Anonymous
UNWELL
The title is inspired by the Matchbox 20 song “Unwell.” This is a first-hand account of my stay in a mental health facility while trying to combat major depression.
I arrived at the hospital at 9:00 on a Thursday night. I was taken from the lobby down a long, boxed-in corridor that led to the adult facility. The doors closed and locked as I entered the main living area. Two people were passed out in chairs and another guy was on a couch with his head back and his mouth wide open. No matter where I looked, all I could see was a black ball of sickness radiating from beneath the closed eyelids of the patients. The entire facility reeked with the black stench and there was no way to stop myself from becoming intoxicated with it. Burying myself in my loose shadowy clothing, I sat down in a chair facing the dark glass separating me from the outside world. The only security I had was my black jacket which I could hide beneath. And to me, hiding was important – especially since there was nothing I could reveal about myself at that moment to make the situation any better. Nothing I could say or do to make them treat me like I wasn’t crazy. It seemed like I had no control over the events that had put me in this situation. My mistakes had taken me from college, kept me from going home, and now had me placed at the mercy of a dark hole where I would be under constant surveillance 24 hours a day. All I was going to be able to do was sleep, eat, and take pills. I was lonely, scared, and on the defensive. My jacket was the only familiar thing I had that made me feel safe.
Nervously playing with its slender strings, I watched my family leave through the thick unyielding glass of the front door. All I could focus on was the darkness and all I could think of was how I hadn’t been able to regain enough sense to tell them I had made a mistake. A mistake that I was about to be punished for. Rooting myself to the chair I braced myself for the staff member that sat down beside me. After recently having been left by myself in an unfamiliar place and having been searched by two peer staff members who were more interested in their conversation than me, I didn’t have the heart to be trusting or friendly. As her tone grew more sympathetic and her questions more interrogative, I found myself clamming up. Her double meaning was suspicious and I just wanted to stay inside my jacket where it was nice and safe and warm. But she had other ideas. Asking me to take off my jacket, she shielded whatever good intentions she had behind a firm disapproving voice. I looked up questioningly and she said she would give it back to me later, after she had taken out the strings so I wouldn’t hurt myself with them. I told her I wasn’t going to give it to her yet, but she persisted – as if it were a matter of life and death. I tried to explain to her that the jacket was all I had left, but I was too put off with her to explain.
Like a child, I stubbornly clutched it. The room was emptied in a matter of seconds as the other patients were taken to the kitchen area. The other staff members began crowding around me. They looked more like linebackers than people who sincerely wanted to help. The woman asked again for the jacket and then said she was going to have to take it without my permission. I cursed at her. It was yet another mistake since it convinced everyone else that I was unstable and unmanageable. They reached for the jacket and I held tighter as they wrestled me for it. They forced me to let go as first the jacket, then the strings, slipped out of my hands. I continued to struggle, trying to get loose from the multitude of hands and bodies that now encased me. But four people were already on top of me forcing me to lie down on my stomach so they could shackle my hands and feet in wide cuffs.
As they escorted me back to the quiet room, I couldn’t help but feel like I really was crazy. Their routine response to the agitated behavior I had displayed scared me. I was only trying to protect myself, but somehow things had yet again gotten beyond my reach. I then realized that I couldn’t protect myself here. That the staff was trying to protect myself for me. So I had to give in. I had to let them take care of me – no matter how they chose to do it. I had to let them think that they knew me better than I knew myself. I felt a prick in the small of my back that signaled my first round of medicine.
I allowed myself to succumb to it. But when I slowly started to black out, it didn’t matter what I tried to tell myself. All I could think was “They took my jacket.”