ALTAR TO ALTERS
By December 2005, you gave yourself the best and worst xmas present ever: Speed Psychosis.
Christmas was always a hard time. Just like it is for a huge percent of the population that lives in familial denial. Most turn to their friends to get through it with some sense of contentment and fellowship. But if no one really enjoys your company, then drugs will do just fine to kill the time.
You were actually in a great mood. So happy to be left alone with this big frosty snowman made outta meth stacked high in front of you. 12 different half finished projects laid strewn haphazardly about the room. All the roommates had gone away to their respective warm holiday gatherings. Sucks to be them, you thought, with not a shred of envy.
You were so glad that you wouldn't have to get into some pointless political argument with one of those right wing bigots related to you. Or hover over a bowl of green beans and mashed potatos while everyone else ridiculed you for being vegetarian. Or hear, yet again, that forced age old question of, "When are you gonna settle down, get married and have some kids with whichever man is crazy enough to have you?!" Always followed up with, "Aww..whatever happened to that guy Zack? You should've married him when you had the chance." Or laugh about that time when your dad, in a drunken frenzy, carved the turkey with his bare hands. Grabbing, mangling and throwing the much labored-over carcass all over the room. Cursing as each limb smacked up against something and fell to the floor, greasily doomed. Picking up the whole table, he flung it over. Toppling off into broken shards went the glasses, the good plates and all trimmings of that delicately prepared meal. Your poor mother sobbed, numbly clutching a broom. But the dog was happy as fuck that afternoon.
Nope, not this year. You could do whatever the hell you wanted to do in this big empty house. So you joyfully consumed almost that entire huge chunk of meth over a heap of sleepless hours. They blurred together in a revolving shock of night/day/night/day with the unforgiving flux of time lapse photograhy. This extensive holiday would forever alter the internal workings of that person you thought was you and only you.
To understand what birthed this seasonal hatred of Christmas, several attempts were made via dream healing and concentrated meditation to trace it back to it's origin: Germany, 1972. You were 3, your brother was 5. The two of you woke up and excitedly started playing with the new toys you'd received for Christmas the day before, all spread out on the floor of the bedroom at 4 or 5 in the morning. Suddenly, the door burst open. Your infuriated red-faced father screamed that it was too early to be making noise. Your brother chirped, "But Daddy, lookie what Santa gave me!" He held up his bright blue Tonka dumptruck gleefully. Your dad grabbed him by the wrist and flung his entire body across the room. He bounced off the wall and landed head first on the floor in front of you. Through your terrified screams you heard a splitting sound. The pretty porcelain tea set you were playing with was broken. For years that's what you believed shattered at that moment. But it was not the china cracking. It was your brother's bones.
Something else snapped then, too. Willy appeared. Sitting there next to you. This happy little 4 year old boy, tenderhearted and true. His calming presence acted as the gatekeeper to all the other alters who would later join him and you, one by one, over the next several years every time a new trauma broke into you. But you never saw them coming. It was only a sneaking suspicion. Like that weird feeling you get when someone else is watching you.
At 12, you saw that movie about a woman with multiple personalities called 'Sybil'. Your reaction to it was, "I'd never be lucky enough to have that problem." Not good enough to have a mental disorder. Not good enough to have a built-in defense mechanism for dealing with life threatening stresses. The ultimate in self-deprecation.
Not even halfway through those 4 days that you spent spun up as fuck, having an enjoyable White Christmas, all of your busy bodied building projects became just background noise to something else that was conspiring for your attention. People began appearing solidly before you. Saying nothing. Just sitting there. Staring at you. How rude.
It was annoyingly disconcerting to look over and see a young boy with eyes wide as saucers, his entire fist shoved into his mouth. His other hand gently caressed his crying girlfriend's head, laying there limp in his lap. Long hair covered most of her face except where it had matted down in her streaming tears. One wet eye peered straight out at you. No amount of pleading, cajolling or yelling seemed to dislodge their dreamlike presence there on your bed. And when you moved around to different parts of the room, only their eyes followed. Creepishly boring into you. This real life nightmare had only just begun.
And here you were, so happy to be left alone for Christmas.
Yet the whole house began filling up with strange people staring at you. There was no escape. No matter where you looked or didn't look. Even with your eyes closed. Everything,everywhere was matrixing into another staring accusatory face in some phase of physiological decomposition or distorted with agonizing bliss.
You tried to amuse yourself with silly ideas. As if all of these figures were the trapped souls of people who died from drug overdoses on this holy holiday. And they all came here to Partay! Wooohooo!! But no amount of dark humor could curb the increasingly unfunny haunting invasion flooding your room, filling the hallway, coming up the stairs, walking around outside the window. It began to frighten you, this complete loss of control. And soon you felt a greater empathy for those schizophrenics on the street as they stand there yelling in the bus stop or at a garbage can, toward someone no one else can see. Stuck in the torment of a terrified brain in crisis, hallucinating mercilessly.
After a couple more day/nights of this, you became so scared, so backed up into the corners of fear, all you could do was sit in the lukewarm bathtub. In the dark. Crying. Then you started singing to calm yourself down. It brought a tiny respite. Silver Bells. Noel. Silent Night. Still the unblinking eyes did not subside. They found their way to you through the faucets, the shower curtain, the peeling light blue paint on the walls and on the ceiling of the bathroom.
So you started praying. "And yea though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death, i shall fear no evil for thou art with me..." Over and over until the bath water turned ice cold. Hot water on. Swirl around. Repeat for another rough ungodly hour. Never alone. Yet so totally alone in your own private hell.
Joseph Campbell once said, "The path is from dreams to visions to gods. All the tomorrows, all the yesterdays are within you. All the hells, all the heavens are within you. All the gods are in you." So you reached out for someone else.
Evan soon showed up after you finally made a frantic phone call for help. He took you to a large luxurious loft in West Oakland where he was housesitting. A completely muted neutral space. Even he became skittish, nervously laughing at the steady stream of nonsensical descriptions detailing these ornate hallucinations with which you were still carousing. He lead you over to the couch, sat you down and gave you a blanket to cover up your shivering, though not cold, body.
Through a tightly clenched mouth, a certain phrase kept repeating itself in broken consonate sounds, "GT STND! GET STND! GET STONED!" So you followed it's direction and got stoned. But it wasn't you talking. This was someone else.
At last, your panicked heart rate began to slow and the hallucinations eased off a bit, mutating into swirls and patterns instead of crazy judgemental dead toy faces. As you laid down, a high pitched ringing drowned out your ramblings. Then cold beads of sweat trickled down your neck. You wanted to vomit suddenly, but had nothing in your stomach. A dark cloud of bile forcibly ejected itself from so far deep down in your gut, it felt like your intestines were being ripped out. Out shot a hoarse blood curdling primal howl. And then, convulsions. Only one step left til Overdose. Death.
With spit flying through your teeth drilled shut like a vice, you tried to voice the words, "Immm hvinnng e seezure!" Evan replied, "What? You want a ceasar salad? I'm not sure if there's any parmesan in th--" "No! Imm hvinng a seezrr! A SEIZURE!!!" But your stiff electric limbs made this obvious by now. Your eyes rolled up into your head and you dropped off the cliff of muscle coordination like a piece of lead. Evan had enough sense at least to hold your head while the rest of your body spasms did their short circuiting stringless puppet dance. It stopped eventually. Then aftershocked over the next few hours in a fog of exhaustion and kinetic helplessness.
Gently, Willy's little face floated in front of you. All other hallucinations had ceased. His smile was so sweet and kind.You asked him, "Were you the one telling me to get stoned?"
"Yeah...we were scared."
"Who's we?"
Willy calmly asked if it would be ok for you to meet all the other alters.
"All the other alters? But...? I thought I didn't have any?!"
He giggled and said that they'd all decided you were too bossy, so they were just gonna hide until you needed them again. So here they were. One by one. Name. Age. Face. When and why they came to be living inside of you. And what they thought about what you were doing to yourself now. You sighed, "I'm so sorry..."
It felt wonderfully warm and loving, this unexpected intervention. This family reunion of secret selves who helped you cope for so many years. Who cared enough about you that they made sure not to show themselves off too much in front of society for fear of getting you thrown away into an institution. They did actually have your back. Even those who wouldn't acknowledge you since they were
so pissed about shit. Even those who would fuck every stupid dude that got drunk with you back in Boston because they were so into it. You still thanked them, though you weren't sure what good it would do. But they did actually care whether or not you lived or died because then, they would all either live or die too.
So much of the past made sense now. Why you never really felt alone. Why it was so neccessary to write everything down, to take photos, to document events and be sure they did actually happen. To keep a record. To keep track of time. Because you often found things written and recorded that you did not recognize or remember as your own. It was a beautiful, long overdue reception. An accidental healing that greatly improved your outlook on life. And Evan graciously sat there listening to this perplexing conversation you were having with all these imaginary people, watching over you as the discussion grew more peaceful. Until finally, you fell into a heavy comatose sleep.
Yeah, maybe it was just the drugs talking. But similar to feeling the presence of The Angel of Death, this kind of knowing experience was too far beyond questioning. So there was no need to quantify it's validity. It was as real as a dream within a life that is as real as the dream itself feels.
It was what it was.
When you woke up 2 days later, it took huge concentrated efforts to speak. Your mouth did not work right. You couldn't string together words or pronounce an understandable sentence. This was the scariest plight yet. Weeping, you were suddenly struck dumb. What if you had just damaged your brain so severly, you'd given yourself some form of cerebral palsy for the rest of your life?! Inside, behind your disabled tongue, you cried, "My God, What Have I Done?!"
MERRY CHRISTMAS DOOKIE HEAD!! Now, you may fully appreciate the ability To Speak. To Think. To Act Freely. To Write. To Feed Yourself. To Wash. To Pee. To Sit Upright.
The next day, you left Oakland to go start a new job at Amoeba Records on Haight Street. Evan said he was hurt that you spent those completely retarded out-of-your-mind nights quarantined to the couch, not sleeping in bed next to him like a good sane girlfriend should. But he could never understand that you already felt so crowded, the last thing you could deal with was being cuddled or screwed. Though you were grateful he showed up to help you, his emotional reaction to this insane situation said something about the clueless and unabashedly inherent selfishness of men. Maybe he felt you owed it to him since he protected your skull during those violent fits of convulsion? But you were too busy almost dying to think about how much he might need to get some head. Really rather unfortunate. From beginning to end.
Although psychologists are still debating whether or not multiple personality disorder even exists, you later researched the different wide ranging theories on this and wondered if 2 opposing conclusions might both be true. If trauma occurs before the age of 7, it is said, the child's brain is far more likely to fracture into different aspects as their personality has not fully formed yet. Those young brains, that in most other mammals, would still be in utero, are too tender and too vulnerable to withstand violent abuse, so it compartmentalizes itself as a natural coping mechanism. Another camp suspects that early trauma injures the aura's spiritual defenses and thus, opens the child up to being possessed by other entities. Maybe they are both correct? Perhaps those alternate personalities are just lost ghosts looking for another host to crawl into? And what better way to show your appreciation than by paying an emotionally protective rent to the original owner of the body that is now housing you? It's just a thought on a subjective goose that is difficult, if not impossible to prove.
Possible or not, that Psychotic Christmas was quite a gift. You recovered. And for a couple years, you severly cut down on your drug use. Because now, there were other people to whom you could turn to feel true long term love and gratitude.
All the hells, all the heavens, all the gods are within you.
*u can call me ph!*
Showing posts with label multiple personality disorder. Show all posts
Showing posts with label multiple personality disorder. Show all posts
7.05.2016
6.07.2016
13% [chapter 9]
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!*
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!*
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