I spent three days in a psychiatric hospital, once. I went to the ER and said something about having maybe been suicidal six months before that. I had been homeless six months before that. So the old white guy who interviewed me sent me to the psychiatric ward, instead of paying attention to my daily vomiting. I did not get treatment for that disease for six years. I was afraid to go back and demand treatment.
While I was on the ward, a very tall forty-year-old man started stalking me. He followed me around the ward. He asked me why I did not want to fuck him. Whatever I told him did not register as a good enough reason. The nurses were supposed to check our beds every two hours, but they did not. He assaulted me, but I fought back. I’m not sure why, exactly. When you’re a woman and you have no money and you’ve been homeless and you’ve been places like that, you have no credibility. People think you’re crazy without knowing anything else about you. People you love tell you to “get help” when you talk about how sexual violence has impacted you. It’s as though women and girls are allowed only so many sexual assaults before we hit the maximum and everyone else no longer wants to deal with us. It’s as though we’re allowed to be only so broken before other people, people who are only the requisite amount of broken, have had enough.
I stayed awake after 2 am that morning in the nurse’s station. I was there when they checked in a new girl. She was maybe 17. She probably should have been somewhere else, like wherever children go when their parents give up on them. She was sweet, a child, really. We talked.
It turns out she knew him. Later that morning when he saw her again, he hugged her. They spent the rest of the morning cuddling each other. She was underage and the staff were uneasy but he was bigger than they were. They were afraid of him. Instead of saving her, they tried to get him transferred to another ward to keep her safe.
Turns out he was in the hospital by choice. They let him go later that day.
They let me go later that day, too. After an appeals hearing. After I presented my case about why I should have the right to leave the care of a 26-year-old psychiatric student who said I was lying about having been abused as a child. Her proof, which she was legally obligated to present, was that my parents said I had lied. Her proof was that I, at 20 years old, had no proof it happened. Aside from my own symptoms and the fact I was homeless at 20, all of which counted against my credibility. Of course.
They let me go, in the end. They let me go because I had just inherited $10,000 from a bond one of my grandparents registered in my name. I think. This time of my life remains blurry. What I know is, Charles Schwab saved the day. And saved my life, because without that money, I would still be in that hospital. Forced to take thorazine and diagnosed as permanently mentally damaged because a student 5 years older than I was didn’t understand how childhood trauma impacts the brain. I would like to believe psychiatric training has improved. This information is widely available, now. Dozens of books produced by leading experts in the field corroborate my story of what happened to me. But I was not an expert, and my testimony would not have been considered expertise. If not for the privilege of brief financial not-quite-windfall, I would still be there, in that place that is worth than death, today.
I read somewhere that hospital is closing. This is supposed to be a bad thing, because it will let all the crazies back out onto the street. People who think such things are idiots. Places like that were never intended to lock up the actual crazies.
Case in point. I got into my mother’s car outside the hospital, and we both pretended she hadn’t just done her best to get me locked up. Maybe she was genuinely worried about me. Maybe she wanted me to shut up about the family. Maybe she was trying to be a good mother. I suppose the answer depends on your perspective.
As my mother and I sat there, not looking at each other, that man strolled by. He had simply walked out of the hospital. I’m sure everyone who worked there knew he was a threat. They just didn’t care. They didn’t want him there, threatening them every time they tried to separate him from a vulnerable underage female patient. They wanted him to be someone else’ problem.
These things all sound impossible, I get that. Like fairy stories. The monsters under the bed are supposed to be just bad dreams. The horrible stories people tell about prison rapes and psychiatric hospitals that lock up the basically sane are supposed to be the stuff of b-movies. Except.
I mean, I don’t know you. Maybe you would think that I am crazy. Because I suck at putting on nail polish, or because my food looks ugly on a plate. Maybe you think if I don’t shave my legs or decorate my walls, I cannot possibly be credible. Maybe you just think of violence as something that happens to other people, and every victim must have done something to deserve it, really. Maybe you think we live in a meritocracy.
I overheard that girl arguing with her mother about staying in the hospital. Turns out she’d tried to kill herself the night before. I’m not sure what happened to her in the end, but I can guess.
I can’t make you care about these people. I can’t make you care about me. Some days I have a hard time caring about me. When you’re told over and over that you’re nothing, you start to believe.
What I do know is, the violence in this world is a contagious disease. It lives in the most powerful but they pay no attention. They spread it down the class pyramid and down and down, until eventually it accumulates in people like me. We become the garbage dumps for all of the sickness and toxicity that people with real power in this world feel, but don’t want to have to face.
What I do know is, there is an awful lot of sickness in this world. But it did not start with me. And while nothing I ever say or do is going to make you believe me, I don’t care so much about that. What I care about is whether you recognize that things like this do happen, every day. To people who have done nothing to deserve them. To people who make one mistake or two. To people who are born into bodies that you look at and subconsciously think, no one is going to care what I do to that body. To people who are born into families who mistreat them and so you look at them and subconsciously think, no one is going to care what I do to that person. And probably you are right.
What I care about is whether you start to notice what you yourself think when you look at people like me. And why.
