Throughout the clinic the real cold war wages, slithering through the navy blue furniture, snaking up the nurses’ station, slamming windows shut in outrage, half-empty soda cans piling up on one side of the dining table, the stains reach out and are mopped away, and away again. The days go by slowly, sluggishly, unwillingly. We’re the Brat Pack because we have the audacity to ask for things. Blankets, cups of coffee, packets of sugar, anti-anxiety meds, laundry detergent, shampoo, bags of tea, markers, nail clippers, ice cubes, notepaper; a litany of everyday items I had taken for granted. The rules, the rules, the RULES, they wind through every aspect of life at the clinic. What you end up getting is an opposite of Lord of the Flies situation. The worse the restraints get, the more we act up, in defiance, in stubbornness.
I get in trouble repeatedly for having coffee in my room. Meanwhile, half the house does meth (yes, literal meth) in the backyard and they get the standard fourteen day restriction. Restriction comes in many forms, depending on your crime, ranging from not being able to leave the premises to having snack privileges revoked. Ghostly residues of vape smoke hang around mysteriously around the house, stifling us with its sweet smell, till the people smoking are ratted out. I hide behind my computer screen as snowflakes pile up at the bases of all the windows. The weather gets colder every day, but we don’t feel it. Inside the house it’s hot, and the eyes are hungry, we’re wrapped up in blankets and pjs. There’s an indignity to trailing around the house with a blanket draped around you and I won’t stoop to that level, it can never be that bad.
With no alcohol to numb my brain when it gets upset, I lash out in other ways that surprise even me. I steal people’s lighters all the time and burn my arms and thighs repeatedly. I curl into a ball on the office floor, screaming and sobbing from the raging in my head. They don’t send me off to the hospital. I sit up, rub my eyes and go back to listening to music. It rains all the time, and I love the beat of silver droplets hammering at the windows. They find me curled up in the mud in the backyard, shaking, and catching lightning from other realities, realities that no one else has access to.
My therapist says, “you’re never going to get better if you don’t try. Nobody can make you do anything. We can sit in silence in these sessions, or we can get real. Trust me, I’ve seen a lot. There isn’t a lot you could scare me with. Don’t you want to participate in your own life?”
For the first time in my life, I take my therapist seriously. I tell her things I’ve never told any other mental health professional before. She takes her metaphorical shears and digs into my psyche, pulling up weeds and habits and trauma, all kinds of junk I never knew was in there. Each session leaves me amazed, and exhausted.
We’re only allowed two cups of coffee a day, but we can bring in outside food, which they lock up cruelly into the pantry and fridge. There is a time for everything. Life breaks down into specific slots of the clock that dictate our lives. When meds are given out, mealtimes, when you can get coffee, when you can get snacks, when the TV gets turned off, and the big, dreaded curfew hour – 11pm on weekdays, 1am on weekends. This is the only rule that doesn’t bother us much. We cling to the comfort of routine, and it’s difficult to get people to stir out of their warm beds. Nobody wants to play boardgames, let alone leave the house.
We’re not allowed in each other’s rooms. Most of the Brat Pack lives on the Stress side of the building (closer to the nursing station, where the doors have alarms, and absolutely no sharps allowed). We’re cooler than the General side because we get special privileges, like extra cream in our coffee, laundry whenever we want, a thermostat in the room, pens with the real tips, control over the radio. We smoke Marlboro silvers, wear loungewear instead of pjs, paint our nails, have laptops, regularly win at Trivia nights, and buy soda for the house. One of us is doing an economics master’s at MIT, one of us dropped out of high school, one of us is court-ordered to be here, one of us is fleeing from abusive parents, one of us is a burnout engineer kicked out of Microsoft, one of us has been to jail eight times.
“You know what I miss?” says Holden. “Driving. I drove everywhere.“
“Yawn,” I reply, looking up from my laptop. “I miss doing ketamine.”
A staff member walking by, hisses at me for that comment.
“I miss energy drinks,” says Asher. “I can’t believe they banned those.”
“It’s cuz you guys were chugging them like maniacs after evening group. And like staying up all night,” I told him.
“Do you guys ever just want to run off? I mean, there’s nothing to stop us. It’s not the psych ward,” says Holden.
“Yes,” says Calvin, who is pacing up and down the hall, like an animal with zoochosis. “But I’m here because of a court-order so I can’t. I don’t want to go back to jail.”
“Jail sucks. The food there is SO awful,” comments James.
I thank god again that I’ve never been to jail. I can’t imagine it’s too different from the psych ward (it is). I’m getting such cabin fever it’s making me sick with boredom. But, as I tell myself every single morning, it’s better than the psych ward. Every day is the same, with the same clock telling us what to do, like little automatons with beat up hulls for brains.
What does it mean to be human? Here in the clinic, we’ve been stripped down to our most bare selves, the raw nerves, the neuroses, the horrible habits, all under observation, all the times. You can’t take a shit without it being noted into the ‘charts’. But what’s left? What fundamental truth lies in our core?
Turns out, not a lot.
I don’t know if it’s the mental illnesses, but most of the patients here don’t have any special aspirations or dreams or any personality worth noting down. They’re content to lay around all day, watch TV, and let the government take care of the rest. Every day I’m astonished by the apathy of the general public. I’ve never slowed down in my life, always hammering away about something, living in a future that I’m constantly chasing, never satisfied, but Ashley and Calvin and Irisa and everyone call it a good day if the radio plays a song they like.
I suppose, in my life, they’re NPCs. There’s nothing wrong with that; they’re okay with their packaged, pre-determined little lives, sometimes allowing the squalor to build up. There are many patients here that have to be hounded into taking showers, into reading books, into doing the journal homework they dole out all the time. Once they’ve been stabilized, they’re usually sent off to an Adult Family Home, a kind of state-funded residence, where they’ll take 40 percent of your paycheck in exchange for housing you. It fills my stomach with dread just thinking about it. But the temptation is there. To let go of the reins, to sink into the waves without fighting it. Working an easy job, content with the ordinary lull of the first world life, living on disability benefits. looking forward to watch TV after work. Just another consumer.
I don’t know what I’m running for, job, school, apartment, a horizon that never gets closer, but I think all writers have a tendency to live in the future. Everything we experience will be a story one day. It’s good damage. It’s the only way. That’s how we bear existence. All of it.
Schizoposting 
