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Watching television
A movie about a woman
Committed to a mental institution is playing
Don't watch it My psyche whispers
My heart, just as strong
Tells me " you can do it
Watch it…maybe healing will come."
The images of slobbering women
Clawing themselves, moaning and murmuring Nonsense syllables that represent a private language Human beings trapped in the mire of their own lives Unable to find their way home again; Some nameless monster of hurt Standing between them and lucidity;
Although I empathize with their suffering,
Their macabre is too sharp for me.
I become an unwilling transient in my own memory and
The image of a developmentally delayed 39 yr old
Running down the hallway haunts me, her hospital johnny
Flapping open
Diarrhea spewing from her sagging dimpled buttocks
She, screaming .… humiliated by what her body is doing to her...
Nurses, orderlies chasing her
Clearly disgusted with the watery fecal trail she has left.
She is in the grips of a terror
And cannot see or hear
She runs into a wall, and stunned by the blow,
Is finally captured.
They drag her away, as she wails over and over
"I didn't mean to ...… I didn't mean to ...."
The other women howl like wild hyenas
And it sets up a chain reaction of rocking and screaming
Among the women who can still make noise.
The staff scrambles to quiet the
Animal cacophony
And I can do nothing but cover my ears.
The agony of these women hangs in the air
Like thick smog, choking me.
I am here because my adoptive Mother wanted to punish me
For being different ......
For not being fat, for not being dense, for not being ugly, for not being hateful......
For not being her.
I am not her child, you see, but the child of another woman
Who did not want motherhood
And through some clumsy effort of Fate
Gave me to this maternal miscreant
All she had to do was say "She's crazy ..." and pay two dollars
For something called A Lunacy Warrant, and
Officers came, dragged me, dazed and bewildered
From my home
In handcuffs,
To the desk of some first year psych resident
Who gives me the luxury of ten minutes of his time
Asking me first year psych resident questions
like " Do you hate your father?"
Designed to reveal the sickness in me.
...( Did I hate my father ? Why would I do that ? Because he stood silent
And allowed her to beat me bloody and bruised ??...
Because he never tried to save me from her ?...
Because he never had the balls to leave her , until much too late...?>
Nah...I don't hate him.
I just wondered why he didn't love me any more than that....)
So, based on my telling the truth, this yahoo sends me to
The Nuthouse.
Where there are really crazy people.
After the doors swing closed and are locked behind me,
A Russian psychiatrist
Thumps a Bible at me,
Tells me only Jesus can save me now.
Another Psychiatrist asks me what my favorite books are,
And insists that I quote from them verbatim, a sure test of my sanity.
I am astonished to understand
I am surrounded by lunatics who are not patients
And terrified that I will be driven into becoming one of them.
Like a virgin guarding her chastity in a Navy Base,
I learn to guard my sanity. At night, I cannot get under the blankets because they are so filthy that their color is no longer discernible.
They lock us in our cell,
A chilling, barred-window room euphemistically called
A dormitory.
(Perhaps they named it that because you become dormant if you stay in it long enough.)
In this cell, there are rows and rows of pitifully narrow cots
With women thrashing
Rolling back and forth
Banging their heads
Attempting to eat the foul smelling blankets, ripping their johnnies, pulling out their own hair, masturbating angrily,
Sing-songing bizarre phrases...
It is indeed the Fifth Circle of Hell
And I am a prisoner in it.
I have learned not to sleep for more than an hour at a time
If I want to live.
A woman prowls through the room, between the beds
Lurking about
Hovering over those who are foolish enough to sleep.
She is huge for a woman, and has the arms of a lumberjack.
She is here because she strangled her husband to death, and is something of a celebrity because she is Criminally Insane.
I am here because my mother doesn't understand me
And because the law says she can do this to me,
Even though I am 19 years old, an adult, and relatively sane.
Exhausted, I fall prey to drowsiness, and my eyes flutter closed
I am unable to open them again; heaviest sleep drags me down
Below the surface.
I awaken with a someone's - too-close start
To find the hulking figure of Lumberjack Woman leaning over me
Perhaps appraising my neck.
I sit up abruptly, too filled with terror to speak
Seeing me conscious causes her to re-consider
So she moves on, resuming her hunt for more likely prey.
The "nurse" comes in, every two hours, to do a "bed-check".
We hear the keys turn in the lock, and you can hear the blankets rustling and feet patting on the floor
As those condemned to insomnia
Race for their cot.
Being found awake has serious consequences.
Drugs. Straight-jackets. Bad things. Very bad things.
We all assume the position...of sleep, that is,
As Nurse walks between the cots, shining her flashlight
On a recumbent form now and then.
She arrives at my cot, finally, and pushes on my shoulder,
Nudging me roughly.
I pretend to be asleep. She nudges me again.
I open my eyes and ask her what she wants.
"Why aren't you under the blankets?"
"Because they are dirty, and they smell", I answer.
Nurse has an "Aha !" look that says she has deduced I have
A Problem.
"Well, be that as it may, you have to get UNDER them..."
As she lifts the acrid linen and insists I lay my body on it.
The stains of stool and urine are on those sheets. They are brown and dark red and yellow...a rainbow of body secretion souvenirs.
I do not want to lay in that.
She holds the blankets up, and gestures to me
With the flashlight to get IN, because there is an "or else".
I have seen the "or else", and choose the putrid sheets instead.
Cringing, and holding my breath to avoid inhaling the stench
I slide under the blanket.
I can feel the filth of the sheets against my legs
And for a moment, I am horrified I will scream or bolt.
I battle for composure as Nurse stands over me,
Making certain I obey.
She is eventually convinced I am "tucked in", and she makes a last stab at covering my feet, binding them mummy-like......
And continues her rounds in the cell.
She leaves, the keys turn in the lock
And all the night prowlers hop out of their cots
To resume rocking or murmuring or patrolling
As their individual madness orders them to do.
I leap out of the rank linen,
And pull the coarse, scratchy blanket over it.
I shiver from the February night
But at least I am not laying in someone else's excrement.
Too weary to maintain the vigil wakefulness,
I succumb.
I didn't even hear the keys in the lock again.
Yellow stars burst in my brain as
Nurse slaps me awake this time,
And I am jerked to consciousness
Violently
By the sting.
" I TOLD YOU TO STAY UNDER THE COVERS, DIDN'T I ??!"
She snarls at me through clenched teeth.
My eyes still adjusting to the glare of the flashlight and the agitated women dancing like snakes in the darkness around me....
She jerks the blankets out from under me,
and I am dumped into the floor with a loud thud.
She pulls me up by my arm, and her strength surprises me.
I cannot fight her; a childhood of daily beatings teaches me not to.
I am still not really awake fully, and I can barely comprehend what is happening.
She rips the covers to the foot of the cot, slams me into the bed by my arm, and yanks the blanket and sheet up to my chin.
With brutal knife-like precision, she tucks the sheet and blanket under the form of my entire body forcefully, making sure the linens completely enfold me, like a shrouds' wrappings, particularly tucked tightly around my feet
So tightly around my feet.
The urge to vomit wells in my nose and throat
Having to breathe through the veil of stink
The sheets waft over my head.
She lowers her face to mine
And through gritted teeth and coffee-cigarette fumes, tells me
I had better stay under those sheets
If I know what's good for me.
Having never known what's good for me,
I have no frame of reference for what she says.
She stomps about, vents her spleen on a few other innocents who yelp like kicked dogs, and she leaves.
Some of those she torments blame me for rousing her ire.
Some of the women say its' not my fault.
And then there are those who just sit and stare into the darkness, Silent.
As soon as the keys turn, I wrangle my way out of the shroud wrapping, free my imprisoned feet
Gasping
Escape the sensation of suffocating
And lay on top of the blanket again
Waiting for the trembling to stop.
The next day, the Shrink tells me the "staff" has noted I have a problem with imaginary germs.
I can barely sit in the chair
Because my entire backside
Legs, buttocks, back, shoulders, elbows...
Every part that touched those slimy sheets
Is on fire with an oozing angry red, swollen rash
That bites viciously into my skin
A constant burning reminder
Of being tucked in.
He continues to lecture me, piously
About "dealing with my unreasonable fears".
I smile a wry smile.
He is convinced now, that I am mad as a hatter.
The irony of this place
This entrapment
Has suffused my entire being....
… and I have come to the conclusion that I will indeed be
Crazy as the rest
If I am left here any longer.
I do not think what I say or do matters any more
Because they will call me crazy no matter what.
I am sent to spend more time with The Mad Russian
Because clearly, religion is my only hope
Of salvation,
And what on earth could be more compelling than
A psychiatrist with a Bible ??
She rails at me for being so ungrateful that Jesus died for my sins,
Even though I am pretty sure I haven't done any sins.
As a matter of fact, I think I may have been the recipient of a few.
It is of no consequence, now, though.
Listening to her, I am wondering if perhaps there is a
buy-now, pay-later plan For this "sin" thing.....like, could I pay for the sins now, and actually do them later ???
I consider asking her this, just to watch her spin
Off her clearly tentative axis;
Then I wonder if even thinking such an outrageous thought
Might not be an early sign that The Madness is creeping up on me.
(continued, part 2)
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