After you've been "wrapped up" enough to make the Michelin Man himself proud, the Amazon nurse grips you by your upper arm and steers you out of the room and down the hall in the opposite direction of the "meal room." You're pushed into a bathroom where some shampoo, soap, one towel, and a new set of scrubs are waiting for you. The door is closed behind you and it's then that you realize the fact that not only is the huge nurse going to stay in the room with you, but also there's to be nothing between your naked body and her unwavering gaze.
You think vaguely that you should be embarrassed about showering in front of a complete stranger, but oddly enough you aren't. She's in here because you are still on "suicide watch," which means you're going to be followed everywhere for the next three days, bathroom included. You figure this "shower time" can't be any worse than that day in junior high gym when you came out of the stalls to find your clothes missing. Turns out, your shirt and jeans had just taken up new residence in the urine-filled toilet down the way, courtesy of your classmates. Gym was third period. You survived that day thanks to your only friend's extra set of clothes and the promise made to yourself that when you got inside your bedroom at approximately 4:15, you would then, and only then, allow yourself to cry. By that time, you'd firmly understood that things only got worse if people could physically see the damage they inflicted. So being in a small, dimly lit bathroom with no shower curtain and no inhibitions on this 14th day of January isn't actually as distressing as you would have previously thought. It's just something you have to do.
That shower is, however, technically the most difficult you've ever taken, and that includes those horrible, permanent-scar-leaving episodes in gym. You're wearing rubber gloves and can't really bend your arms due to the duct tape going up way past your elbows, holding the garbage bags to your skin. When you get done the nurse hands you the towel and takes the tape and bags off your arms. You look in the mirror and don't even recognize the face staring blankly back at you. It suddenly occurs to you that this is the first time you've seen yourself since yesterday morning, after you'd made up your mind to go through with The Plan. Your gaze travels the length of your face, and you're pretty sure you still have some shampoo left in your hair.
After getting dressed in the new set of scrubs (as you're not allowed any underwear), you're escorted into the "main room." That's what Amazon-nurse calls it. How creative.
Sitting down on one of the blue chairs, you see the television is on. The control panel on the television is covered over, so it appears the nurses choose the station. The TV is currently tuned into a Law & Order marathon. You've never liked that show or any of the countless spin-offs. It always makes you think of your father. He's a lawyer, and no one in your parents' rinky-dink town ever lets you forget that he's somehow the sole person responsible for sending their brother or uncle or boyfriend or cousin to jail. You've stopped telling them that that's his job, that he doesn't "have it out" for anyone except criminals stupid enough to get caught. They still call you names when you walk away from their taunting. "Weirdo" seems to be the favorite. Every time they start in, you can't help thinking that they need to get some new material if they expect to get a reaction these days.
You sit there in the "main room" until noon, when it's time for "lunch." Soup and a dry turkey sandwich are on the menu that day, but you're just grateful it's not that gruel again. Afterward, it's back to the "main room" for more screaming Jerry Orbach and Sam Waterston. At five, it's back into the "meal room" for dinner. This time, it's a bowl of wilted lettuce and a ham sandwich, and you wonder if people around the world who attempt suicide are required to eat crap like this too, ostensibly to regain their sense of self-worth and overall mental health. You look around the room at all the visibly unhappy, sad faces. Maybe they should take a different tack, you think.
All day Saturday and Sunday, after your "shower-show" for Amazon-nurse, you and the other patients (read: inmates) watch television. All day, until 9 o'clock at night when you're given your specific, customized medication, you sit in front of the screen and space off. There aren't any magazines. They could be used as weapons, you overhear someone say.
Monday begins and ends the same as Saturday and Sunday, except for one thing: your "first session" with Highly-Regarded-Dr.-WhatsHisName. You "meet" the Head head-shrinker in his office, and he tells you your diagnosis and vaguely outlines the "'course of action' the staff and I will take concerning your well-being." Sounds like bullshit to you, but you just nod your head in the hopes that the more you acquiesce and play along the sooner you'll get out and be able to eat real food and do anything but watch Law & fucking Order.
You have daily group therapy after that, too, sort of a knock-off of the whole AA experience of "sharing." You try not to think too much about the fact that you're the youngest person there, still a teenager. The closest person to your age is your roommate, who's 27. Everyone else, you judge, is well past 35, pushing 100.
The counselor-woman asks you why you hate yourself so much. You smile slightly and you really want to say, "Everyone else does, and I've always been a follower, so . . . " But, you keep your mouth shut. The woman just looks at you with pity written all over her perfectly symmetrical, covered-in-expertly-applied-make-up face. She then tries to give you a pep talk, but seeing as how she's basing her claims only on what you've allowed her to see and know about you during your brief "stay," you feel it's unwise to put much stock in her pathetic attempts at encouragement. After all, who knows the real you better than you?
_____________Edited for length_________________________________________
As it turns out, you're in that place for a total of 6 days, 12 hours, and roughly 35 minutes. One day blurs into the next, until it's hard to tell when the switch from hour 24 to hour 01 occurs. The third night, the nightmares come back (because that's the first night you actually succeed in falling asleep), and after the fourth night the nurses no longer prop the door open before lights out. Showering in the morning goes back to the single-person job it was before, and even though you know you shouldn't you still somehow feel lonely and abandoned when Amazon-nurse isn't there to keep you company.
It seems like you'd always been there, like you had lived a lifetime in that wing, and upon your emergence into the weak heat of the winter sun outside that building, almost a full week after your arrival there, you realize you had kind of died there, too. The "you" who went in there, the person you were before is dead, gone, scattered to the wind. That person seemed dead already, but now it's final. Somehow that place, that nuthouse gave birth to a completely new you.
The person who is now walking out is someone you don't really know, someone who's been "reborn," someone you suspect no one has ever seen or even guessed was there inside that perfectly unfeeling, impassive shell of a person you showed to the world for so many years.
Today, as you finish writing this moment in your history, you feel free in a way you know you never have before. Even when people read it and look at you differently afterward, like they know your secrets, all your secrets, you're unable to find it in yourself to actually care. It doesn't bother you. You don't owe it to anyone else to live your life how they dictate because it's yours and yours alone. You don't want to be a slave to anyone's idea of how you should be. You don’t want to be anyone's property. You've never been what was wanted-not by your parents, their religion, or even society at large today, (and not even by yourself, truthfully). Today, though, today you want to be who you are. You want to be the kind of person who isn't constantly miserable, and you realize now you don't need someone else to complete you or show you the right way. You already are complete and whole. You're a living, breathing, human being. So now you just have to live-until you die.
Warning: Possibly triggering material, including vague references to suicide, bullying, and mental illness, in a work that by and large takes place on a psych ward.
Also, use of the second person.
You are surprised when your first time on a psych ward isn't as you'd pictured it. You're also surprised to learn that at times it's not all that bad.
You don't need to name any specifics in the retelling, not for obvious reasons of privacy, but because it honestly doesn't really matter. Most places like that are very much alike. You could swap the details of your account with others in different states, with different circumstances and different "maladies," and the story would still be roughly the same. It's not the specifics that make the experience True, but the impression and feelings left behind afterward. The shreds of yourself you're left with after "your stay" are what let you know it wasn't all just another nightmare.
You're there in the first place because you tried to kill yourself, tried being the operative word there. To be perfectly honest, you thought you were ambivalent about dying. If it happened, then it happened. And if it didn't, well, you had tried not to think too much about what would happen if you didn't die.
So, you gave yourself the opportunity to die, and you didn't.
You vaguely recall your father finding you. The first time you really come to, you're in the emergency room. People are everywhere, bustling about, chattering animatedly. An air of purpose and even a little desperation permeates the room. They ask you if you took anything, and you laugh because you've just realized that this really isn't Heaven, and it certainly isn't any kind of Hell you've ever heard of. But, then again, at least it isn't your Hell, the one you only occasionally let yourself think on. They ask you again, "Did you take anything?" You shake your head, and in that moment you're finally able put it together that you're on a table in the hospital, and that the world's flattest, most pathetic pillow is under your head. Needless to say, the people asking you the question don't believe you. So, they get a urine sample to make sure. That wasn't in The Plan. You're slowly realizing that none of what you thought would happen when you finally picked up that kitchen knife is actually happening or going to happen. It's all out of your control, and that's what really terrifies you. Here you thought you were exercising the ultimate form of control over your life (or at least that's what you'd been telling yourself up to this point), and now it is completely out of your bloody, cut-up hands.
The next time you come to you're being sewn up. It doesn't hurt, and you actually find it mesmerizing, the graceful movement of the doctor's hands as he pulls your skin together again. Gradually, you realize there are only four other people in the room: the doctor, a nurse, your mother, and your father. Two are right in front of you, where you can see them. Two are in back, where you can only kind of sense their presence. It's unnerving, and your only wish at that moment, sent out to anything listening, is that those two people who don't know anything about you and have never cared enough to try would just leave. But, your parents stay there anyway. Their God has never done anything for you before, why should He now, you figure.
Eighty-seven stitches later, you're allowed to sit up. They'd cut up your favorite shirt when they'd brought you in. (You'd thought that if you were going to die at least you'd die wearing something you liked.) So now you're given a dark green scrub top to wear to the "facility" into which your parents are forcing you. You know you're going to miss that shirt. It was the only piece of clothing you'd owned that cheered you up just on sight. Now it's in the trash, along with the rest of your life hereafter, your mother is telling you.
You don't like your mother, and you're pretty sure you haven't for awhile. Right now, you don't even know what love means, so you can't honestly say you love her, either (or anyone else really, yourself included).
Your father is nice. He's nice to the point of being weak. You like his taste in music, though, and he has always said he likes yours, but you don't know if that's the truth or only him being nice.
But, it's too easy blaming everything on your parents, too cliché. It's your own fault you're "messed up," as your mother so eloquently puts it, and you are now told you have to take responsibility for your actions. So they're sending you to the nuthouse, so that you can do that-take responsibility. However that works.
Two hours later, you and your loving parents begin waiting for you to be checked in. Two hours after that, you are still waiting. Finally, some shrink-type comes in and commences quizzing you, asking, "What's going on now? What's the problem?" Less than an hour after he's done, you're officially a patient. Your parents, after having a long conversation with said shrink, leave, and you wonder if that which you're feeling at that precise moment is resignation. Surely, it can't be relief.
You have a roommate. She's asleep when you're "assisted" into the room. You ask what time it is and the woman tightly gripping your upper arm tells you it's after three. You wonder if it's worth garnering another death-glare from the "orderly," or whatever she is, to ask her to be more specific and also look at the big hand on that cheap K-mart watch of hers. You decide it really isn't. The door is left wide open and the nurses at their "station" have a clear, unobstructed view into the room. (The plastic trash bin doubles as a doorstop, standard issue, no doubt.) You're tired, and right now all you want to do is sleep.
Unfortunately, the pillow that now rests under your head is just as pathetically flat as the ER's, and your "roomie" snores so loud it sounds like Air Force One is continually taking off next to your ear.
After staring at the ceiling for what seems like ten whole days, a man comes into the room. Thank the gods it's not death-glare-giving-can't-read-a-watch-woman. This orderly-guy directs you to get up and go have your blood pressure and temperature checked. So you get up and walk into the hallway, now clothed in your stylish lavender scrubs, complete with floral print jacket. There's quite the line, and while you wait you set out counting the number of people in the vicinity also half-awake, also garbed in hopelessly cheery doctor/patient-wear. The final count consists of fifteen patients, and six people who seem not to be strictly nurses, or doctors, or orderlies, but some unholy combination thereof. This tally doesn't include your roommate, who you can still hear snoring down the hall, or the male orderly-type desperately trying to get her to wake up by shaking and repeatedly calling her name.
After all that waiting (which you guess is about 20 minutes' worth), for less than two minutes of "tests," you start back towards the room. On the way, you pass your roommate as she's steered toward the nurses' station by a firm grip on the arm, courtesy of the frazzled-looking attendant. That was at six in the morning.
Your next wake-up call comes at eight. You are informed that breakfast's here, and it's time to start the day. All this is said in a sickly-sweet tone of voice, the kind that's used on naughty children when they surprisingly act even remotely decent. It's the kind of voice that doesn't quite manage to hide the weariness and pessimism of its owner. But, you're feeling too weird to acknowledge that this seemingly happy person might in fact be human too.
You get up and notice that your roommate, who had no problem resuming "take-off" after "cabin-pressure and fuel check," reaches the door before you. This you find especially amusing, considering her bed is farthest from the door and she has a pronounced limp.
What you are then expected to consume can't really, in your honest opinion, be called "food." Whatever it's called, you quickly come to the conclusion that what you are in fact looking at is standard-issue, crazy-person gruel. And, of course, caffeine and sugar are definitely not dining options. You're stuck with horrible orange juice that tastes like something scraped off the bottom of a trash can and mixed with water, and the scrumptious gruel which your roommate is now digging into with enviable gusto. When you get up to leave after five minutes of staring at your tray, the nurse/orderly/whatever standing guard at the tray drop-off tells you to finish your "meal." So you promptly head back to your seat and begin the task of choking down said meal because frankly that woman scares you. She's like a middle-aged Amazon woman looking for a fight. And you're still pretty out of it, not to mention the tough time you'd have defending yourself with the limited use you have of your hands.
When you endeavor to use the spoon to shovel the mush into your mouth, your hand shakes, and you have a difficult time accurately reaching your target. Your motor skills are pretty much shot, and you think you must have cut pretty deep if your nerves and muscles are affected. Or more likely you're just in shock. Honestly, you don't really care.
When you've swallowed enough tasteless ooze to satisfy your Amazon taskmaster, you stand up and firmly cradle your tray to the drop-off area. Then one of the nurses/orderlies tells you that you need to be "wrapped up" before your shower. She tells you to wait in your room and someone will be in shortly to help you. You end up waiting about half an hour from what you can figure. Then, the same Amazon nurse from "breakfast" comes in with trash bags and duct tape in hand. Duct tape? Wow. You wonder if that's standard issue too.
After you've been "wrapped up" enough to make the Michelin Man himself proud, the Amazon nurse grips you by your upper arm and steers you out of the room and down the hall in the opposite direction of the "meal room." You're pushed into a bathroom where some shampoo, soap, one towel, and a new set of scrubs are waiting for you. The door is closed behind you and it's then that you realize the fact that not only is the huge nurse going to stay in the room with you, but also there's to be nothing between your naked body and her unwavering gaze.
You think vaguely that you should be embarrassed about showering in front of a complete stranger, but oddly enough you aren't. She's in here because you are still on "suicide watch," which means you're going to be followed everywhere for the next three days, bathroom included. You figure this "shower time" can't be any worse than that day in junior high gym when you came out of the stalls to find your clothes missing. Turns out, your shirt and jeans had just taken up new residence in the urine-filled toilet down the way, courtesy of your classmates. Gym was third period. You survived that day thanks to your only friend's extra set of clothes and the promise made to yourself that when you got inside your bedroom at approximately 4:15, you would then, and only then, allow yourself to cry. By that time, you'd firmly understood that things only got worse if people could physically see the damage they inflicted. So being in a small, dimly lit bathroom with no shower curtain and no inhibitions on this 14th day of January isn't actually as distressing as you would have previously thought. It's just something you have to do.
That shower is, however, technically the most difficult you've ever taken, and that includes those horrible, permanent-scar-leaving episodes in gym. You're wearing rubber gloves and can't really bend your arms due to the duct tape going up way past your elbows, holding the garbage bags to your skin. When you get done the nurse hands you the towel and takes the tape and bags off your arms. You look in the mirror and don't even recognize the face staring blankly back at you. It suddenly occurs to you that this is the first time you've seen yourself since yesterday morning, after you'd made up your mind to go through with The Plan. Your gaze travels the length of your face, and you're pretty sure you still have some shampoo left in your hair.
After getting dressed in the new set of scrubs (as you're not allowed any underwear), you're escorted into the "main room." That's what Amazon-nurse calls it. How creative.
Sitting down on one of the blue chairs, you see the television is on. The control panel on the television is covered over, so it appears the nurses choose the station. The TV is currently tuned into a Law & Order marathon. You've never liked that show or any of the countless spin-offs. It always makes you think of your father. He's a lawyer, and no one in your parents' rinky-dink town ever lets you forget that he's somehow the sole person responsible for sending their brother or uncle or boyfriend or cousin to jail. You've stopped telling them that that's his job, that he doesn't "have it out" for anyone except criminals stupid enough to get caught. They still call you names when you walk away from their taunting. "Weirdo" seems to be the favorite. Every time they start in, you can't help thinking that they need to get some new material if they expect to get a reaction these days.
You sit there in the "main room" until noon, when it's time for "lunch." Soup and a dry turkey sandwich are on the menu that day, but you're just grateful it's not that gruel again. Afterward, it's back to the "main room" for more screaming Jerry Orbach and Sam Waterston. At five, it's back into the "meal room" for dinner. This time, it's a bowl of wilted lettuce and a ham sandwich, and you wonder if people around the world who attempt suicide are required to eat crap like this too, ostensibly to regain their sense of self-worth and overall mental health. You look around the room at all the visibly unhappy, sad faces. Maybe they should take a different tack, you think.
All day Saturday and Sunday, after your "shower-show" for Amazon-nurse, you and the other patients (read: inmates) watch television. All day, until 9 o'clock at night when you're given your specific, customized medication, you sit in front of the screen and space off. There aren't any magazines. They could be used as weapons, you overhear someone say.
Monday begins and ends the same as Saturday and Sunday, except for one thing: your "first session" with Highly-Regarded-Dr.-WhatsHisName. You "meet" the Head head-shrinker in his office, and he tells you your diagnosis and vaguely outlines the "'course of action' the staff and I will take concerning your well-being." Sounds like bullshit to you, but you just nod your head in the hopes that the more you acquiesce and play along the sooner you'll get out and be able to eat real food and do anything but watch Law & fucking Order.
You have daily group therapy after that, too, sort of a knock-off of the whole AA experience of "sharing." You try not to think too much about the fact that you're the youngest person there, still a teenager. The closest person to your age is your roommate, who's 27. Everyone else, you judge, is well past 35, pushing 100.
The counselor-woman asks you why you hate yourself so much. You smile slightly and you really want to say, "Everyone else does, and I've always been a follower, so . . . " But, you keep your mouth shut. The woman just looks at you with pity written all over her perfectly symmetrical, covered-in-expertly-applied-make-up face. She then tries to give you a pep talk, but seeing as how she's basing her claims only on what you've allowed her to see and know about you during your brief "stay," you feel it's unwise to put much stock in her pathetic attempts at encouragement. After all, who knows the real you better than you?
_____________Edited for length_________________________________________
As it turns out, you're in that place for a total of 6 days, 12 hours, and roughly 35 minutes. One day blurs into the next, until it's hard to tell when the switch from hour 24 to hour 01 occurs. The third night, the nightmares come back (because that's the first night you actually succeed in falling asleep), and after the fourth night the nurses no longer prop the door open before lights out. Showering in the morning goes back to the single-person job it was before, and even though you know you shouldn't you still somehow feel lonely and abandoned when Amazon-nurse isn't there to keep you company.
It seems like you'd always been there, like you had lived a lifetime in that wing, and upon your emergence into the weak heat of the winter sun outside that building, almost a full week after your arrival there, you realize you had kind of died there, too. The "you" who went in there, the person you were before is dead, gone, scattered to the wind. That person seemed dead already, but now it's final. Somehow that place, that nuthouse gave birth to a completely new you.
The person who is now walking out is someone you don't really know, someone who's been "reborn," someone you suspect no one has ever seen or even guessed was there inside that perfectly unfeeling, impassive shell of a person you showed to the world for so many years.
Today, as you finish writing this moment in your history, you feel free in a way you know you never have before. Even when people read it and look at you differently afterward, like they know your secrets, all your secrets, you're unable to find it in yourself to actually care. It doesn't bother you. You don't owe it to anyone else to live your life how they dictate because it's yours and yours alone. You don't want to be a slave to anyone's idea of how you should be. You don’t want to be anyone's property. You've never been what was wanted-not by your parents, their religion, or even society at large today, (and not even by yourself, truthfully). Today, though, today you want to be who you are. You want to be the kind of person who isn't constantly miserable, and you realize now you don't need someone else to complete you or show you the right way. You already are complete and whole. You're a living, breathing, human being. So now you just have to live-until you die.