The Clinic, Part 01: The winter of compliance

“Hello good people of Seattle, you are in danger. I repeat, you – let go of me – let – you’re in DANGER – stop it! They might – ah – might try to stop – but ow! ow! There are monsters, trust me! They’re everywhere – help! Don’t let them take me!”

One of the security guards grabs my leg and my knee smacks against the counter and I let out a yowl of pain. “Seattle – listen -“

The microphone is ripped out of my hand and suddenly my face is on the floor, cheek pressed against the dirty carpet. Two officers have my hands and two more are sitting on my legs. I can hear the squeak of feedback from the microphone as it’s slammed back into its cradle. The anxious cries of passengers swell all around us like a Bach symphony out of tune. We’re in one of the more empty gates at the Seattle airport so I’m worried not enough people heard my message. The demons and spirits are coming and the only decent thing to is warn as many people as I can.

The fight attendant who I grabbed the microphone from is crying loudly. I’m the one in a four person headlock and she’s the one crying. They’re asking me all kinds of questions but my mouth isn’t working. Might have had something to do with the handful of pills I had gobbled in the airplane bathroom.

“Let go of me, you cretins!” I shriek but it comes out in a mush. They open up my bag and find several empty pill bottles and the psych people are on the scene like a cheap suit. I fade in and out of consciousness.

“Is she aggressive?”

“She’s too out of it to fight.”

“Restrain her anyway.”

I’m strapped up and carried aloft through the airport on a stretcher like a doomed queen being sent to execution, except she’s done this like nine times already before. I’m sure people are staring but I can’t see them. I wish I could remember what backwardsass journey through an airport looks like. I’m sure there was a comically large elevator, all flanked by security guards and paramedics. Airports are very profitable.

It’s the same old, same old.

I’m in Seattle a month before I get to go outside. Like everything else in my life, the move out west was rocky and impulsive. The doctors had had it with me and cycling in and out of the hospital doors. We’re going to have to institutionalize you soon if you don’t improve. Institutionalize. A horrible word, and I knew what it meant. The state hospital. I’d never been in one but there’s no shortage of information and media on how awful they are – cold, jail-like, senseless, hopeless, last resort.

So I took the last bus out of that graveyard and agreed to go into residential psychiatric treatment. My doctors and friends were thrilled. I was finally going to get the round the clock care I needed, but outside the hospital.

I’ve been itching for Seattle for a while now, so I let my doctor pick a program there. I call it The Clinic. It’s for people not sick enough for the hospital, but too sick to live on their own. I knew my support system was tired of having to bear the burden of keeping me in check, so I signed myself over mostly for them. I don’t like The Clinic, but it’s a helluva lot better than the hospital. They let you have your phone and computer, and let you leave the premises as long as you have off-ward privilege, even get overnight passes (if you’ve been good). Seas used to rise when I gave the word.

I had packed my life into a travel backpack and checked-in suitcase. My room looks as bare and gloomy as the one in New York, but way uglier. I don’t have much stuff. The books and clothes and a few other odds and ends are packed up in a five foot by five foot storage unit deep in Brooklyn. I wonder when I’ll see any of it again. After months of traveling with just a backpack, it’s nice to have a whole suitcase worth of clothes to wear, books to read, and art to make.

Maybe the Beatniks deserved what they got.

Normal isn’t an option anymore. I sign over my last bit of pride when I scribble my name onto the admission forms. The rules here are long and many. No substance abuse of any kind, including weed and alcohol. Mealtimes and med times are strictly enforced, as are bedtimes, group therapy, and meetings with clinicians, doctors, therapists, and nutritionists. We’re only allowed to have a part-time job, and that only if we’ve been cleared by the psychiatrist.

It’s not the residential facility that I’m at odds with, I’m at odds with life itself. It hangs a little lonely on me, too loose like a kid playing pretend with her father’s suit, but I can’t breathe properly. We gather together, a motley crew of unfortunates. And the cliques form, pass Go, and collect $200.

It’s a place for people who simply have nowhere else to go.