Content warning: suicide, mental health, institutionalization
last may, i emptied thirty (30) little heart-slowing pills called propanolol into my palm, dropped them onto my tongue, took a sip of water, and swallowed. i hadn’t showered or eaten in days and only ever left my room to smoke at a nearby park, a courtesy to my two roommates. i got into bed, holding the covers against my chest, waiting. staring at the ceiling. wondering if i should turn off the lights. breathing.
a few minutes later the police barged into my dorm with my (younger) brother and demanded that i come with them. i was manic and psychotic, and had been posting incoherent pictures and text nonstop on instagram for at least an hour: pictures of me clearly distraught in my pajamas wrapped in a blanket, random reposts, theories about black holes and newton’s laws, pictures of me laughing and smiling captioned with gibberish. when they arrived i knew i had defeated instagram. i refused to come with them so two of the cops climbed into my loft bed, straddled me, held me down, and cuffed me. i was wheeled out of the building and into an ambulance. i think my uncle was there, just staring.
my brother rode with me in the ambulance. at the time i was convinced that he and his friends were running an experiment at the Hospital and that it was up to me to stop them from killing people. i wasn’t scared, i was indifferent. (i’m a superhero!) they were wearing white coats to administer treatment to emergency patients in an attempt to prove to society that they, undergraduate neuroscience students, were qualified, superior. the paramedics and he tried to speak to me, but i remained silent with my eyes closed. i was on a mission. but i was slipping away. i remember getting agitated when they lifted my eyelids to check my pupil dilation. and when they stripped me in the e.r. i refused to interact with anyone. i just listened, waiting, shivering.
i was fine by the morning, speaking to doctors with a little too much enthusiasm. when they were done checking my vitals and left me alone, i detached myself from the fluids and the readers like taking off a sock, got dressed, scanned the hallway, and flew down 20 flights of stairs like a gazelle through trees. white coats chased and yelled but no one caught me. when i got outside a guy in a white coat nicely explained to me that the police would find me if i continued to run, so i should come back inside. i did, to be shoved against a wall and cuffed again. this time i was taken to the psych ward.
it’s like jail. if you can’t function, if you can’t take care of yourself, they try to help you by locking you in a corridor that has bedrooms branching off of it. to pass the time and wear off the meds you pace from one end to the other, until you hit the halfway mark where another gender resides. it’s you and other people like you being regulated by people who claim they know what’s good for you without ever having walked a day in your shoes. and if you don’t listen to them, if you don’t take the pills, speak about what’s on your mind, they’ll hold you longer. so i didn’t tell them that i knew about their unethical experiment, that i was only there to stop them. i didn’t tell them how everywhere i went everyone was talking about me in riddles, trying to help me decipher and destruct. i just played the part of the patient, going to groups, listening to the nurses, eating when directed. and took notes. and exchanged love letters with one of the homeless patients.
there is something about being shocked into a different environment though. something about being held in a space where the one obligation is that you focus on your health. slowly i dissociated from my version of reality, constantly cross-checking it with what i knew i was supposed to believe, what the government wants you to believe. it’s frustrating to know that “real” life and all its problems await you outside the locked doors of that one fucking hallway, but it’s also comforting to know that you get a break until you’re “ready”.
when you’ve been discharged from a psych ward, let’s say for the two week average at the last facility i was held at, you’ve relearned how to take care of yourself, but might still forget things like your passions and motivations or the difference between psychosis and reality (judging by what was playing on the radio and the last thing my friend said to me inside, was i supposed to join the crips or the bloods? or unify them? or maybe this was all nonsense). you can’t be discharged without an outpatient treatment plan. the thing about outpatient treatment plans is that nobody can really enforce them. if you’re smart enough, you can totally be escorted out of a hospital, go home, and end your life. or, commonly, you can be escorted out of a hospital, not have a home, and end your recovery right there. in the street. in front of the whole world. whether you want to or not. slowly deteriorate back into the state that put your life in danger and got you admitted to the hospital, in the street, in front of everybody. the whole world witnessing and neglecting.
although it can be very intense and unwelcoming and uncomfortable in a psych ward, i find a strange comfort there, healthy or not. i also did an internship at a psychiatric facility. yes, they’re filthy and lumpy and cold, and that part is unnecessary, but anything goes in that environment. you can say whatever, real or not real. you can do whatever and it won’t be unexpected or judged. you can wear whatever, or strip in the hallway. you are free. in a limited way you are free. in all the ways you can’t be free when you have freedom in society, you are free because you are not part of society. i thought about admitting myself just last week.
i didn’t hear any voices this time, but mine in my head really seemed to hate me and i wanted to escape. instead i made that free space for myself. the ones who would understand, i told to support me from afar. those who wouldn’t, i avoided. and those who i needed to, i pushed away. you’re not supposed to do that. to isolate yourself when you’re ill. but hypocritically that’s what they do to you in a psych ward. it worked. i’m regaining focus. getting back into the groove of my treatment. again. slowly. it seems i’m learning how to manage the waves again.
so of course i worry about the friends i made in that hallway. because i have everything i could ask for and yet i struggle. because last may, two weeks after my discharge, i saw one of them, also bipolar, in the street, in front of everybody, clothes tattered and dirty, eyes dazed, shoes in pieces, smelling. we saw each other. and as i searched for appropriate words, the reflection of myself that i saw in him started to speak as i stood silent. it spoke incoherent words from another dimension or a past life. it sounded scared. and as i watched my reflection talking to me while i held my tongue, the glass shattered. memories of us chatting in that hallway with my crush, of him giving us relationship advice like a father, got blurry, lost color. so i took a step back and walked away, that reflection’s soul wandering in the air.
i have no idea where he is today, how he is, if he’s even alive. i try not to think about him, nor my other homeless friends from that hospital stay, too directly because i feel so powerless against a system that deems depression as laziness and homelessness as complacence. but somewhere along the rollercoaster ride of my moods and episodes, i realized that some consistency and direction could come from dedicating my professional life to them. to us. so on a good day, i’m on the road to founding my own wellness center. a place that doesn’t need superheroes because it’s run by them. by us.