Storymania - Day 23 by Christine Varela

Day 23
Christine Varela

DAY 23

Restlessness transforms into pain as I contemplate the slow smoke traveling from the cigarette in my hand and into the horridly grimy, disgustingly dirty vent of the tiny smoking lounge - and out into real world air. My tortured soul no longer cares by what method it reaches the outside. It just pleads for no more locks, bars, walls, shots.....

I have nodded off again, I conclude, feeling the singing pain in my finger, my cigarette must have burned all the way down to my thumb and forefinger. So common these days, my cocktail of medications I swear must be lethal, I swallow so many pills a day, no wonder I feel so unbalanced and unhinged.

After nodding off, they stuck me in the damn padded room, they should pad them selves in this stale urine smelling rooms. I fell asleep with the heinous cigarette in hand, then I contemplate that the anorexic bitch went to report that I was burning myself, as she was the only one present. Oh well, at least no shot in my ass this time, they just gave me a nice adult ‘time out’ in this room where the nut cases pee in the corners. I would say I was grateful for this place. But the stench of urine is overpowering, then I smell feces, vomit, agh, makes me want to just wretch myself. If I scream, though, they’ll give me a shot, then my clothes will smell as I will surely fall asleep on the floor and no one pisses or pukes on the wall, just the floor.

Finally, I hear the lock, Nurse Patty has come to my rescue. No smile just a dulled face, monotone voice, she leads me to my room. My roommate laughs, I do to, I know how to play along although I feel like punching her. Yet again I smile, make some small talk. Deep in my heart I know this is not a jail, not a state penitentiary - this is a state mental institution, I have no set release date, they can keep me against my will as long as they please, and they have and they will. This is the story of my numbing agony as an insider who has lived to tell, lived and not gone insane (according to my definition) or died or actually not yet gone to the higher jail, as so many have.

Then we hear more monotone, trying to be happy voices come down the hallways announcing “Group Therapy” in the back hallway in 5 minutes. Trying to be all happy cheery, because if we all go to special group therapy we are out of their hair for one whole hour.

Here is how it went today, and damned if I wasn’t hoping it wouldn’t be more focused:

Social Worker: My name is Blah and I am so special, would some one like to tell us why they are here? (I could have told her that asking people and you always get the wrong people, but I keep to myself).

So and so: Yes, I would like to go first, um, I’m here for the first time and I am really scared that I am going to become Jewish and I am Catholic now.

Okay, now I’m about to pee my pants because this is funny stuff, and I want to laugh but I don’t, so they work with the girl with her fears and all, she is schizophrenic. Okay, she’s feeling better about her religion dilemma.

Then up goes another hand, and glory be it’s another good one. This young lady is here, not because she has suicidal thoughts, as most here do, but because she has constant homicidal thoughts about killing her roommate because of some issue they have unresolved back at their apartment, she figured she would check in here instead of take the biggest butcher knife to Wendy’s head while she was sleeping. Wow, that threw me back a couple of paces. We ran out of time, but I was sure hoping someone pulled her aside to talk to her, it didn’t seem they did so on to free time and our new homicidal friend is now wondering why no one is talking to her.
We are then ushered down to dinner, the one place we are allowed to go off the miserable, locked floor. We are chaperoned and must eat as a group but it beats eating one of the cold trays that are bought upstairs for people who are not safe enough to come off the unit just yet. So, you see, I can cooperate just a bit. Its the salad bar that draws me down here every day, a full salad bar with all the fixings any restaurant would have, through this I am sated. Oh, and the real coffee and iced tea. Those are my twice a day pleasures I indulge in downstairs here in the cafeteria. Oh and the desserts are sometimes quite sinful as well. I have made a few friends who are going through the ringer here just as I, the cocktail of medications and the diagnosis of bipolar 1, with PTSD, major depression, and other serious problems that just don’t seem to get better like the other people with those same diagnosis, so we call our little group ‘’ group delayed bipolar, PTSD, major whatever and x this and x that” Because every day we see the shrinks its something new, some new medicine or idea. We always go along, we’re not here because we don’t want to get better - I mean this isn’t my idea of a vacation or paradise. It’s actually very sad. I thought I would be here for one week and now I’m going on two months. We often joke, did they sign us up for a study and not ask us? That makes us laugh. Anything to laugh and make the time pass. At times it feels like a jail, because they control everything. We are not allowed to shave our legs. For a woman walking around in shorts with hairy legs, I can tell you, it’s very demeaning. Just those little control things. They get to you.

Again I am awaken, this time to a pounding on my door announcing more therapy. I noticed my roommate was not present and asked a fellow ‘inmate’ as we call ourselves. He informed me that Maria had to be put into the other padded cell because she woke from a nap and the whole ward went ballistic because she wanted her organic chemistry book to study for her exams. The nurses had this book but would no longer give it to her after she hit someone over the head with it, requiring stitches. Maria believed she was living in her dorm room still. Most of the time she was tranquil but I always knew something was going to happen when she woke up, as it usually did.
The day goes by and soon they will call us for snack off the ward. In the meantime I am in my room sitting on my bed pretending to read as to avoid talking to my roommate, she is back in the room. The bell rings and we all flock to the elevator to sign our names on the dry erase board, signifying that we are going to the cafeteria. If we have ‘off ward’ privileges we can go, if not, say if we were bad or out of control, then we must eat on a tray upstairs. I sign my name big and bold with a smiley face, Caroline :) the opposite of how I feel. I feel small, petty, stupid, and unhappy, yet I try hard to play a role so that I can get out of this horrible place. We get into the crowded elevator and evacuate at the bottom floor where we can always smell the food. Tonight it is apple pie, how else do they want to kill us? They don’t give us much time, and that is good because I can’t stand having much time. I refill my ice tea when the counselor or should I say chaperone tells us time’s up and we walk out of the cafeteria and thank the server and get back into the elevator and go back up to our floor, the third. The last thing or our night is one meeting, one very intense meeting, so Sarah and I crowd into the smoke room, we can only have 6 total in there of course there are a lot of people who smoke so we practically run to get a spot. We talk a bit, mostly fret over our upcoming group therapy meeting, because the counselor who does this meeting is the best from all day, Jake, and gets a lot out of us. We fret because perhaps we will come a step closer to well-ness and in some way it is what we fear most.

It is 9pm and at least 15 of us have show up for the most intense meeting of the night, Jake is the senior psychiatric counselor running the meeting. We introduce ourselves, but he already knows us so well. It is as if he can just look at us and intellectually spot our feelings and fears. I say fears because when it came to me he already knew my fear and he told me so. He knew that I feared I would never write again because of all the medication I am taking that numbs my brain for my bi-polar. I began to cry, you see, because he was right. Then he gave me a goal it was to begin. To begin to write something, and here it is and I cannot seem to stop, you see, because I am going to write until they let me out of this place, I will prove them wrong. That I may have bi-polar disorder and another array of problems that I am taking medications for but I can still write, I will still write, this is my journal, my life, of days spent yearning for release to the world outside. That release will happen and until it does I will write.