In a Nutshell

         It was May of 2004 the first time I overdosed. It was an accident, and I truly believed that when I said it. I was deep in the grip of my drug addiction, constantly chasing that high, and I never knew when to stop. I never wanted to stop. I never wanted to come down.

         When I went to the Emergency Room, they made me drink charcoal and gave me a psych evaluation. I didn't expect the woman to come back into the room and inform me that they were sending me to Broughton. The state mental institution?!? Sure, I'm crazy, I've always been crazy, but didn't they understand? I didn't mean to overdose..it was an accident! I was just trying to get myself to that point of oblivion where I wouldn't have to think or feel! I wasn't trying to kill myself! So why did I need to go to Broughton?

         I didn't take the news well at all, which I'm sure didn't help my case in the least. I screamed, cursed, ranted and raved. They stuck a uniformed guard at my door so I couldn't try to leave, and after awhile a police officer came to take me. He put handcuffs on me and I had to ride in the backseat of the cruiser as if I had done something wrong..me, innocent me, who was just trying to get high. I remember how uncomfortable it was in the back of that cop car, as if I had never been in one before. It was almost a two hour drive, and I needed a smoke, bad. I didn't realize that I wouldn't be having another cigarette for quite awhile.

         I don't remember many details of when I first got there. I was confident that I wouldn't be there long, so I didn't call my family to let them know that I had just been committed to the state psychiatric hospital. I was very angry, and treated the staff horribly, because I personally blamed them for my being there. Because I had just arrived, and because I came in labeled as "suicidal", they put me on what is called One to One, which basically means one staffer to one patient. Suicide watch. I didn't understand why the staff person was following me everywhere I went. To my room, to the day room, up and down the hallway, every step I took, she was on my heel! That just made me angrier, and when I tried to go to the bathroom and she followed, I lost it.

         I stepped into the stall and my One to One stayed at the bathroom door, halfway in the hall, not really paying a whole lot of attention to me. The wheels in my mind were spinning. I was in panic mode, and I knew that the only thing that was going to make me feel better was to find something sharp, so that I could take my anger out on myself. My eyes focused on the fluorescent lights on the ceiling. I turned the lock on the flimsy stall door and stepping up, one foot on the toilet and one foot on the handrail, I boosted myself up to the top of the partition. Balancing as best I could, I grabbed at the plastic covering on the light fixture, ripping at it in an attempt to get it off and break the thin glass bulb. I can vividly remember the exact way my One to One sounded when she realized what I was doing and started screaming. The tone of her voice, the shrillness to her cries, her exact words, "Help, help!" over and over again. She pressed the small emergency button that all staff carried, which sent an alarm sounding throughout the huge hospital. "Care Team, Division A. Care Team, Division A." was announced over the intercoms, and I immediately knew that I was screwed. The plastic cover wouldn't come off, and my chance to cause some destruction to myself was over. Before anyone could come to aid my One to One, I stepped down off of the toilet and sat on the seat.

         Of course, I didn't realize how many people would come running at the sound of that alarm. When they busted open my stall door, my body language suggested that I was no harm to anyone, myself or them, but they were dead set on some action. They grabbed me under my arms, and I went limp, allowing them to restrain me. They carried me to a seclusion room and dropped me on the bed, and I started to realize that they didn't think I was done. Grabbing my arms and legs, they spread them as if nailing me to a cross, and slapped leather restraints around my wrists and ankles. They put tiny keys in the restraints, locking me up tight. Then they turned their backs and walked away, leaving me with my One to One sitting in the doorway, watching me.

         I begged her to let me out. The more I begged, the more intent it seemed she was on ignoring me. I didn't understand how a person could sit there with another person, another human being, strapped down to a bed, crying and begging for mercy, and seem to not care. I thought that she was cruel and heartless, but I know now that it was something she had desensitized herself to. It was something she had seen a thousand times over.

         I worked myself into quite a state. I still have nightmares, quite often, of being in four point restraints. Strapped down so tightly that the only thing you can move is your head. When the nightmare comes, it is as if I am there again, on that hard plastic hospital bed, the leather straps biting into my skin. My chest closes up and I cannot breathe, as if it were that day again. I begged the woman, I called her every foul name that has ever been uttered, I pleaded, I cried, and still, she would not let me up. I was hyperventilating, and was at the point where your face and hands begin to tingle, to go numb, and when I told her this, she did not believe me. I was so scared and confused.

         Now, of course, I know well the intricate dances that are done in that world, for it is another world in itself, the insane asylum. Though I had been on psych wards since a very young age, I had forgotten how to play along, and I did not realize that all I had to do to be released from the restraints was calm down. I did, after a few hours, stop my screaming and crying, and they finally took the restraints off of me and let me up, One to One following more closely now. It was weeks before I would be restrained again after that, but the nightmares provided me with constant reminder of the event.

         Time is a funny thing when you are locked up. Time has always been a funny thing for me anyway, but when you are in a mental institution, it grows even more slippery and hard to grasp. Hours turn into days, days into weeks, weeks into months. But then a month will have passed, and it only seem like a week. In my memory, the state institution was like Wonderland. I cannot say that I was Alice though, because I was mad too. I didn't know it when I was young, but I know now why the Hatter was Mad. It was an occupational hazard of his time, mercury used in curing felt, which was used to make hats, caused the hatters to go mad. I was smack dab in the middle of the tea party, pouring all of the tea out into the sugar bowl and drinking it.

         When you are first admitted to North Carolina's State Institution, you are sent to Division A, either to the male or female side. It is the admissions ward, where all new arrivals go. There they are assessed, treated and released, or sent to the next level in wards. I fully expected to be released after only a few days, but that was not the case. When they came and told me to gather my clothes and few personal items together, that they were transferring me to Ward 7, I flipped out on them. I was perfectly comfortable where I was, I had grown used to the staff, and I had befriended the patients. That didn't make a damn bit of difference to them, of course. They uprooted me from my new home and escorted me to Ward 7.

         I will never forget when the door first opened onto 7. It was like every old mental institution you've ever seen in movies. Broughton was a very beautiful, and very haunted place. The very first time you ever see one of the ward hallways, they look so long, like they go on forever. I paced that hallways hundreds of times over the next months, and it wasn't anywhere near as long as it looked. There were two girls sitting in the window seat by the payphone, laughing and giggling to each other. They looked pretty crazy, and it's funny, because I guess I didn't realize at the time that I looked pretty damn crazy myself. I had befriended the nurse that was transferring me, and I remember how serious she was when she warned me to stay away from those girls and be sure not to turn my back on them, because they were trouble. I became friends with both of them during my stay, and once we got out I ended up living the life of an addict in an abandoned trailer with no electricity with one of them.

         I couldn't possibly count the number of people that came and went on Ward 7 while I was there. I don't know what the average length of stay is in a mental institution, but I would say somewhere around two to three weeks. I was there much longer than that. At this point, Broughton was my home. I had nowhere to go if I were to leave. I had severed all ties in the outside world. I told my lover at that time to fuck off, I didn't care what became of my possessions, and I had no intention of going back to the life of insanity and abuse that I had been living. This was my world now. Of the handful of people who stayed constant while I was there was a girl named Kelly. She was only a few years older than me, and was from the same part of the state that I was. When you are with someone 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, you quickly grow to either love them or hate them. I loved Kelly with all of my heart, and we grew very close. She was suicidal, and had a One to One for the majority of her stay, as did I, so we were never really alone. Still, we became very skilled at breaking the rules even with a staff person stuck to our sides.

         Every month or so, the staff would decide to give me a chance to be off of One to One. I'm sure the time seemed to stretch out much further in my mind, but in reality I would only wait a day or two until they weren't watching me as close, then pull a piece of glass out of my stash and cut myself, which would land me right back with my One to One. It was the same way with Kelly, except it was even rarer for her to be let off of One to One. I only cut myself when I was left unguarded; what she always attempted was much more lethal.

         It was just another week, like every other week when you're locked up. Days didn't differ much, and time drags on. I was off of One to One, and they up and decided to let Kelly off too. She somehow convinced them that she was no longer a harm to herself, and she promised to behave. I knew better. Kelly was planning a visit with her family. Her Mother, Father and Husband were supposed to come one evening, and she hadn't seen any of them for a while. She was stressed out about the visit, but I felt confident that she wouldn't hurt herself, at least until they were gone. I was wrong.

         I remember sitting in my room, reading a magazine, and suddenly I had the thought; I need to check on Kelly. A feeling just came over me, like something was wrong. I got up and ran down the hall to Kelly's room. I don't remember now, but I assume that her door was closed when I got to it. I must have knocked on the door, and when I didn't get an answer, I opened it. Her bed was made up, but she wasn't in the room. There was a staff person on the hall doing checks, which is just how it sounds, checking to make sure everyone is present and accounted for. Checks were scheduled for 15 and 30 minute intervals. Sabrina, a very sweet, very young CNA, was doing the checks, and I asked her if she knew where Kelly was. She didn't, but she said that she had just seen her a minute ago, so she was around somewhere.

         A feeling of panic came over me. I ran back down the hall to the day room and quickly scanned all of the patients sitting there watching television and hanging out. Kelly wasn't there, no one had seen her, and no one was concerned. I dashed down the hall to the bathroom, calling her name loudly at this point. I threw open the door and looked underneath all of the stall doors, but no one was in the bathroom. I looked into her room again as I passed, but it was empty. My heart races now, even as I am only telling the story. I saw that someone was on the payphone at the far end of the hall. Still calling for her, I walked in the direction just far enough to see that it wasn't her. People were beginning to give me strange looks, but I knew deep in my heart that something was wrong.

         Back down the hall, and even though you're not supposed to go into other patients rooms, I flew into Kelly's. Hitting my knees, I grabbed the blanket on her bed and flung it up, fully expecting to see her laying underneath, in a noose hanging from the springs. Nothing. In every room was a tall wooden storage locker where we kept our clothes and things, and they were quite large enough for a person to fit inside, which I knew from personal experience. I got to my feet and turned to check Kelly's locker, and before I could get my hand on the door, I looked up, and there I saw her. It was the most horrifying experience I have ever had, and trust me, I've had some horrifying experiences.

         Kelly had climbed up and was sitting Indian style on top of the locker, her body slumped over. There was a vent in the wall above the locker and she had tied a long drawstring from her pajama pants around her neck, and hung herself from it. Her face was the most awful thing that I have ever seen. It was mottled with various shades of deep reds, purples and blues, and I knew the instant I saw her that she was dead. I rushed to the door, and the only words that I could make come out of my mouth were, "Sabrina, NOW. Sabrina, NOW!"

         Sabrina ran into the room and all I could do was point. She hit her emergency button and an alarm sounded throughout the hospital. Panicking, she tried to grab the bed to pull it over to the closet, tugging on it several times before she realized that she was in one of the rooms where the bed was bolted to the floor. Another staff person came running into the room, this one thankfully a little more level headed. She opened the closet door and climbed up the shelves, grabbing the drawstring and breaking it, severing its connection to the vent. I remember backing to the far end of the room and climbing onto the window sill, afraid to move. After what seemed like hours, but was surely only seconds, a few men finally arrived, and they pulled Kelly's limp body from the top of the closet. I blacked out at this point, and don't remember anything else that happened.

         Because Sabrina had just done checks, Kelly assumed that she would have at least 30 minutes before anyone would come looking for her again, and honestly, they wouldn't have sounded any alarms if she wasn't in her room the first time that they checked. They would have finished up checking on all of the other patients, and then they might have come and looked for her again. Then again, they might not have. They might have just assumed that she was seeing the doctor, or the nurse, or was with staff somewhere. And because of the positioning of the closet in Kelly's room, and how tall the closets are, she could have easily continued going unnoticed. Kelly knew all of this, and so the minute Sabrina left her room, she climbed up on top of that closet and hung herself.

         They told me that I did a good thing that day, that I saved Kelly's life, because she was only up there for minutes before I found her. If I had given up when I couldn't find her, or if I hadn't gone looking for her at all, Kelly would be dead. Her attempt at suicide would have been successful.

         It was weeks before I could look Kelly in the eyes again. After they revived her, I didn't even walk up to her to see for myself that she was okay. I couldn't. Every time I looked at her, all I could see what how her face looked when she was on top of that closet, the ugly color, the swollen features. She was back on One to One, and they advised her to give me some space.

         Finally, I was ready. I approached her and all she could do was hug me. She told me how sorry she was, and that she had never intended for me to be the one to find her. She showed me the bruises and cuts she had gotten when they roughly pulled her down from the closet, and pointed out the burst blood vessels in her face from the hanging. It was the last thing that I wanted to talk about, and it was all she wanted to talk about. My relationship with her was never the same after that. I loved her so much, and it hurt so bad to see her. Kelly, who I had had an affair with in the mental institution. Kelly, who I had taught to cut herself because it was safer than strangling yourself. I couldn't take the chance of having my heart broken with her again. I don't know where she is today. I heard that she finally got discharged, and I can only hope and pray that she is doing well.

         Kelly and I both ended up getting moved to different wards after that. Again, I was angry when they moved me, but the ward we were on was for people to receive treatment. We were moved to wards intended for long term stays. It was an entirely different world, again, and one that I was not happy in. I ripped the springs from underneath my bed, but couldn't pick the antique locks on the windows. Everywhere you went in the hospital was by tunnel, so there was no escaping like I had done in the past. This world was much more tightly locked and guarded, and the people there were lifers. It scared me, so I began to play their game. I smiled, and I stopped hurting myself, and I got the fuck out of that place. I went back again after that, but never for as long as that time.