Confessions & Recollections I

The first time I ever got a good look at the place, and I mean a real good look - I immediately felt my stomach double in weight. Everything was in tints of white. The walls, the floors, the orderly uniforms, the smiles as fake as the plastic plants that sat in front of caged windows that never let any sunlight in anyway. In a world that had been very deliberately drained of all color, those of us who were a little heavy on mental color had been locked away. They would sap the color out of us, too. As long as they were given enough time. And they had all the time in the world. It was rare to hear anything, except for the unsettling scraping of an orderly’s tennis shoe against asbestos tile, or the echoey clip-clop of dress shows growing or shrinking, depending on which way they were headed. Every now and then my ear would catch another resident screaming or struggling with something the rest of us couldn’t divine. I commiserate with their personal hell. Every one of us were fighting different demons, but none of us allowed to acknowledge the existence of them, or each other. Most of us weren’t truly alone. I know I wasn’t.

When they remove you from your cell for the first time, it’s safe to say none of the patients expect it. Being kept in solitary, a numbness develops to time and space. Seconds drag and stretch themselves into hours that contort themselves into weeks, there’s no sense in trying to measure its passage, you just had to let it happen. The key to everything here was to abstain from fighting, from battling. Capitulation was the only path toward salvation.

They wanted us to know that we could never win without accepting Him into our hearts. It’s funny how they never mentioned our minds or souls. They didn’t want anything in our minds. They must not have believed we possessed souls, just that we may have been possessed. I tried not to think about it too much, but when you spend all your time alone, it’s difficult not to let the mind wander. The things they were supposed to be fixing in my brain, at least the things I heard in hushed conversations while I was within earshot, told me I should never be alone. It was too dangerous, the consequences could be too great. And yet here I was in solitude. No windows, just a flap across the padded steel door that meals were dropped into, or pairs of preening eyes would gawk into. I had a dim light that swung on a chain from the ceiling, but too high to reach. The filament was dim and flickered incessantly, but there was no use in asking for a replacement. “We’re looking into it.” an orderly would assure me and two months later they would say the same thing while hurrying me back inside, slamming the door behind them. The specific sound of the tumbler locking stirred something deep inside me. I don’t know the right word for it, or exactly how to explain it. A mixture of anxiety, rage, and hopelessness all boiled down into a single unnameable essence. Sometimes you need some somebody, anybody to listen. And sometimes because you’re in a specific place at an exact time with no way of controlling what happens, things that have been buried deep beneath layers of consciousness find themselves sprouting into a new spring. They burst through the top layer and begin stretching for that invisible sun and after that, it’s not so quiet anymore. There’s the constant humming of machinery that replaces the abyssal silence. Have I inched my way into another circle? Or have the conditions merely changed? You can’t always pinpoint the rubicon of sanity, but when I reached that point, they told me I had gotten there. The chatter that began like spring was now in the heat of summer and I was never alone. I didn’t need any company, not even in my cell. They were always there. They always listened. They provided advice and counsel, but they made me promise one thing: You can’t tell them about us. I promised. I was ravenous for friendship, connection, anything slightly resembling human interaction. I was so grateful for what they provided, but we had to be careful. I had to be careful. It was until the day I heard the scuttling and scraping of tennis shoes across the tile floor, squeaking as it pivoted and stopped at my door, that maybe I had not been careful enough. Two large men, muscles bulging out of their scrubs flung open my door and stood in the light. I remember covering my eyes to shield them, but they were on top of me before I could think. They struggled me into a straight jacket the way a parent might struggle to get their toddler into pajamas before bedtime. The only reaction I had in my system was to fight it. Every battle here was a losing battle. They plopped me into an old wheelchair and pushed me down a poorly lit hallway. More flickering fluorescents - each one striking like a brain zap to someone like me coming off their meds. The right wheel creaked, and I told one of the orderlies a little WD-40 would stop that as soon as possible, followed into a bit of a rant on how WD-40 isn’t actual a lubricant though, it’s more of a penetrating oil and one of them smacked me lightly on the head. I stopped talking. Not because of the smack, but because my friends asked if I could. At one point, we cruised through a common area. Other patients, those deemed safe enough, were milling around. A 27” Magnavox tube tv was suspended in one corner of the room running replays of The Lawrence Welk Show. They must feel so lucky to be this free, I thought to myself. We wound through numerous corridors, or maybe we were just walking in circles, but I had lost point of where we were and I had no idea where we were going, so what difference did it make? It made none. Eventually, they stopped in front of a door, one of the large men opened it, the second pushed me in. I rolled softly toward the wall and stopped, but the door had shut behind them. There was the sound of the tumbler working, the door locked. I felt my blood pressure spiking, sweat starting to bead along the area my hairline would be, if they hadn’t shaved my head during intake. It was as if I could feel my eyes dilating and every individual pore rising up as a goosepimple. Completely on edge, yet entirely restrained. Help me! I shouted inside of my head, but their chorus had gone silent. Were they as afraid as I was? Outside the door I could hear a different sound. Not scraping tennis shoes or the clip clop of dress shoes, but the click clack of heels. I could turn to face the door, so I waited. The tumbler went in reverse and the door swung open. The light scent of what I came to learn was Vanille Fleuri de Tahiti pleasantly filled the room.

I was wheeled around to face the smell and made and shied away eye contact with a severe looking woman in her mid to late forties. Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun, she wore black rimmed Versace glasses that really didn’t fit the narrowness of her gaunt features. I quickly reminded myself not to say this out loud. Her shrewd hazel eyes studied me intensely for what felt like a dog’s age. I tried my best not to blink, I’m not sure why, but it felt important in the moment. She sighed, bit her lip and mumbled something I couldn’t hear. A second later, the straps at my back were being loosened. The pins and needles returned into my arms and no sooner were they freed that I was vigorously shaking them, trying to find a semblance of feeling again. She laughed slightly. At least she understood. We talked for a couple hours. Basic psychiatrist to patient stuff, trying to get to know me, feel me out. Questions about my childhood (bad), my teenage years (bad), my early adulthood (mostly bad) and everything else (really quite terrible, thank you). Everything was going as swimmingly as these things go, I wasn’t fighting the current, I was letting it carry me along, trying to keep the good doctor happy. And then a question I didn’t expect altered our course. Yes, I was deluded into thinking I was alone in my room, my cell, whatever you want to call it. I had to think that way, right? I had to let them think I thought that way. She looked at me quite plainly and said very evenly, “Tell me about Mary.” I blinked, my mouth may have dropped open slightly, giving it away. “Mom?” Was the stammered reply I could muster. I had talked about her earlier, of course, the incident between her and my father always came up. It was the most foundational moment I’ve lived through. She shook her head no, and I could feel the fear growing inside me. I told her I didn’t know any other Marys. She tapped her pen against her temple twice. I remained whole, but felt myself melting into a puddle in the wheelchair. She reduced me to an infant with one swift motion. Tears filled the corners of my eyes and streamed down my cheeks. I told her everything. About all of them. Every last word I could remember. “It’s okay.” She said in her most comforting tone. I refused to believe her. They told me not to believe her. It was a trick, a tactic to get her onto my side and oust all of them. They said if she had her way, I would never hear from them again, she would make them go away. I couldn’t have that. These were my friends. I apologized to them profusely for not being able to keep my secret. Once I stopped blubbering, she rested a hand on my knee. I couldn’t remember the last time anybody had touched me in such a kind, considerate way. She lifted my chin up to meet those hazel eyes and smiled. “His Word and Light welcomes you, child”