Mind Games Ch 2 Mania

I didn’t even wake up for vitals. The nurses kept barging in, telling me I was going to have to get up or I’ll have to stay in the ward longer, but I didn’t care. Seeing Linda again would just make it worse. So I slept. And slept. Until Ben broke into my room and forced me to get out of bed. “Jake, you can’t just sleep all day! Besides, therapy is in an hour.”

Oh shit. All of the commotion that happened yesterday made me forget all about meeting this Dawn chick. Yet again, anxiety bites me in the ass. I jolted out of the room and chased down Anita.

“Can I please take my Klonopin today?” I begged.

She looked at me like I was still shooting up coke. “No, it’s too late and besides that we’re changing your medication. I heard what happened the other day.” She eyed me up and down like I had just gained 500 pounds.

“Please, today I have to see my new therapist and—“

“No,” she snarled, vanishing down the hall.

I ran to Mike’s room and pounded on the door. “If it’s the fuzz, I’m not answering and I know there are Russian spies after me, SO FUCK OFF!!!”

“Dude, it’s Jake, open the door,” I yelled through the crack. My entire body trembled. I was beginning to believe people were watching me. I spun around to find Cheryl glaring at me, a bundled ball of torn-up toilet paper squished between her hands.

“SHIIIIIIT!!!” she screeched, tossing the toilet paper in the air like it was confetti. An attractive blond nurse I was familiar with came scurrying around her, picking up the pieces of toilet paper and throwing it away in the garbage. Ben came after the hot blond, tugging Cheryl into the medication unit.

No matter what mood or crisis I’m in, Cheryl could always make me smile with her random, psychotic concoctions.

“Soooo…are you gonna watch Cheryl play with dirty toilet paper or are you gonna come in here?”

I whirled around to look into Mike’s eyes, totally forgetting my mission.

“Because I don’t have all day.”

“Shut the heck up!” I shouted, running into his room and bouncing on his bed. He chuckled hysterically, dropping on the floor and picking up Sports Illustrated. He stretched out his foot and kicked the door shut.

“So I heard some crazy shit happened with you yesterday,” Mike commented, eyeing a photo of an exotic dark-skinned woman. “European women always have some of the greatest pair of jugs, you know? Are they just gifted from God, or what?”

“Yeah a lot happened yesterday. Because of it they’re changing my medication.”

He turned to another page. “Damn! This chick could be Jessica Alba’s younger sister!”

Frustration broiled with me. I yanked up my sleeve and stuck my mummified arm underneath his nose. “I flipped out and tore my arm open! And I’m about to freak out again because of this new fucking therapist!”

“That’s crap,” Mike grumbled, pushing my arm out of his face so he could gawk at more women.

I rolled off the bed and snatched the magazine.

“Hey!” he whined.

“Listen to me! I’m about to have a nervous break-down here!”

Mike stared at me blankly. “…I don’t know what to tell you. These things happen all the time here. It sucks, but that’s mental illness.” He grabbed his literature and went back to flipping through it. “Just give Dawn a chance. Shit, she can’t be anymore dull than Kenneth!”

I laughed. “Guess you’re right…”

“Seriously, though, you have to take into consideration what it was like before you got in here…life was a heck of a lot more complicated and your mind was definitely five times more dysfunctional.”

But what if I end up being locked up in this place like a dog with Mad Cow Disease? What if I end up even more insane leaving then when I came in?

************************************

Ben peaked into the room, finding us both sprawled on the floor reading Hustler. “Time to stop reading pornography and talk to your new therapist, Jake,” he grumbled, rolling his eyes.

We both giggled as I got up and slid out the door. Even after talking to Mike, I was still incredibly nervous. What if she’s worse than Kenneth? What if she ends up being a royal bitch like Anita? A pearl of sweat rolled down my face. Here comes what I’ve been dreading since I woke up yesterday.

We stopped at the door and waited until she was ready to come out. “I heard she’s really nice,” Ben commented.

The door creaked open and my heart stopped. What came out was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.

************************************

“This morning I looked at your files and I’ve noticed you’ve had a pretty hectic lifestyle…”

All I could do was stare. Those bright blue enchanting eyes and dark, almost black, brunette hair had me in a trance.

“Past addiction to cocaine and alcohol…past abuse,” she read aloud from one of the many sheets in my records. “Do you know your diagnosis?”

“Yes,” I finally sputtered. “Bipolar Disorder Type 1—rapid cycling, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and social anxiety.”

She nodded, a dark strand of hair falling from her bun. She tucked it back behind her ear as she tucked my file back into her desk drawer. “I think we should talk about the night that got you in here. It seems that Ken never went over that with you.”

“I’m not talking about that,” I snapped, rage surging through my veins. I glared into those curious, searching eyes.

She frowned slightly. “Why not? All of this is confidential. There’s no need for me, or anyone else for that matter, to record this history into your files. I am only wanting you to talk about this so I can get a better understanding of who you are. I am here to help you.”

I gulped. My hands were sopping wet with sweat.

“Are you okay?” she asked, leaning forward to get a better look within my eyes. It was very intimidating.

“Y-yeah,” I stifled a laugh, “just a little nervous…I’ve never talked about this…don’t really want to…I haven’t even told Mike.”

Her brow arched in amusement. “Who’s Mike?”

“He’s one of my good friends here…shit, honestly, he’s my only friend now—“ my heart lept. God, now I just sound like a total loser.

“Why is that?”

I sighed, letting my head fall into the palm of my hand. “I lost all of my friends. All because I thought they were talking smack about me and pretending to be my friend—well, I actually heard them talking about me… I didn’t know if it was real or not because most of the time I was tweaking on blow, so I ended up beating them up or trashing their apartments…stole their things because I thought they were jacking shit from me when really my memory wasn’t crap and I was losing things.” I groaned, my chest throbbing. “I know, crazy…”

“No, no, no,” she disagreed. “That sounds a lot like you were experiencing mania, either that or a mixed episode. Have you ever heard of these terms?”

I blinked. I have no idea what the heck this lady is babbling about.

Her vibrant eyes smiled. “When you were going through this, were you always on edge? To the point where your mind wouldn’t turn off, metaphorically speaking? Was your concentration decreasing?”

“Yes, exactly!” I exclaimed, sitting up. “Also, there would be periods where I’d feel pressured to talk and would keep jabbering on and on like some idiot, either that or my thoughts would be so consuming I could hardly speak.”

She got up and yanked a book from the shelf beside her. She flipped through the pages and then handed me it, pointing to the page. “Do most of these symptoms match with how you were acting back then?”

I gazed at the page.

COMMON SYMPTOMS OF MANIA

• Inflated self-esteem, grandiosity

• Irritability

• Decreased need for sleep

• Pressured speech

• Flight of ideas, racing thoughts

• Distractibility

• Increase in goal-setting or psycho-motor agitation

• Excessive involvement in pleasurable activities (spending sprees, wreckless driving, drug and alcohol abuse, sexual indiscretions).

“During the beginning, yes, I was all of these symptoms… Well, before the drugs I was just extremely depressed and couldn’t sleep.” Then I really became a nut case.

“What happened after your manic episode?” she asked, leaning on her hand.

“I lost all of my friends, my family refused to communicate with me and I got real depressed again…but it was different this time…my auditory and visual delusions intensified. I was drinking all day and night, wouldn’t stop thinking…”

“About what?”

I shrugged, my heart sinking. “Death,” I whispered, on the edge of crying. I threw my hood over my face. “Things were very…dark. Everything just felt so sinical. I felt dirty, like I was in a pure place and didn’t belong.”

“Sounds like you were experiencing a mixed state,” she declared. “Do you feel comfortable explaining that night? Like I said before, this is all confidential, I promise. I just heard from one of the nurses that you had a break-down last night. I feel if you would talk about it, you’d probably feel a lot better.”

“I would sound insane.”

She rolled her eyes. “Honey, you’re not crazy. You have a chemical imbalance in your brain—it’s just like having asthma or diabetes.”

Heat burned within my cheeks, my chest fluttering. “Look, I don’t know you, okay? And I told you a lot that I’d usually never tell a complete stranger about, so could you just drop it?”

“Yes,” she blurted, nodding abruptly. “Yes, I am really sorry if it felt as though I were pressuring you…I just would really hate to see you hurt yourself again, okay?”

“Can I go now? It’s four-thirty and we all have to go to dinner. Wouldn’t want to miss another episode of tooth-pick girl fights push-over nurse.” I stood up.

“Yeah, you can.” She got up and handed me that book. “Your assignment is to study your illness. It will help you discover and understand why sometimes you feel a certain way and also how to overcome it.”

I tugged it out of her cute, petite hands.

She grabbed my elbow before I could leave. “One more thing. I’m very proud of you.”

*******************************************

“How was it?” Mike asked as we took a seat at the cafeteria table. Luckily, Alyssa was at a different table tonight, though I could still hear her yelling and whining while Ben tries to calmly reassure her she needs to “eat to live”.

“Okay,” I grunted, studying the meal before me. Gooey Salisbury steak and chalky mashed potatoes. Yum. “She was a little pushy about certain subjects, but over all she knows her facts and she’s five million times better than Kenneth.”

Mike gave me that irritating ‘I-told-you-so’ look as he smacked on his sad excuse for Salisbury steak. “That’s probably why they decided to switch you; they knew she’d be perfect for your recovery.”

I shoved a spoonful of mashed potatoes down my throat and gagged, spitting it back onto my plate. “God DAMN! Usually this hospital has decent food, but this is just raunchy!” I chugged my glass of water to try to rid myself of that bitter, salty taste. “Anyways, you and I will never fully recover and you know that. A chemical imbalance doesn’t just go away.”

“But you can learn to control it with the right medication, therapist, and life style,” he counter-acted, his mouth full of food.

I shrugged. “What if I still want to snort another line of coke? Or drink a bloody mary or a screw driver?” Mike gave me a look my mother would have if I had said that. “All I’m saying is what if I don’t want to change?”

“Then you obviously want to end up back in here,” Mike spat, slamming his fork down. “I want to do a line of H just as much as you want blow, but I’m not going back to that. It doesn’t help anything. It only makes us go more insane.”

I sighed, watching Alyssa flea out of the cafeteria, finally getting away scott-free. “That’s it! We’re getting you on an NG tube, Allie!” Ben shouted out into the hall. “Do you hear me?! We’re getting you on it TONIGHT!”

Sometimes I don’t blame her for wanting to starve to death. Sometimes I wish my land lord never broke into my apartment. Then I would’ve bled to death and not have to realize my destiny of sobriety, therapists, and prescription bottles.