THE DEEPER THE SHIT
THE MORE BEAUTIFUL THE BLOSSOM
Before moving to Boston and California, that small rented room at the back of your parents house in Burlington, Massachusetts was the site of hard dark harvest. A reaping time that would inform so many of the decisions you made later in life. 3 seeds had been planted in the mud of your distorted psyche. By 1989, they came to fruition.
The first flower to break ground was that of Insanity.
Intentionally, you got that job at the mental institution in order to get a good insider's look at how your life might be if you were ever committed to such a place. Just in case your parents ever succeeded in putting you away. Just in case you ever completely lost control and let it all go. Just in case you ever surrendered to that black cloud that was always hovering right behind you, patiently waiting every single day.
Like so many patients at the asylum, you were a messy combination of epigentic tendencies, environmental factors and traumatic stories, but had the luck of retaining your highly functioning status. From the point of view of floor staff, you wanted to see the actual differences between this side and the other side of that Insane Line society has drawn in the sand. Many hours were spent scouring the case studies of those committed. This is what you learned of the wartorn people living on the 3rd floor ward:
Of Martha:
It was speculated that she had been raped over 50 times by all of her relatives before the age of 5. She was committed for having multiple personality disorder. She'd explode into a psychotic rage, tearing apart thick denim jeans and leather sneakers with her bare hands if you ever let her see a pile of folded laundry. That's what would set her off. God help you if you were working that shift, the staff warned, so be careful to stay out of her way until at least 4 other staff members were prepared to restrain and sedate her. On the nightly rounds, you'd sometimes pass by her room and hear distinctively different voices conversing with each other behind the door, discussing how good or bad she had been that day. Given the degree of her learning disabilities, it seemed highly unlikely that these voices were being faked for any reason because she had nothing to lose or to gain. Clearly, this was her brain's desperate attempt to keep calm that deadly rage that was always carefully clinging just below the skin, like a thin cotton dress on a frightened little girl running through the pouring rain.
Of Vinnie:
Committed as a child at the same time as his older brother, Danny, he enthusiastically exhibited grandiose manic fantasies. Pretending to be a sports star, movie star, rock star or any other kind of superhero, just like most other kids do, except that he was now in his twenties. His frustration at his arrested capabilities, at his life of captivity, at his folks who never came to visit him or his brother on Family Day, often erupted into violent outbursts. But he was your favorite patient and you were his favorite staff member. One day he asked if he could marry you. You replied that you didn't believe in marriage. He punched you, giving you a black eye, then choked you until some of the other staff members ran over and broke his hold. Like most other men you got close to in regular life, Vinnie begged for forgiveness the next day, crying, saying how sorry he was. Unlike most other men though, his apology was drowning in sincerity. How crazy it is that more respect was shown to you inside an asylum than out here in the normal misogynistic world?
Of Eddie:
He fell silent at a young age after witnessing his older brother commit suicide. A tall skinny man in his mid 30's, ever present at the hourly allotted smoking time with a perma-grin plastered on his face. He had the look of a boxer. Deep scars distorted his brow and broken nose from the time he had successfully put his head through a reinforced glass window. Almost daily, he would mime the act of his brother killing himself. Lifting his head back and looking at the ceiling, pointing with 2 gun-like fingers under his chin, he'd open his mouth like that Munch painting 'The Scream'. Then, he'd resume rocking back and forth in his ill-fitting fire-resistant vest, puffing on his pipe happily. One afternoon, all the other staff members had left the floor for one reason or another. Suddenly, you realized you were alone on the ward with only 3 months experience and 18 energetic basket cases. Some of the patients realized this at the same time, too. Eddie lumbered over and stood there, towering over you. He said, quite clearly with a chuckle, "Hey, why don't you suck my dick?" You could not believe your ears. Another patient, 63 year old Rosie, started laughing hysterically when she heard this. She began skipping around in erratic circles. You sat frozen. Eddie started to fumble with his pajama pants. Rosie laughed louder. Roger, a 70 year old with turrets syndrome cued up his excited screaming loop, "WHOOP! FUCK ME UP THE ASSHOLE!" Like a mating call, this made more patients gather round, expectant of a spectacle. Just then, another staff member returned to the ward. Eddie shuffled off, still grinning, his sly blue eyes staring back at you over his shoulder. Rosie, disappointed, ceased skipping. Roger quit looping. A few giggles drifted off, back into their rooms, and everybody resumed behaving at their normal levels of crazy. Still frozen, you said nothing except that you felt sick, so you went home early that day.
Of Rosie:
Her manic, overt and compulsive interest in any kind of sexual activity, be it with other people or doorknobs or vending machines or lawn furniture or just about anything, made her socially non-viable. She remained committed for a large part of her adult life. Very little was known about her past as she was a voluntary patient. She offered up scarce few details about herself that were serious, preferring to tell sex jokes and make endless innuendos instead. Her speech showed signs of tardive dyskinesia setting in -- a swelling of the tongue and overproduction of saliva from so many years of taking various anti-psychotic medications. She seemed to find great humor living in the institution though, and was fairly entertaining for the first few hours of each night shift. But later, piercing high pitched banshee wails would fill the halls from 3 to 4 AM for no discernable reason. Even she couldn't tell you why she was screaming. She'd just stand there in the moonlight as it shimmered through the long pale blue corridor of the ward. Looking like a lost little kid. This short round aging woman in fuzzy pink slippers and a worn out bleach stained nightie, drooling and clutching hard at her cunt as if it would escape her grasp and go roaming off on its own, out into the woods without her. Never to be seen nor heard from again.
Of Beverly:
She received an unknown number of beatings and sexual assaults growing up, responding to the abuse by becomming completely non-responsive for over 2 decades. She had graduated to vocalizing a long drawn out and heavily accented "ooohh kaaay" to every question or request posed to her. She was non-aggressive, non-violent, submissive to her surroundings and totally immersed in her own internal world. On rare occassions at night, she would repeatedly chant the phrase, "in a graaay corrrnerrr..." and pace at the dark end of the hall. But she spent the bulk of her days sitting quietly in a white plastic chair by the window, staring down at her fingernails. Sometimes she'd rip them completely off but seemed to feel no pain at all when doing so. Nor did it seem to bother her to draw bizarre abstract images all over her bedroom walls with her own feces. Staff would often find her at night, sitting there on the floor of her room, staring up at her work, rocking back and forth, chewing at her fingertips, covered from head to toe in shit.
Of Charles:
Born autistic, he also became severly mentally disabled after contracting scarlet fever as a teenager. He was a good guy who loved to play checkers and go for long walks through the forested grounds. Whenever he spoke, he held up and wiggled his right index finger with each word like a puppet. But sometimes, in his frustation, he'd start punching himself in the face. It instantly brought you to tears whenever you'd witness him hurting himself. Feeling a similar self loathing in your own warring mind, this is what self abuse looked like from outside the narrows of that blinding subjective fight. And you felt helpless to curb the power of that undertow, even from a compassionate distance. Seeing similar images in movies of people on the verge of pulling the trigger on that gun that they've got shoved into their mouths jolted some kind of wakefulness; signaling the birth of understanding what self-compassion feels like because now you could see self-abuse from outside your self. That image of Charles punching himself in the face burned itself into your brain, helping you to ease off with your own episodes of cutting, hitting, gnawing, hair pulling, head banging and other sorts of mutilating. But whenever you did succumb to these mad attacks later in life, you'd more quickly shift to the view from outside. Bawling over the remnants of the whole scene as if you were someone else, or someone else's loving mother, watching all of this unfold on film or tv. Wishing you could reach into the screen and gently hold that person, offer them some slight consolation. Lightly brush their hair with your fingertips. "Everything's gonna be okay," you'd keep whispering. Tragically, Charles died at the age of 29 from drug complications after a nurse mistakenly administered the wrong medications to everyone at the institution. No words can describe what that week at the Rehabilitation Center was like.
Of Alex:
She preffered to stay in her room and write or do word puzzles. When she resisted joining group activities, the staff would jump on her, pin her down and shoot her full of thorazine for her disobedience. You never found it in your heart to be able to participate in this popular activity, especially since you could understand her desire to just be left alone. When Jon and Kevin, always the first two staff members to engage in any kind of physical confrontation, had their knees in her back and her arms pulled nearly to the point of breaking, they yelled at you, "Give her the shot! Why are you just standing there?! Do it! DO IT NOW!" But you refused. You will never forget the look she gave you. The tiniest of smirks flickered across her never-smiling face as it was smashed hard against the concrete floor next to a puddle of apple juice that had spilled during the altercation and was trickling toward her fallen off shoe. Infuriated, Jon and Kevin hauled her down the hall, throwing her body like a bag of cement onto the steel bed with thick leather restraints attached. A single barred window allowed a strip of afternoon light into the pink and padded space known as The Quiet Room. They strapped her face down, shot her up in the ass and left her there for the rest of the night. All because she didn't feel like playing bingo. No recorded history or reasons for her committal could be found. Her case file was filled only with insurance forms, dutifully signed every year by her parents or guardians or whoever gave her away as a ward to the state. On a side note, both Jon and Kevin soon left their staff positions at the asylum to pursue careers as state troopers. Go figure.
And of Carol:
She suffered from a total inability to make simple everyday decisions, thus lending her to become the maleable object of anyone's manipulative suggestions. And get manipulated, she did. Staff would always find her coaxed off into some hidden alcove, having been convinced by an older male patient that giving him a hand job was a good idea. She was the youngest person on the ward, only 19 at the time. You nearly shat yourself with joy seeing her walking down Market Street in San Francisco 8 years later, having been mentally shored up enough that she could now be living out in the world on her own. And so far away from North Reading! A shabby drunk man on the corner asked her something distracting. While stopped at the red light on your bike, you heard her familiar voice as she responded to him, still tinged with a hint of uncertainty. "No...? No. New shoes. I'm going to buy new shoes!" And off she went toward Payless, looking both ways before confidently crossing the street. Transfixed with your mouth agape, your eyes followed her as she walked through a glowing pillar of dusty orange light that peered out between the buildings of downtown. You cried for the rest of the ride home. So overwhelmed and amazed that kismet had crossed your specific paths on this random day. Steeped in a much deeper appreciation for the profoundly overlooked luxury known as personal independent freedom.
Therefore, the resulting conclusion of your private research study on the viability of finding some kind of asylum within an asylum was a vociferous and resounding DON'T LET GO! NEVER GIVE UP ON YOURSELF.
*u can call me ph!*
