My last post was a little bleak. I blame the hot weather in my city, and my ever changing internal moods for that.
I discussed the abuse at the hospitals with my therapist. Well, I didn't so much discuss things as I ranted and raved for a good hour about the injustices in the American mental health care system. Finally, he stitched me back together in about five minutes of behavioral modification (or cognitive behavioral therapy, whichever term you prefer), altered my perspective, and sent me home feeling like a little embarrassed for losing my patience.
I have this love hate relationship with the county mental health system. They were both the people who hurt me and the people who saved me and helped me to recover. Sometimes, the same person is in both categories.
I have been a ward of the county's mental health program since the age of 22-23 (previous to that I was enrolled in private insurance under my mother which warehoused me in the hospital that was actually pretty fancy back in the day, with lavish cakes for dessert and non-stop art therapy). For the bulk of the time I was with the county I felt ignored, belittled, maligned, and neglected. At one county center my doctor was a new person every three months, the previous doctor having quit or gotten fired, and it was a stressful relaying all the painful bits of my life to a new doctor every three months.
Then again, the county provided free medicine so long as I entered a rehabilitation program, but that was years later, in approximately 2008-2009. The county both provided for me and left me to my madness with no concern for my well being. It was a confusing time, my enemies were my carers and my carers weren't caring....but they could care at random and unexpected moments. If this sounds confusing, that is exactly what I felt. Confused. Alone. Tormented by internal voices and treated as a leper by the external world. But there were moments of refuge. I found refuge with other schizophrenics and bipolar people. I made unlikely friends: from different social classes, of different races, and different religions. The only thing that bonded us was our shared experience of forced hospitalization. Despite what we were (or had been) on the outside, once inside we became blank, generic mental patients; interchangeable cogs in a machine we had no control over.
I cannot relay just how startling it can be to have staff not speak to you when they approach you to take your blood pressure. It is a silent act between a nurse and whatever that person saw me as: a sick person, maybe, or maybe they saw me as a sick thing, a thing that was more like an animal than like them. It is when you have been dehumanized to this point that something kicks in: a final coping mechanism. A last ditch effort to find human decency where there is none. Every smile becomes a source of fuel, more powerful than the watered down decaf coffee they serve on the wards. A smile could make the boredom tolerable, could make the interactions with the volatile patients tolerable, make being in captivity while the world moves around without you---tolerable. The bonds I made with the other schizophrenics are deep. I still run into someone from the hospital from time to time (in the county behavioral center, on the bus, etc...) they have always cracked a wide grin, approached me, sometimes hugged me, always asked how I was and if I remembered this group or that hospital from the past. I will not lie, I both cringe and breathe a sigh of relief whenever I run into another former patient. I cringe because I am almost done with my Master's degree now (I am going to be in my final semester this fall), I have been passably healthy and out of the hospital for 5-6 years now, I have new hobbies, new friends, a new life---I pretend like I was not that sick person banging on the bullet-proof window rambling about suicide and CIA agents; I cringe because it hurts to remember the damage. Yet, I breathe a sigh of relief because I can finally smile my real smile at somebody who knew the "real me." There is a kinship between us former mental patients based on the mutual experience of being dehumanized, marginalized, imprisoned, all for our own good.We are what society mocks, at least when they are not busy building up hysteria around us because of some sociopath who may or may not have also had the label of schizophrenic, bipolar, or autistic at some point in their pasts. I strongly disagree with the idea that schizophrenia, bipolar, or autism disorder is the root (or even tangential) cause of mass murders. I have known many great men and women who were totally insane. One of the kindest woman on the wards was a middle-aged African-American lady who said she heard non-stop golden oldies playing like a radio in her head to the point where she could hear and do nothing else (except sing along, which, to my great amusement, she did frequently). I must remember this woman and the others whenever I get angry about the hospitals. There was cruelty, yes, but there was also random acts of love and compassion that I have never found on the Outside.
I will always love those that I met on the inside: who found a way to keep their souls through everything. They are like me. I am like them. This reminds me of a book by Philip K. Dick called "Clans of the Alphane Moon," a science fiction tale about a future where the mentally ill were rocketed en mass into outer-space, to colonize their own planet without infringing on the realities of the Normals. It is a great book! I highly recommend it due to its unique insight into the quirks of those with mental illnesses and its laugh out loud style humor. On this random note, I bid you adieu.
I discussed the abuse at the hospitals with my therapist. Well, I didn't so much discuss things as I ranted and raved for a good hour about the injustices in the American mental health care system. Finally, he stitched me back together in about five minutes of behavioral modification (or cognitive behavioral therapy, whichever term you prefer), altered my perspective, and sent me home feeling like a little embarrassed for losing my patience.
I have this love hate relationship with the county mental health system. They were both the people who hurt me and the people who saved me and helped me to recover. Sometimes, the same person is in both categories.
I have been a ward of the county's mental health program since the age of 22-23 (previous to that I was enrolled in private insurance under my mother which warehoused me in the hospital that was actually pretty fancy back in the day, with lavish cakes for dessert and non-stop art therapy). For the bulk of the time I was with the county I felt ignored, belittled, maligned, and neglected. At one county center my doctor was a new person every three months, the previous doctor having quit or gotten fired, and it was a stressful relaying all the painful bits of my life to a new doctor every three months.
Then again, the county provided free medicine so long as I entered a rehabilitation program, but that was years later, in approximately 2008-2009. The county both provided for me and left me to my madness with no concern for my well being. It was a confusing time, my enemies were my carers and my carers weren't caring....but they could care at random and unexpected moments. If this sounds confusing, that is exactly what I felt. Confused. Alone. Tormented by internal voices and treated as a leper by the external world. But there were moments of refuge. I found refuge with other schizophrenics and bipolar people. I made unlikely friends: from different social classes, of different races, and different religions. The only thing that bonded us was our shared experience of forced hospitalization. Despite what we were (or had been) on the outside, once inside we became blank, generic mental patients; interchangeable cogs in a machine we had no control over.
I cannot relay just how startling it can be to have staff not speak to you when they approach you to take your blood pressure. It is a silent act between a nurse and whatever that person saw me as: a sick person, maybe, or maybe they saw me as a sick thing, a thing that was more like an animal than like them. It is when you have been dehumanized to this point that something kicks in: a final coping mechanism. A last ditch effort to find human decency where there is none. Every smile becomes a source of fuel, more powerful than the watered down decaf coffee they serve on the wards. A smile could make the boredom tolerable, could make the interactions with the volatile patients tolerable, make being in captivity while the world moves around without you---tolerable. The bonds I made with the other schizophrenics are deep. I still run into someone from the hospital from time to time (in the county behavioral center, on the bus, etc...) they have always cracked a wide grin, approached me, sometimes hugged me, always asked how I was and if I remembered this group or that hospital from the past. I will not lie, I both cringe and breathe a sigh of relief whenever I run into another former patient. I cringe because I am almost done with my Master's degree now (I am going to be in my final semester this fall), I have been passably healthy and out of the hospital for 5-6 years now, I have new hobbies, new friends, a new life---I pretend like I was not that sick person banging on the bullet-proof window rambling about suicide and CIA agents; I cringe because it hurts to remember the damage. Yet, I breathe a sigh of relief because I can finally smile my real smile at somebody who knew the "real me." There is a kinship between us former mental patients based on the mutual experience of being dehumanized, marginalized, imprisoned, all for our own good.We are what society mocks, at least when they are not busy building up hysteria around us because of some sociopath who may or may not have also had the label of schizophrenic, bipolar, or autistic at some point in their pasts. I strongly disagree with the idea that schizophrenia, bipolar, or autism disorder is the root (or even tangential) cause of mass murders. I have known many great men and women who were totally insane. One of the kindest woman on the wards was a middle-aged African-American lady who said she heard non-stop golden oldies playing like a radio in her head to the point where she could hear and do nothing else (except sing along, which, to my great amusement, she did frequently). I must remember this woman and the others whenever I get angry about the hospitals. There was cruelty, yes, but there was also random acts of love and compassion that I have never found on the Outside.
I will always love those that I met on the inside: who found a way to keep their souls through everything. They are like me. I am like them. This reminds me of a book by Philip K. Dick called "Clans of the Alphane Moon," a science fiction tale about a future where the mentally ill were rocketed en mass into outer-space, to colonize their own planet without infringing on the realities of the Normals. It is a great book! I highly recommend it due to its unique insight into the quirks of those with mental illnesses and its laugh out loud style humor. On this random note, I bid you adieu.
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