Psycho Ward – Part Two

Everybody stared at me bug-eyed.

“That’s it?  You…you fight with your parents?”

The disbelief in his voice was palpable.

Granted, MY reason for being there was a bit milder than everybody else’s.  This was a mental institution, by the way.  But my daily fights with my parents, accumulating to a single incidence of violence, paled in comparison to everybody else’s reasons for being here.

They were all teengagers like me.  Some of them were beyond saving.  There was a small Filipino girl who mutedly sat in chair, staring intently at the carpet.  When it came her turn to state her reason for being there she said,

“I am here…because I tried to stab my sister with a pair of scissors.”

These were my new friends.  My co-prisoners.

Then there was a kid named Bobby, one of those people that I label as one of the “DK’s” (depressed kids).  The social outcast with long, abrasive haircuts, gothic clothing, and bad acne.  Bobby was there because he liked to slash his wrists and watch himself bleed; to escape the pain… of having a bad haircut or whatever.

Everyone sitting in a circle around me had such an extreme reason for being there, that I instantly stood as the odd man out.

“You fight with your parents?” the counselor repeated.

“Yeah.  That’s it.  I used to get hit a lot.  And then one time I hit back.”

I didn’t say much more after that.  What else was there to say?  I didn’t have anyone here to bond or relate to.  I felt betrayed.  By my parents, by the police, by society… The only one I really had was my girlfriend, who lived in the next town over.  The town I was IN, presently.  In fact, I could look out my barred windows and see her house.  Yet she had no idea where I was.  Nobody did.  I just… disappeared.

Everyday I would wake up and be treated to breakfast: pills.  MMM!  Exactly what I was putting in my body, they weren’t telling me, but I’m sure it was something to make me more compliant and agreeable to their program.  After “breakfast”, I would be graced by a visit by the local staff, asking me how do I feel today?  Do I think happy thoughts?

“I’m not fucking suicidal,” I would reply.  If anything, I would have killed myself on account of being bored out of my fucking brains.  And then, after a few days, I started getting a new present to break up the tedium: homework!

Hilarious.  Like I had ANY intents on doing homework right now.  Or ever.  I was amazed that anybody expected me to go back to school by this point.  Or not take a hike along the river and live life as an eternal vagabond.

I figured this little charade would end after a week.  It did not.  This days just waned on.  The second week passed.  It was right about then that I received a “special” visitor.

Tall, skeletal, and completely inapt at understanding me: it was my psychologist.  I suddenly made the connection.  HE was the one behind everything!  As he approached me sitting on the edge of my bed, I stood up.  I felt powerful urge to leap up and bash his face in.  Why not, right?  What would I suffer… a few extra days in this place?  Was I ever getting out, anyway?

“Darby.  How are you feeling?”

His slow, almost omnipotent manner of speaking crawled right under my skin.

I thought long and hard before I answered.  “Great,” I replied, cooly.

Hey went on to explain that the circumstances in my life had driven “those who love me” (pff!) to make the difficult decision to put me in here.  But had this time been effective in making me see the wrong in my ways?

“Absolutely.  Doc, I am so glad I had the opportunity to be taken out of that hazardous environment, one that I had created, and fully see the err in my ways.  I accept full responsibility for my actions.  I am not a bad person.  I was just on a bad path.”

He patted me emotionlessly, as if I were a lab rat.  “That’s good to hear.  How’d you like to return to school?”

I swallowed, forced the biggest smile I could, and went, “Gee, could I??”

The rest of the school year was pretty much a shitshow.  I resented authority twice as much, but I realized I had to play the game to get anywhere.  I nearly didn’t graduate (more about that here: Surviving High School), but miraculously did it, and I went to become a student at a modest college.

At college, I stopped taking my medication (Adderall), which my psychologist deemed “risky”, but fuck him; for the first time in my life, I made the honor roll–and I made that or Dean’s List every single semester for the entirety of my college career.  So as I suspected, the medicine may have been the biggest factor in making me such a bad, angry person.

Also my girlfriend, who went to the same college with me, ended up banging my best friend and his girlfriend one night and was promptly ex-communicated from my life.  She had done nothing but hold me down.

College was the first time in my life that I showed any potential for being anything except a thief or a junkie in my life.  I took that momentum and ran, and I would say I’ve made plenty of progress up to now.

You need to be at your lowest before you could be at your highest.  Being in a mental institution was precisely that moment.  I would never wish anybody share such a cruel fate except those who are genuinely suffering painful neurological disorders.

I hope I’ve inspired you.