Psycho Ward – Part One

Here’s one I hear a lot:  “You’re crazy!”

You’re crazy.

Am I crazy because I live a fringe lifestyle, constantly on the edge?  I think not.  No, crazy must be gaugeable in some way.  Like people in a mental institution.  You know, those people they lock up in a room with padded walls, confined to a straight jacked, highly medicated and under constant oversight.  Those are the ones you could deem crazy.

And by that admission, the term “crazy” would, in fact, apply to me.

If you have read some of my earlier stories, you know that as a young man, I was always, hm, I guess you could say “behaviorally challenged”.  I could never avoid getting into trouble with the police, with the law, or with authority.  Senior year of High School was my darkest hour.

It could have been attributed to a number of things.  I was taking Adderall daily, a medicine prescribed to those with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder).  Being so hyper and spasmodic, I had always used physical outbursts as a way to channel my high levels of energy.  The medicine robbed me off that.  I was, in essence, a zombie.

Also I had a girlfriend.  Despite her being just the biggest, skankiest ho bag ever, I constantly put her above everything else.  That included my blood family, whose relationship with me was boiling over into very dangerous territory.  My parents had always believed in corporal punishment (spanking and all that shit), and I was right at the age where me getting hit could be gone forever, if I would just stand up for myself.

I did.

One brisk Spring night at home, my father, pissed at my insolence, came at me, ready to stronghold my conformity to his liking.  I caught him, I shoved him down, and I pinned him on the staircase.  And then I let half-a-dozen punches rain down on his head.  My sisters stood at the top of the staircase, threatening to shatter my precious Playstation should I not release him.  I did stop punching, but I savored this moment.  After being beaten and hit with fists, shoes, bottles, and tennis rackets, year after year of my life, I had just crossed the turning point.  My father knew that this was the assertion that his little boy was finally stronger than him.

Lights outside.  Police lights.  Suddenly, the house was being stormed by an army of police officers, who wasted no time dragging me to the porch and slapping me with handcuffs.  The police didn’t listen to a word I said.  It figures; the leader of this operation was Detective O’Shea, who had been in my father’s pocket for years.  My first meeting with O’Shea came at the ripe age of thirteen, the first time I had ever been arrested.

He acted like he was doing me a favor by allowing me to stay at home that night.  Only after I had promised good behavior, of course.  The police eventually retreated to their bacon-mobiles and left us to a very uneasy silence.  My mother seemed more occupied with “What will the neighbors think!” than the events that transpired.

It was back to a normal life after that.  A normal life, for just one single week.

Exactly one week later, the police returned.  This time I would be coming with them.  And we weren’t headed back to the station.

We would be heading to MacNeal Hospital in Berwyn, Illinois.  Make no mistake about it; this wasn’t a physical injury treatment hospital.  This was a psychiatric services hospital.

A mental hospital.  For the mentally insane.