This is a work of memoir. It reflects the author’s present recollection of my experiences over a period of years. Certain names, locations and identifying characteristics have been changed, and select individuals are composites. Dialogue and events have been recreated from memory, and, in some cases, have been compressed to convey the substance of what was said or what occurred.
Writing: that was the release I had been searching for. My pen didn’t leave the paper for hours, and all of my insecurities, doubts, obsessions, sadness, anger, and pity slowly trickled out with every stroke of the pen, until the fact that I was locked in Stephen’s Mental Hospital became irrelevant. It felt like I could finally breathe, like everything that had been building up inside was finally coming out. I was locked up, but yet I was free in a way I never before had been.
At 8 o’clock later that night my door began to creak open, quickly re-introducing me with reality. If they caught me with a pen they’d accuse me of attempting to commit suicide with it, move me back down to red status where I couldn’t do any activities, and take it away. I wouldn’t be able to write at night anymore, and it would ruin me. Too terrified of these thoughts to think of doing anything else, I frantically stuffed the pen down my shirt.
The door opened wider and wider when the pen tumbled out the underside of my shirt. I quickly and awkwardly thrusted my right thigh over my left, catching the BIC between them. I kept my legs crossed and put my hands on my knee, just before Angela got the door wide open, letting me know it was time for nighttime meds. She looked at me suspiciously for a moment, and then returned back to the main area. I took a deep breath, wiped my brow and followed her to find everyone else intently watching Monsters, Inc. (2001) in the main area.
“Here, you’re fifteen minutes late, I had to keep meds out just for you, now I’m late on everything else for the rest of the night. Oh, and here – it’s supposed to be only for staff but, whatever. Doctor’s orders.” One of the disgruntled nurses snarled at me, handing me a generic-brand water bottle and a little paper cup filled with pills. I was surprised, Dr. Green had actually come through with the water bottles, but that wasn’t the only thing he changed. I looked in the paper cup to find it filled with more pills than my usual amount, and there were different sizes, shapes, and colors of pills that I wasn’t familiar with.
Uncomfortable with taking a handful of random pills, and feeling undermined that there’d been a change in my meds without anyone bothering to notify me, I immediately thought of the scene in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)where cool, calm, and clever Jack Nicholson stuck it to the man and hid the pills he was forced to take under his tongue until he could spit them out later. He was so sly, so sneaky, and I thought I’d be a clever badass and outsmart the system in the same fashion.
I smiled at the nurse, stuck the lot of pills under my tongue and started to walk towards the television, when I suddenly felt the most intensely sickening, putrid taste consume and coat my entire mouth, jaw, tongue, and throat. The majority of the capsules were rapid-release and exploded almost on contact with my saliva, and my mouth and eyes started to water. I rotated my jaw around, attempting to dilute the wretched taste, somehow forgetting the few horse tablets still remaining in my mouth and still safely covered in film. While rotating my jaw, I unintentionally ground up the massive pills between my molars. It was unbearable. I felt like I was dying and I wanted to puke, but nothing came out.
In the middle of my agony I lost control and shouted “AHH, WHAT THE FUCK!?” at the top of my lungs. After the outburst came dead silence throughout the entire ward, the first of which I’d ever witnessed. Staff, nurses, kids; everyone dropped what they were doing and just stared at me with their jaws on the floor. Suddenly they all couldn’t care less about Mike and Sully’s mission to scare kids. I was normally the sane one, the quiet one. They were just waiting for the moment they’d see a glimpse of my more unhinged side.
I chugged the rest of the water bottle, and then sprinted back into my room to my illegal stash I had accumulated over the last few days. I pulled out my bottom drawer, tossed all my clothes over my shoulder that were hiding it, and quickly downed my entire supply: three tiny plastic cups of apple juice, two of orange juice, and individual single serving size baggies of graham crackers, baby carrots, pretzels, and fruit snacks.
Try as I might, everything I put into my mouth was instantly neutralized by the medicine and nothing proved effective. I laid down onto my bed, surrendering to the hell inside my mouth and almost instantly passed out from the sedatives within the medication that were supposed to take a few hours to slowly dissolve in my system before taking effect. I woke up at three in the morning and I felt goofy, completely out of my element. Everything was hazy, the lights in the hall and the shadows seemed to intertwine and hover around the room. I got up and unintentionally giggled a bit, feeling both stoned and drunk – at least what I assumed being stoned and drunk to feel like. I walked to the door, finding I had to gyrate my hips around in every which direction in order to find my balance and prevent tripping over myself and falling on top of Dustin, who was fast asleep. I carefully walked down the hall, both of my hands against the walls to hold me up, and found Angela by herself working on paperwork at the table. She stood up, surprised to see me awake.
“Well hey there James, what are you do-” But before she could speak and before I could think, I launched myself off of the hallway wall supports straight into her arms. My entire weight was resting on her shoulders and if she were to step back or shrug me off I’d fall onto the floor like a sack of potatoes. I hugged her as tight as I possibly could and started to whimper like a puppy dog. Touching of any kind by anyone, especially between staff and patients was strictly forbidden, and she stretched out her arms as to not have any part of it. She could have said one word at any point and a lab coat army would have stormed in, tackled me, stuck me with a needle and put me in a straightjacket. But instead, after a moment’s hesitation she too embraced me and started to pat my back.
That was my first hug from a girl ever, and I was addicted. It was the most magical, amazing, beautiful, best thing I had ever experienced in 18 years of life. I’m lucky I was hardly conscious at the time otherwise I may have involuntarily pitched a tent. It was just as life-changing, just as powerful, and just as rejuvenating as how Edward Norton described his hugs into Bob’s bitch tits in Fight Club (1999). I wanted to remain in her warm hold forever. “There, there James. Everything’s going to be okay. You’ll be out of here really soon, you’ll see. Shhhhh. C’mon now, let’s get you back to bed.” I still couldn’t stand and she put my arm around her neck and we started to walk back to my room.
“Let’s do this again sometime, this was buttloads of fun. Goooodnight Angela, you big silly!” She walked me to my bed, tucked me in and walked out the door, her butt at exact eye level with my face on the pillow. I had drifted away already by the time her butt had left the room and woke up again just after seven. Dustin was already out of bed and I wondered why no one had tried to wake me up yet. With my memoir finally started, my first hug last night, and my first good night’s sleep in four days, I awoke in a very good mood and I couldn’t wait to see Paige again. I didn’t know how, but somehow I knew: as soon as we were both rid of this mental institution me and Paige were to live the rest of our lives together: kids, pets, houses, I’d go on to do the full monty with this girl. She’d stop cutting and I’d stop washing my hands so much and we would have a perfect life together. Together forever.
On my way down the hall to breakfast, I looked to my right and saw three nurses and two paramedics wrestling with Jonas, a third grader from the younger kid’s ward, sticking him with a needle and trying to wrestle him into restraints. “Aaarrrrrggggghhhhh, you’ll never take me alive penis face! I’ll punch you in your vag and jizz in your hair!!!…………………… Nooo you guys, seriously, please…. No, stop, I’ll be good and cut it out, I swear,” his voice screeched. Before I could figure out what was going on, Sasha ran up to me, grabbed my arm and pulled me into the main rec room.
“C’mon James, come join the dance party!” With all the staff distracted by Jonas, the patients had seized control of the radio and turned the rec room into an all-out mosh pit. Sean Kingston’s brand new hit single started to play and that’s when I witnessed something so blatantly, so painfully ironic that for an instant I thought my life was being written by Gary Larson and I was in the middle of a Far Side cartoon: Anthony turned the volume to max, and then a room full of psychic ward patients, many of which were there after attempted suicides started to have a regular dance party to the chorus:
“… you make me suicidal, suicidal. Beautiful girls, you have me suicidal, suicidal…” Anthony was jumping on the couch, nearly hitting his head on the ceiling and throwing couch cushions every which way and yelling “Bullshit and party, and bullshit and party.” Collin was doing a new spazz dance that was somewhere between disco and a seizure, Sasha was doing the classic “snorkel” move, and Rob, Rob who was supposed to be gone was sitting in a chair just staring off into space, and remaining stationary even when Anthony started dry humping his leg.
Suddenly Todd turned off the radio, ending our jamboree. Thank God, I hated the song and Todd was the best male leader, he specialized in fitness and that meant possible time playing volleyball or climbing the rock wall today. “All right guys, some changes in the plans. Let’s go for a little walk outside until they get things under control in here. Then we’ll come back, have group, go down to lunch, and then maybe do something in the gym later if you guys are good. Okay, go grab your jackets, let’s go!”
Everyone went to put warmer clothes on and I whispered to Anthony while Jonas got dragged away in the background, “Dude, what happened?”
“Nothin’, Jonas just stole a magic marker and drew cocks everywhere, and then started showing his dick to people.” I looked around and sure enough, on the couch, on the TV stand, numerous walls, and on the metal support beam were crudely drawn phalluses. Everyone regrouped and followed Todd out the door and down the stairs. It felt like it had been forever since I’d been outside and I stood in awe of the crisp, cool March midwestern air softly nipping at my cheeks, the rising sun beautifully illuminating the horizon. The songbirds were singing their songs so beautiful they put even the most skillful string-player to shame, echoing throughout the seemingly endless number of hundreds-plus foot tall oak trees, the ones I couldn’t see the tops of no matter how hard I tried to. I promised myself that I would never take any of these things for granted ever again. We followed Todd through the parking lot, past the playground, onto a dirt trail leading into the woods, and down steps leading to a sit-down area overlooking one of the great lakes.
“What the hell are they doing!? It’s in the middle of fuckin’ March!!!” Anthony shouted while throwing a rock into the lake that was still frozen over. The rock hit the ice, and five cracks started to grow, branching out like a spider web where the rock had hit. A hundred or so yards away we could see Anthony’s target: three guys and a shanty surrounding a hole, ice fishing. They were normal people invading our turf, and that never went over well with anyone. We knew that everyone had seen all the films and every other media that portrays mental institutions and mental patients, and we knew that every outsider had preconceived notions and assumptions that we are all suicidal, homicidal dope fiends who couldn’t control our emotions or actions.
“Alright guys, just quiet down and look out onto the pretty lake. Take a moment of silence to reflect on everything”, Todd said, trying to calm everyone down, but after just a few minutes of admiring the glistening ice, one of the men ice fishing got up and started to walk towards the shanty for something when he slipped and fell over onto the ice, causing an uproar of laughter.
Anthony cupped his hands over his mouth and screamed “HAHA, you fucking dumbass!!! I hope you all fall in, along with your tiny house! Let me have all your beer! Haha, don’t come here for help though cause we’re all fuckin’ crrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrazzy and we’ll skull-fuck you and… and eat your brrrraaaaiiiinnnns!!!”
“ANTHONY!!!”
I sat down on a stump, propping my arm up with my knee and rested my head against my hand when Paige walked over, giddy as ever and sat down next to me. Her beauty was only ever outdone by her soft-spoken inquiries into my well-being. She cared, a whole hell of a lot. There was no doubt in my mind: this was my future bride.
“So, what’s your story dude?”I was caught off guard.
“Um, what do you mean?”
“That stuff in group was bullshit, no one attempts suicide just because they’re lonely, and what’s with this OCD stuff?”
Oh God. “Yes, YES I was just lonely damn it. Everyone thinks they’re lonely, but no, NO ONE knows my level of loneliness, okay? I’m lonely to the point I get stomach aches and it’s physically painful. I’m the only one I have and I always have been. I have no one to talk to, no one to dream with, no one to watch stars with, I have no one, and never have. And OCD? That has absolutely nothing to do with me being here, nothing.”
“Alright, sorry, geeze. Calm down there buddy. Just trying to, I don’t know, reach out, ya know?”
“No, I’m sorry. It’s just that like… no one gives me any credit. These guys who just met me last week are like ‘oh my God this kid has bad OCD, let’s fix him’ but they don’t know anything. Right now I just wash my hands a lot, I would love to have them see me when I was diagnosed at twelve. I could only walk on the grey tiles at Wal-Mart, I had to constantly repeat my OCD numbers over and over and over again, I couldn’t use public computers, public phones, public nothing. I used to only be able to walk left-right-left and if I accidentally went left-left I’d have to walk backwards ten steps and redo it, I couldn’t step on cracks and…”, I take a deep breath… “and a bunch of other stupid things. Anyway, I have worked my ass off and literally given my blood, sweat, and tears to get to the point I’m at now, and nobody recognizes that.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry James. What about family? Any brothers or sisters?”
“Yeah, one of each, both older. They took all the good traits and I was left with shit. Tiffany was the valedictorian in high school, and at State University she’s like the smartest person ever. And Jimmy, are you kidding me!? It’s impossible to explain, but he’s just got this glow and essence to him that just makes you want to be his friend. I swear to God that he could easily get with 99% of every girl in the world if he wanted to. He’s tall, tan, thin, and attractive-the exact opposite of me. You’d guess Wesley Snipes was my brother before you guessed Jimmy was my brother. So they took everything good from my genes, and now I’m stuck here left with trash genes, and can’t even graduate high school or look a girl in the eye.”
“Aww, don’t worry James, it’ll all be okay.” She wrapped her arms around me and gave me a heartfelt hug and with Anthony distracting Todd, she got away with it. Wow, nothing for 18 years, and now two hugs in one day!? If I kept it up at this pace I’d be a regular man-whore by the end of the month. She was so beautiful, so soft, so warm, I never wanted to leave her embrace. I envisioned her one day being my wife, and spending the rest of my life with her. Surely, we’d find a way to make it work, no matter how far apart we lived from each other. We were at least in the same state.
“You know, you remind me of a girl from school named Britt. I sit by her at lunch sometimes.”
“Yeah? Is she a lesbian?”
“Um, no? Why would she be?”
“Haha, I don’t know, ‘cause then maybe you could hook me up with her.”
“…Wait, what???”
