Psych Ward

My roommate came bouncing into the room, so excited about what was given her in the art therapy class. “Look! Look! Look!” she squealed in excitement. I was busy staring at the walls, but decided to interact, no use pissing off a manic roommate. I looked. She showed me a picture of a man, drawn with a pen, on a piece of white paper hand towel from the hand towel dispenser. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she squealed again. Her excitement was not infectious, but quite evident. “It is!” I mustered up a response. “The artist signed it and everything,” she continued. I don’t think my response was even necessary, actually, as she didn’t seem to notice me. “Who is it? Who is it? Who is it? Who do you think this is a picture of? Who?” She rapid fired the questions at me, vigorously tapping the picture with her long, skinny finger. I had to think quick. Who do manics see everywhere? “Jesus?” I answered tentatively. “Yes!” She shouted with glee. “Jesus!!!!!” And off she went to show others.

I smiled. God bless the manics. I wondered if the beauty she saw everywhere, the deep meaning she gleaned from nothing, the bright and beautiful and energetic world that vibrated around her was better or worse or just opposite of the dark, gray, tired, slow, meaningless well of despair and depression in which I found myself. The psych ward, at least in Michigan, is a place of kindness and compassion. The patients and the staff treat each other respectfully in a way that I don’t see in the outside. Outside, one has to ‘control’ oneself, fit in, act normal, behave. Inside, one can stare at the walls for hours or squeal with joy over a drawing or pace or cry or play piano or talk to oneself or sing in the halls or even be so unaware that one’s pants fall right off in the lunch room. The response is acceptance and gentle guidance toward more appropriate behavior, such as pulling up one’s pants before they slide completely off. (No belts allowed in the psych ward, of course.) There’s no teasing, no rude comments, no staring, no pointing. Huge emotional blow-ups over minutia are talked through, as if the staff appreciates that the feelings really are that big, even though the events that led up to the feelings on the outside would be considered every day, common, ‘little’ things. It’s not just the staff, either. The patients are like that – respectful and kind, allowing each other space to work through and ‘be’ whatever needs ‘being.’

A safe place. It was a safe place. Two weeks ago today I went in: suicidal, exhausted, depressed, empty. No, not really empty. I still can’t really wrap my head around it. I’m afraid more than anything. We watched Criminal Minds last night, and the killer in the show was full of rage, triggered by trauma. I’m afraid that I am full of rage, and once I let it out it will never stop until, like in the show, I kill myself or am killed by cops. I had the same thoughts I always do, “Was I born this way? Is my rage a sign that I am evil? Could I snap and become psychotic? Will letting the rage out cause me to snap? Am I already psychotic? How do I feel the pain and sadness and terror inside without also feeling the rage? Where do the pain, sadness, and terror come from? Did I make it up? Did I make up the movie that plays the scenes of sexual abuse that the doctors tell me is real? Is it real????”

I’m supposed to recognize that I am not evil, that I was not born evil, and that things were done to me that caused a ‘locus of control shift’ to occur when I was very young. This locus of control shift caused me to take the blame from the perpetrator, where it belongs, and place it on myself. I have so firmly placed the blame and shame upon myself that Prowler wants to kill the little girl inside as opposed to letting her feelings permeate the rest of the system. Since we’ve all believed she’s bad, then she should die. That also solves the problem of having to feel her feelings. The doctor asked me, in the hospital, if it would then make sense to kill all young children who had been horribly sexually abused, since they were all evil. The absurdity of the statement was shocking, but I see that’s where the logic goes. So I’m supposed to make the shift again, recognizing that the little girl feels bad because evil was done to her, not because she is evil. I’m supposed to put the blame on the perpetrator. That’s quite as shocking.