Thank you to everyone who submitted their stories to this zine. More information can be found by contacting thebraveatheart@gmail.com
Letter From Mt. Sinai
What I Learned From My Hospitalizations
When they put me in the mental hospital And violated my body with their drugs And threw me into a small locked room Where I wrote on the window in spit Because pen and blood were forbidden me I cried out, but not for you-I cried out for justice.
Forced treatment is violence, committed mostly against the innocent.
I want you to understand. Let this knowledge cut away at your guilt at not being there, Cast it away and throw it to the dogs. They are much abused, these poor dogs, Yet still following the voice of their master And attacking their master's enemies. They fear the beggar in the street more Than the well-dressed man who put them there. I know and understand this fear Because I have been a victim of it. Oh yes, I wanted you to be there. Not to feel guilt, but so that you would understand That in my tears and rage I was still beautiful In my hospital shift I was still sexy That their drugs did not take away my anger Nor their needles my dignity. Hold fast to this knowledge. You may need it In the dark times ahead. Credit: Sarah Harper
I was committed involuntarily three times in my life. The first time was to Mt. Sinai as a teenager, because I had visited my ex-boyfriend's house uninvited. I was told that I was on suicide watch and that a nurse would be looking in on me every few minutes. Even the bathroom door could not be locked. I felt panicky and tried to argue with the nurse, saying that I needed to have privacy in order to get to sleep, that I would not be able to sleep with someone watching me. The nurse said I was talking too loud and needed a tranquilizer to calm down. When I spat out the tranquilizer the staff tried to make me take orally, they came back with a needle. I had heard from a friend what would happen next and was very afraid. When they came back with the needle, I said that I would take the pill just don't stick me with a needle in my ass. They ignored me and kept coming for me. I tried to fight them off physically, so four nurses held me down on a table while a doctor pulled my pants down and forcibly injected the tranquilizers. Luckily I was only there one night, but one night was enough to traumatize me for a long time. I learned from my first involuntary hospitalization that medical staff could and would commit acts of physical violence against you, acts that felt very reminiscent of sexual assault, and claim it was done to help you. I also learned that if you are in a hospital you should take whatever pills the staff there tell you to take without complaint, a lesson that stood me in good stead the next two times I was forcibly committed.
The second time was to St. Luke's Roosevelt as an adult. I had decided to go into therapy for depression. Because of my fear of getting hospitalized, I made the therapist promise not to call the cops on me before I would see her. Once in her office, I confided to her my suicidal thoughts. While I was in her office talking to her, EMTs came in with handcuffs and said that I could go to the hospital with them quietly or be taken by force. I stayed there for two weeks before I was able to convince the doctors there that I was sane enough to be let out. I learned from my second involuntary hospitalization to never trust a therapist. The third time was to Cornell Westchester, via the emergency room at Columbia Presbyterian. I was on the phone late at night with someone who had been my friend for years and who I had told about my trauma from the previous hospitalizations. I told her I was feeling suicidal, and she asked how to get to my house, saying that she would sit with me and talk to me until the urges passed. Instead, she called the cops. I was in my room reading and waiting for her to arrive when they knocked on my door. Again, I was given the choice to come quietly to the hospital or be taken by force. I told the cops she was lying about me, and they said that I could tell the doctor at the hospital that and be allowed to go home once I had explained the situation to the doctor. I waited for hours in the emergency room before speaking to a doctor for about five minutes. The doctor decided to commit me involuntarily to Cornell Westchester--her word against mine--and I was kept there for about two weeks. As the person who had made the phone call to commit me, what she said about me was automatically believed over what I, the "crazy" person, said about
myself. I was guilty until proven innocent. It took about two weeks of taking drugs, going to group therapy, etc. until I proved myself innocent enough to the doctors for them to let me out of lock-up. I learned from my third hospitalization to never trust a friend. After my third hospitalization, I became very reclusive and developed a binge eating disorder. I felt that I could not talk to anybody about anything painful in my life, that if I did I'd be locked up again. So instead of reaching out, I ate to stuff my feelings down. For years afterward, I would never let anyone I was at all emotionally close to know where I lived. What saved me, what allowed me to learn to love and trust again, was a support group run by the Icarus Project, a support and activism network created and run by people who'd been labeled with psychiatric conditions. At the support group, there was a rule that no one would ever be hospitalized for things said in the group. There were no professionals--the people there were also dealing with emotional struggles and many, like me, had been abused by the "mental health" system. Some went to therapists and took medication, some did not, but everyone's voices were heard and accepted as valid. I felt a sense of safety and community, and being able to join voices in protest with other psychiatric survivors gave me hope of changing the system for the better. I am telling this painful story in the hope that forced treatment will be abolished. There are alternatives for people in crisis--Afiya, a peer respite house in Massachusetts that values privacy and dignity and has a counselor available to talk to 24/7, is one example of how
crisis states can be treated without force. Voices of the Heart, in upstate New York, is another. We need more non-coercive options like these. What we don't need is the violence of forced hospitalization and drugging. I was looking for help and got abuse--no one should ever have to go through that. Credit: Sarah Harper email: rockharp@gmail.com
Baby’s first trip to the ward “I recommend hospitalization” Take your pick Voluntary Involuntary There is no choice Waiting Waiting Waiting And still I think, “I should have tried to be happier Anything to avoid this Now look what I've done.” Waiting Waiting Waiting Who knows what the procedure is? No one bothers to tell me. I pick at lunch I think there’s meat in this wrap I hate ginger cookies. I’m still hungry. The Prozac still sits in my throat A lump of blue and dark blue I don’t even have a book My girlfriend gives me advice I wish she were here Holding me, letting me Messy cry all over her What are they going to tell
My parents? Maybe my parents will finally be forced To take care of me. It's a hope. A police car Quick packing Quick - make sure There are no sharp things. No computer just in case At least I have books. “Write down my number” In case, in case, in case They can't take away notebooks right? This isn’t your fault Good luck, says the officer And then I’m inside Sign this sheet Quickly now Just a signature Here’s your copy. Here’s a blue band Wait in the waiting room. There? There. Waiting Waiting Waiting Everyone always fucks up my name Answer these questions
While we take your pulse and pressure. Allergies? Do you have pain? Do you feel suicidal right now? No. Yes. No. We’ll get you a bed Wait there. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Sit here. We’ll get some work done You’ll see a therapist. Pee into this cup. Anjana Anjana Anjana No one can hear the right Pronunciation. Close enough, I say. Waiting Waiting Waiting. I wonder how many patients Watch while their blood is drawn And ask how it works Saying, cool? The lady needed to use both arms I’m strangely pleased With my bandages. Waiting.
Waiting. Waiting. I rip off the gauze My left arm is sore It’s still bleeding a little I study it as I listen I could read but I'm so tired * Discharged All this to be let go Credit: Anjana Rao
I know I am a monster that's why I'm tied to a bed that's why you all stare that's why you strategize about defeating me. The Crazy has possessed me and I am too horrifying and demonlike to be human anymore, but who cares, if this is what humans do. Maybe the Crazy is not a curse maybe some things deserve to be destroyed maybe all the benzos and soft voices can't fog me enough not to see past you. I see through you. I can read you. I know you. You can't hide. I pace mile after mile the sign warns of "elopement risk" I see it every thirty seconds in this tiny corridor and I am plotting. This was not a fight until you turned it into one, until you told me you "don't want to get into a power struggle," right, because you're on top, right, because I am a monster, right, because the world needs to be protected from me, right, because this is for my own good, right, I am beneath you, little do you know the Crazy can look up high and see all your faulty and ineffective weapons, DBT skills won't save you, process group won't save you, I am coming for you out of these restraints and I will win. Right, I am a monster. I am a demon. Credit: Cassandra
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Credit: your fellow nurse
Credit: eden madeline
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what a fine pair of eyes you are they see everything in shades of strange (they see everything) (let me gouge them out so you can sleep a little better at night. so i can sleep a little better at night) (let me dissolve them in my stomach acids. i hear your fight but just look at what i can do to you) (you see too madly for your own good) (you are too mad) (you are no good) Credit: Salem Felix
How I Learned To Institutionalize Myself On Purpose I. “[It is important to expose] the interlocking power structures that both cause disability and lock up disabled people.” —Eli Clare, Exile & Pride, xi II. Dear C, in February 2006 we were in the same adolescent psych ward together. You were thirteen but I thought you were sixteen. You gave me a photograph where you looked happy. I think I put it in one of the collages I made years later. I think I tore up that collage though, because I had to tear up my art then. I had to. I’m so sorry, C. I tried to write to you but it was too late to find you. You were thirteen and on the streets. You were popular in the Ward and I was dreamy and on the sidelines. We weren’t really friends but I wanted to be. I just hope you’re alive. Love, Shana III. I am popping pills to curb my effervescence skate close, high dose I am popping pills so you can love me if this will save us then so be it, I prefer benzos to breakups IV. i am a never-ending cry for help & when i cry it is just so fucking saccharine. i am vicious & then i am the kindest soul you ever knew. i wanna be so accountable even when they say i won’t, i
can’t. i am so pink that the one time i had the worst psychotic episode i’ve ever had, they didn’t even hospitalize me. i was such a sweet lovely girl and the doctor just changed my meds and sent me home. V. don’t ever say you were too— ebullient, too buoyant like there wasn’t enough reason, you couldn’t be that down and dark mascara girl messy bun runaway eyebrows never smoked a cigarette closest you got was limp sabotage they will love your drug-free pretty smile & they won’t believe it at all there’s a movie of your life playing in the background but you don’t know what to say or do, you never get a rerun water warm with flagella, margins on the left escaping on the right you never could do square, shift so cerebral, I would rather be cognitively dysregulated than alive, I mean, rather than dead. identity like whoa! limerence so fashionable, pursed crooked shiny chapped smile like oh, what, so neat, so shrug off that woman shrug it off, yeah, girl so pleated, quit, quit, quitting you’re queer nah you’re just another sellout another fake another— why would you want to be this it’s so hard why so much pain everyone wants to be happy no yes they do no you think you have it bad
just you wait stop you invent your own oppression I was reading Anais Nin: “I will invent your lies for you." Sabina & Satine in rose petal grunge Never Neverland, everyone is doomed, no hard as hell mirrors, no ramp after stairs after ramp of grey slate, beige looming like wilted envy. you haven’t got it in you anymore turned to I am the sun to nobody fucks with glitter and you tout ideology like it’s dropping ash, you’re here to fuck with the staff record white liberal racist slang like interior decoration, beads and crayons, you’re not a girl, you’re not a girl at all he kisses you with chicken breath and tells you gay people are going to hell. you wanna wrench those hearing aids from his ears maybe, maybe if his touched yours, you’d be okay, he’d love you anyway, and then he never calls you, and it’s like that guy who cut his chest all over again, do you need to remember, some shock value goth crap you’re tattling on your roomie and maybe that makes you so wise so she gets beat up, all that blue and black security guard flavour all for a fucking pencil with the eraser worn out, all for a silver smile on a soft wrist, all cuz you can’t keep your mouth shut.
pretty darling on the floor, can’t even be sensational, just crouch, bitch, just curl up, hyperventilation is so white shopgirl. it’s your fault and you’re just doing this to yourself and you hide it so well and good job and if you have so much trouble hearing, how come you can hear me now? VI. I do not come here for therapy. I try to get therapy, but I have learned, bitterly and painfully, that there is no therapy here. This is for stabilization. Drug you up and shut you up. I come here out of desperation, and leave out of despondence. Some resistance rekindled. Despair is a funny tree that way. VII. The sickness grows within you, and threatens to explode, but it is also manufactured. You will return to the psych ward over and over again, each time cementing the trust you cannot have in yourself. You learn to be afraid of scissors, knives, razors, wire, tools, dishwashing soap, pills, all manner of potentially dangerous paraphernalia. You learn that you are a threat and expendable at the same time. The hospital beckons in endless nightmare. You are always a liability. You run away from the only feelings of home you have ever known, and you learn that you will never recover the damage done to your psyche. VIII. it started to feel safe to me, those extra-clean tiles and you might want to but it still isn’t consensual
you have learned to let people lock you up because they have convinced you that you are wrong and you have surrendered i know what it means to erase my history even as it’s happening i tried to be a radical activist and i just ended up in the hospital again & again there is no space for someone who is really crazy the hospital is for people they can turn sane they don’t want you anymore if you’re a lost cause then they just want you to die IX. I feel so sorry for myself. Oh god, I feel so sorry for myself. Obviously that’s why I tried to kill myself so many times. I must be making up all this abuse stuff. Most people have it so much worse. I don’t even know if that teacher ever even molested me, so why am I going on like this? The physical fights probably happened a lot less than I say. I never got hit bad enough to really bruise. It’s questionable as to whether I was even really sexually assaulted. At least I haven’t been in really bad psychiatric wards. Just imagine how much worse it is in India. Remember how horrible it looked that time I visited that family friend? Just imagine. I’ve had it all. I’m an illtempered, intolerant waste of space. I’m so good at complaining. So good at being angry. So good at misery. Suck it up already. Nothing really bad happened. It could be so much worse. I should know how to deal better. I should know. (Maybe if I try to die enough I’ll know how to deal better.) Shut up, bitch.
X. “Have you thought about what it would be like if your parents had to come identify your body? If they had to look at a mess of crushed bones and pools of blood, and say, ‘Yes, that was our daughter.’ Have you thought about that at all?” “What the fuck is wrong with you, that is not OCD. You need to be locked up. Only really sick people think like that. You’re a danger to everyone. OCD is obsessive hand washing and stuff, not having really sick violent thoughts. I’m going to report this to the authorities.” “I don’t want to talk to anyone who has an Axis II Personality Disorder, because I’ve gotten involved with people who had borderline personality disorder who were abusive.” XI. Everything feels so perfunctory, you know? like sure, I was forcibly injected, sort of, I guess. I mean, I didn’t really struggle. And that one time I did struggle, it was so… performative, you know? And I couldn’t perform it enough. And then I got put on forced medical leave from college, you know, and they said that part of it was because I struggled. And it was so awful, there was this girl who I’d had a class with, she was an EMT. How ironic, yeah? How wonderful. Like yeah, sure, I’ve done a couple big overdoses. Never passed out, though. Called the police before that could happen. I’m such a failure at suicide! Isn’t it funny. You know, I wrote this paper in my sophomore year of college, I wrote about how fucked up the suicide prevention agenda is. My professor was really not happy about it. I’m really lucky though, at least I got to paint and write about this shit. Most people don’t get
that. Most people don’t get to go to elite liberal arts colleges at all. So I dropped out. Now I’m trying to get back in. Most people have it much worse. I can pass a lot. I took on so many identities but it was all because I talked about it that I got in trouble. You can’t just tell by looking at me. Such a typical borderline. I decided I was plural, otherkin, everything really. All this shit. I still believe it, but I can’t really talk about it anymore. I’m just pretending. Right? Right. Anyway, if you’d been through that, you wouldn’t want to talk about it either. It’s cooler to laugh about it, you know. Just let you think it’s okay. It’s in the past. I’m not crazy anymore. XII. my girlfriend told me she has a hard time thinking of anyone who is crazier than me & i felt so defensive & i wanted to lash out & i felt so bad & it’s true. XIII. Blog Posts That I Never Wrote: 1. Sick Femme Blues: On Being A Disabled, Mentally Ill, Plump, Queer POC 2. OCD: “What Are Your Obsessive-Compulsive Symptoms?” ~A Reclamation Of A Category 3. Why Did You Take My Art Pens Away? OR, Ballpoint Pens Really Suck 4. “This Is A Mental Hospital; What Do You Expect?”: On Conformity & Desolation In The Psych Ward 5. “Will Invega Work?” — Trying To Get Beyond Medication As The Saviour Of My Relationships 6. Panic: Reading Richard Siken In The Emergency Room 7. Suicide/Suicidality As Resistance: Why I’m Drawn To It
8. This Is Not An Open Letter. (To Staff At Psychiatric Facilities) 9. Shivers/ Spasms/ Fitlike Seizing Stims??? On Undiagnosed Possibility/Ache and Incomplete EEGs 10. Dis/Privilege Within Psychwards (OR, How Do You Get To The Highest Level) ~ A Case Study In Kyriarchy 11. “You Should Smoke” —Examining Sober Privilege 12. “Identities Shouldn’t Change So Much” — How To Just Get Over BPD And Assimilate Already 13. Look At That Love Story: How The Media Romanticizes Psych Wards 14. Kissing In The Corridors: How I Romanticize Psych Wards XIV. All that the psychiatric systems have ever taught me is that I am a danger, I am wrong, I am a bomb waiting to go off, and I better contain or control myself or else they will come and get me. So really, here are the choices: Surrender yourself ‘voluntarily’ OR Kill yourself or be killed (slowly or not) OR We’ll find you and lock you up forever. XV. If I could go back to my thirteen year old self, I would tell her: You aren’t dangerous, evil, deviant, or doomed. The intrusive thoughts and psychotic energy don’t make you wrong. But the world will tell you it’s wrong over and over. Sometimes they’ll mask it in acceptance, but they actually still believe it’s wrong. It’s up to you to always know the truth. And if that doesn’t work, then just hide it better. You have to hide it or else you will die. Whether they make you kill yourself or otherwise, they are the ones killing you. Don’t forget that. You have to hide it,
and you have to either have a foolproof plan to die (and decide upon it more firmly than anything else) or you have to just live. If you live, it will never ever be easy but you & I, we will find each other. You will find great love and great disaster. It’s not better or worse to live or die. But you don’t get the luxury of uncertainty. You have to decide. Credit: Shana Bulhan Haydock
“Do you think you should be hospitalized again?” she asked me, sitting next to my hospital bed on a rolling chair that she had brought in with her. I was angry. I had been in a psychiatric hall of the emergency center for over ten hours, stripped of my clothing and given a highlighter yellow T-shirt instead. A police officer constantly peered through my open door, despite the camera already in the corner. “No. I have school.” “Okay,” she told me. Then she patted my bandaged self injury cuts a little too hard and left the room. I thought I would be going home. Instead, I was never given my nightly meds and had to fall into a restless sleep. I was woken by a nurse I knew from a previous time and a police officer who refused to look me in the eyes. The nurse was cheerful, “Your transfer came in!” They let me dress and then I was handcuffed and led through the hospital and into the back of a police car. The hospital was two hours away. There, I was put in a waiting room alone for over five hours until I was finally brought up to the unit, hours after dinner. I was allowed to call my mother, who had only been told ten minutes prior where I was. The hospital was dirty, especially compared to the pristine hospital I had spent my first stint in. Fights were numerous, group therapy was minimal, and a majority of the technicians and nurses were rude. The patients themselves were fabulous but the atmosphere was hopeless. I wasn't getting any real help, and what I was getting was from the numerous patients rather than the counselors who handed out worksheets and left after thirty minutes. However, I couldn't voice this well without having time added to my sentence. My doctor thought I was in denial of my issues.
“Why do you want to get out of here so soon?” he asked me when I asked about my release date. “I'm not learning anything the other hospital didn't tell me. I'm just sitting around when I could be on the outside getting my life together.” He told me I wouldn't be getting out within the next two days. I didn't want him to see me cry; I walked out and instead went to the dayroom and cried to the other patients. Walking out got me a thirty day minimum commitment and the addition of a mood stabilizer to my med cup I had not been forewarned about. I was told to take it or risk a level drop, meaning I'd be forced to stay on the unit rather than get to go down to the cafeteria or the gym. I stayed thirty-two days. That was a month of my life wrapped up in a doctor not telling me anything about my diagnoses or adjusting my meds with my consent. It was a month of missing school and getting so far behind I was having panic attacks, anxiety that hadn't been that bad in months. I got out having learned very little besides what I learned from the friends I made. I still get scared about how easily my life was contained for a month in a tiny section of a hospital. I understand that mental illness is hard to treat. I don't always want treatment that may be necessary...but I wasn't listened to once in that entire ordeal. Having had my power in my medical decisions taken like that still rocks me to my very core. After that, I've had two more hospitalizations to bring my grand total up to four. The stays varied from eight to thirty-two days. Two were voluntary, two involuntary. Each hospital's effectiveness was a hit and miss. One involuntary commitment helped me tremendously, but the whole experience shook me
because of the lack of information given to me. I didn't know all my rights, and that was four hospitalizations in. I'm only seventeen. With bipolar 1 and borderline personality disorder, I don't know if I've had my last hospitalization. I don't know if that will be my decision or not...and I still don't know how I feel about that. Credit: B Ray
Moonlight The moon shines down at night even through the hospital window which comes as a surprise. The silken silver ropes of time are luminescent beyond the glass, untouchable; I am isolated from the passage of it. Only the moonbeams reach me, streaked like cream on my roommate’s forehead, but blue on the pale insides of my wrists, and blue on the blank ceiling. I miss seeing the apex of the sky. Companion The heart monitor’s steady beep-beep is lonesome. It calls out into the night but never receives a response. It worries over me like my friends never did, its circular suckers clinging to my sternum, holding my hand at the index finger with the oxygensaturation clip. I drop off to sleep at night, and minutes later, when my respiratory rate drops below the requisite fifteen-breaths-a-minute threshold (what can I say, I do everything slow) the monitor ignites with alarms, suddenly panicked that I may be dead. The nurse resets it repeatedly, growing apologetic over time. I am careful not to dislodge the wires when I cuddle deeper into the blankets. Credit: Zeph Turner
It was such a strange power struggle that I lived in at school. I often feel now that they took my power to self identify. I tried to tell them that I was anxious and triggered often. I told them that I was bisexual but it seemed that with every confession I gave them I was immediately met with aggression and abuse. They also often were highly involved in who I was dating or if I was having sex, it was very clear that they viewed me as a slut. It wasn't written anywhere and was only told to me in private therapy sessions but if I admitted to having sex they would kindly remind me that if I became pregnant and didn't abort it that I would kicked out of school. During family therapy my therapist would embarrass me as a 16 year old and ask me about the people I was dating or sleeping with in front of my parents. He would also make comments about my clothing and implied that I was attention seeking because I wore too many bright colors. Then when I was 18 I was coerced into signing away my legal rights to my parents until I finished my senior year. If I didn't sign I would be dismissed from school and forced into a more restrictive therapy school. The school diagnosed me with Histrionic Personality Disorder and failed to tell me before I graduated. But they told my parents and they told them about how it wasn't curable and told them that I was selfish and would never be able to see other people's points of view. The thing about personality disorders is that you can't diagnosis or begin to attempt a diagnosis until a patient is 18 because often characteristics of teens and children are traits that many will grow out of. I didn't find out it till I was 19 and my mom and I were fighting when she blurted it out. Basically all the research about Histrionics is very negative. There is “no hope� or cure for those afflicted by this disorder. They had clearly
been grooming me all along to force myself into thinking that my actions were to seek attention. When I finally went to a therapist again as an adult of my own free will I learned that my angry outbursts and self obsession as an adolescence were from the PTSD and General Anxiety I was experiencing. I have also now been given multiple firm opinions that I am not histrionic. After 6 years of therapy and institutionalization they could not recognize my anxiety or pick up on the incest and sexual assault that I was facing at home. They failed me and abused me. And they allowed misogyny to guide their judgment of an at risk teen who was screaming inside for help. They also shamed me for having what they thought made me a monster instead of trying to help me. What I needed was love and compassion instead I was treated like a second class citizen. I think it also important to mention that I attended one of the highest rated therapy schools in the United States and if you asked me then what I thought of my school I would tell you that I loved it and that I was so glad I was able to be there everyday. I was brainwashed into thinking this and it's taken my four years since I graduated high school to process and accept the abuses I went through. Credit: 2011 alum from NewHope Acadamey, Niles IL
don't fall in love in the psych ward. don't watch him spoon three disposable cups of peanut butter into his oatmeal. don't watch his hands shake as he brings a bite to his lips. don't wonder how those lips would feel on your skin. your heart shouldn't race when, at group therapy, he chooses a seat next to you. don't work on a puzzle with him at free time. don't ask him about his life, his anxiety, what medications he's taking. don't relate to his anguish. don't swap attempt stories. don't blush when he says, "you're the only nice thing that's happened in this place." don't keep your door cracked during quiet hour, imagining that he'll peek through the doorway, and enter your room. don't think of how his frail frame would feel beneath our one-fits-all assigned grey sweatshirts. don't think of this in the shower. don't press your body against the cold bleached walls. don't masturbate in the psych ward. "it's been 2 months and they won't let me cut my fingernails," he says. "i look like a madman." don't reply "you are beautiful as you are." don't wish you would never had to leave the psych ward. Credit: Eze Klarnet
Credit: Everett
A Simple Glitch There are moments in our lives where the world around us can feel truly surreal. Some people affectionately call those moments "glitches in the matrix" - like the movie, which you know about entirely even if you haven't seen any of them, or even knew that there were sequels. You saw three people on the bus today all with the same haircut, same shirt, same hat? Guess the matrix had a glitch in its bus.exe routine! Thought you were about to eat a red grape, and you look down to find that you're suddenly holding a green grape? That's the matrix for you. Thought you were about to walk in to a short doctor's appointment and a family counseling session, only to be told that you're going to be held against your will for a month in a medical institution? Gosh darn, that matrix. Thankfully, I've never eaten a green grape when I thought I was about to eat a red one (that would be pretty weird), nor have I seen three identical Bobs all hop on the bus and get off at the same stop (I mean, what do you say? Do you let them know? Do you think they're friends? Are they going to a themed party?), but unfortunately, the last incident did occur to me some years ago. After having passed out briefly one night following a year of my mental illness hitting me harder than it had before, my mother took the initiative to drive me to the hospital and discuss my situation with a professional. If this sounds too direct or confrontational for other people, let me make it clear: I was actually happy to see my mother showing concern for me. We weren't on good terms always for many reasons (mental illness among them), and I had known for some time that I had a mental illness (one that she had made me feel bad for and had never taken
seriously - even threatening to call the cops on me one night if I didn't stop crying, because I have clinical depression). I understand how hard it can be for a parent to admit their child has a mental or even physical problem, and how hard it can be to seek help for it. I don't doubt for a second that mental illness probably even runs in the family, and my mother was likely struggling with a lot of the same feelings that I struggled with. I was happy about this new development, this show of concern. "This" being what I thought was a few sessions of family counseling a month, followed up by solo talks with doctors and other professionals who would listen to my concerns and wanted to help me get better on my own terms. "This" being what I thought was medical professionals respecting that, while I was still young, I was an autonomous individual with rights and feelings (and responsibilities - like high school). But "this" was not any of those things I expected. This was finding out that, without discussing the matter with me, I was going to leave my home for a month or more to live in a hospital, where they pulled me out of school, cut off connection from my friends, monitored all of my habits, told me what to eat, what to say, and how to think while socializing me and treating me with people who had distinctly different disorders than I did (but pretended we all had the same problem for convenience). I remember being shaken to hear the words come out of her mouth. That they were going to hold me at the hospital immediately - that I didn't even have time to tell anyone about this, or to alert my teachers at school about my absence, or to even figure out how to discuss the matter with these doctors or my mother. I was shocked into silence. I was shocked further into silence by the fact
that my mother immediately agreed to these terms. It felt from my perspective at the time like she was saying "I can't and don't want to deal with my daughter's problems, so she's your problem now". I know she was only doing what she thought was best. But why did nobody pause to ask me what I thought? Well, because I was "crazy". I learned then what "normal" people thought of "crazy people". We don't know what's best for us. We don't have our own ideas about how to get better. All of our ideas about how to get better are just us saying "We don't actually want to get better, so we're trying to prevent you from helping us!" I learned a lot more about what people - professionals thought of us "crazy" people. We're apparently selfish, difficult, deceptive. I got the feeling that it really doesn't matter if you're fifteen (like I was) or fifty-five when you're institutionalized, because your previous age doesn't matter. You are now, for all intents and purposes, a two year old child angrily flinging their mashed foodstuffs against the walls, refusing to put on their winter coat before they race out into the snow. And I know, you know, all of us "crazy" people know that under our problems, we're still have our age, our feelings, and our autonomy intact. If the debilitating insecurity of mental illness was not pushing down on us with all its weight, we would certainly have the courage to scream it from the rooftops: "I am not selfish for wanting to be treated like a human being!" or "Your inability to treat me does not make me difficult, it makes your treatment methods insufficient!" or even "It's not deceitful when I tell you that I don't want to be treated like a child - those are my sincere feelings, not lies to get out of treatment".
I spent a month hospitalized for a problem I was confident that I could have dealt with from the comfort of my home. Instead, there were nights I was kept awake, being driven genuinely mad by the newborn child crying beside me in the next bed over (I stayed in a room that had two patient beds - I saw lots of patients younger than me and sicker than me, an experience that I wouldn't have wished on any other fifteen year old girl just trying to also not die). I wanted to cuss at the nurse who always jabbed the needle in my arm in the wrong place with her cold, careless, wrinkly hands. I wanted to tell someone reasonable on the night staff (if reason even exists for those people at night) that it's not my job to look after the newborn baby sleeping next to me because you're so fucking incompetent at your job. No, I don't want a baby to asphyxiate and die in its sleep beside me at night, but if I'm too crazy to deal with my problems in the comfort of my home like a "normal" person, perhaps - just perhaps - I am too crazy to look after this dying infant? I think this is why I studied logic in university: because I saw a severe lack of it in the real world. Who was I - the "crazy", half-starved, depressed fifteen year old girl - to take on these responsibilities? The only responsibilities I wanted at the time were to pass the grade 10 literacy test and to return a copy of Plato's dialogues to the school library on time, not form unnecessary negative biases against healthcare professionals (and crying babies) while limited to a hospital bed and being ever-so-politely told why I wasn't allowed to use the internet or get fresh air (unless I was strapped into a wheelchair), or have a meal that didn't come in an airtight plastic container with minimal
nutritional value and the taste of old dog food mixed with garden weeds. As much as I want to write my experiences off as a simple glitch in the matrix, I have to face the reality that these events are not unnatural. These events are not a glitch or some random, uncommon error. They are systematic to our treatment of mental illnesses. "Normal" people treat people like me in this fashion all the time. And I'm the "crazy" one? I want to say that even though the experience was harrowing, it was for the best. That because I've recovered from many of my problems caused by mental illness since then, it was all worth it. But I need to believe, for my sanity, that out of all the possible worlds, there is a possible world where we are able to rehabilitate those with mental illnesses without giving them new mental illnesses, post traumatic stress, and psychological trauma to deal with. A world where people's experiences with these institutions do not resemble glitches in the matrix. Credit: Ariel Garlow
My experience with institutionalization was a 72 hour hold after I voluntarily signed myself into the psychiatric unit of the hospital. I had visited the ER the two days before signing myself in because I was suicidal and had been sent home both times. I was in crisis and I knew that I was getting close to acting on my thoughts but I didn't want to, and I'd always been told you could go to the hospital in that scenario. But in the ER they acted like since I hadn't attempted anything I wasn't really a threat to myself. The doctors there asked me what I wanted from them before explaining any options. They explained the nature of "the fifth floor" and let me decide if I wanted to stay there. It didn't seem totally like what I needed (and it turns out it wasn't) so I went back home. A day or two after that I was panicking again and called and arranged to sign myself into the unit, avoiding triage in the ER. I was placed in the "Crisis Care" wing, the more intensely surveilled and restricted unit. There were cameras in all 8 bedrooms, and nothing in the room but a bed bolted to the floor. The common room was small with hard chairs, a single table with celebrity gossip magazines, and a TV locked in a hard plastic case. I immediately regretted my decision to stay in the unit and I was scared that I had lost all my rights, but once I calmed down and talked to a few staff I was assured that I would be moved to a less restrictive unit, which ended up happening before bed that evening, about 8 hours after I arrived. In the "Stress Care" unit, the bedrooms had bookcases and desks, everyone had a roommate, and there were something like 25 people on the floor. The common room had books, board games, movies, and a piano. I felt more at ease, like I'd get help in this unit, and I played some cards with a group of women before journaling and going to bed. But the next couple days weren't what I expected; group therapy happened twice a day but it was always
brief and never got very personal. Most people found the doctors to be rude. One walked away from me while I was still talking and always seemed to be blaming my depression on myself, the sort of "if you're unhappy with how your life is, change it" kinda thing which only helps nobody. I knew that my depression was caused by the same thing most people's mental illnesses stem fromcapitalism. I was a senior in college, about to graduate with a social work degree that wasn't teaching what I really wanted to learn- how to organize to enact real change, big change, and not the kind that you get through proper channels like pleading to your politicians. I was reading and watching anything I could find about what was wrong with our world, from racism in the US justice system to the worldwide exploitation of workers, from feminist blog posts on catcalling to Noam Chomsky's "How the World Works." This was all depressing stuff, sure, but it wasn't making me depressed like my mother or my girlfriend thought it was. The thing that was really getting me depressed was that I was simultaneously searching for a cause to devote myself to and finding nothing. I was about to graduate and my peers were finding their passions, child welfare and combating homelessness and treating AIDS and these were all noble causes to me but they're all merely symptoms of a broken system. Capitalism is the system which tells us a person only deserves what they can afford to buy, it's the reason we have homelessness, hunger, and theft. It's the reason we have whole fields of industry devoted to professional sports, cosmetics, and weapons and very little work being done to end racism, human trafficking, or domestic violence. I know that the world's problems are solvable and one day people will live without many of the horrible things that plague today's society. I've learned since my hospitalization that there are so many more of us than I
ever thought there were, and our ranks are growing everyday. I'm hopeful that after capitalism, when people are honest about their dependence on each other and embrace the oneness of life on earth, we'll stop being cruel to each other and we'll all prioritize caring for each other wholly and genuinely. I think mental illness is often a way of our brains alerting us to bigger issues and I'm hopeful that one day mental illness will affect us much less often and with much less suffering. Credit: Lauren McGill