I had a domestic dispute with my father in early 1998. I'd like to blog about it here but it's still too emotionally charged for me. However, I want to blog about my subsequent commitment so I'll just say that the domestic dispute involved a gun and a crime I was forced into and go from there. I was taken by a SWAT team (yeah, it's fucked up) to a psyche clinic where I was eventually committed by a court to be locked up for five months from April to August 1998.
I want to blog about this as another experience that some in the mentally ill community have to go through. The facts of my arrest is that it was self-defense but I still got committed. Feeling that sense of injustice shades my views of my experience and I grapple with how to perceive the whole thing. I'll just shoot from the hip.
I remember being brought to the facility in either late March or early April 1998 when I was 25 years old. I had clashed with my father so badly as my mental health declined and his patience with me not being the greatest thing in the world declined that I was happy I had been arrested. I had a mug shot where I managed a relieved, tired smile. There was going to be change and I was relieved. I went from a bad situation to a new one, whatever that situation was going to be.
I can't remember much early on after my intake. There were two sections of the facility where I ended up. I started on one side and was eventually moved to the other after a month or so. It was a nice facility and I'm glad for that. The workers were pretty cool. I liken it to prisoners and guards having jovial relationships. There was also the "They can't help it they're crazy" vibe. My fellow patients and I weren't treated like monsters though I don't think any of us were there for truly violent crimes. I remember doing a crossword puzzle with one of the female workers most mornings. It's also funny that one of the people that worked for the police on my intake was a guy I'd played baseball against in high school. Even more funny was that one of the workers in the clinic was a guy I was friends with from work at a summer job. Seriously. I'm in the clinic and there was Rick handing out trays of food. I chatted with him once or twice I think and that was it.
One of the patients I got to know a little on that first unit was a girl that had been in the headlines of the local paper. She was a drug mom (not sure if it was cocaine or not.) She had two kids but had a major drug problem she was unwilling to stop. She also was unwilling to let go of her kids and the issue made the papers. She loved her kids but never really seemed to grasp the enormity of her situation and how she was ruining it. I do remember she cried at least once over it. We played Uno and watched Fresh Prince of Bel Air reruns and she was jovial but kind of simple. I think she also bragged about making the paper, though it was for a ridiculous reason. Looking back at it, I think she was just a person lost in the world that had grown up responsibilities she couldn't handle. We never got close and I don't know what happened to her.
The procedures of the clinic were workmanlike like any hospital, I suppose. We'd get trays of food three times a day and we'd be let outside to play basketball or whatever once or twice a day. There was a factory next door and I remember one time the male laborers there were on lunch break outside and kept shouting insults at us. The routine was simplistic. We'd go to a cafeteria and I'd read a Time magazine or whatever on a short break and then we'd go to classes where they'd teach us how to prepare food, one of those routine things that didn't affect most mentally ill people there, though I do remember one guy that clearly needed the classes. I had a fine relationship with the tech workers there. They were all pretty cool though at times they talked about us within ear shot like we couldn't understand simple English. There was a short exercise class where we'd do yoga or something and we'd sometimes be taken to a room to watch a movie. They inflicted the 1994 Flintstones movie on us at one point. One cool thing is I remember watching the 1998 NBA playoffs when the Bulls beat the Pacers and then the Jazz. I was a huge Bulls fan and so was one of the workers and we got revved up during the games. One of my few happy memories of the place.
I had routine meetings with a female doctor. I can't remember much about them other than the typical "How are you feeling I'm feeling fine" stuff. I got a little close with another patient named Pam. She was in the clinic for trying to kill herself with aspirin. She said she'd taken 150 of them and was found barely alive. She was sweet and we'd build each other up expressing our compassion. I seem to remember her parents were wealthy and there was never really a problem concerning her release and what would happen next. There were plenty of problems for me upcoming. My Dad had actually come to visit me a few times in the clinic and I think everyone saw it that I was some poor misguided idiot that tried to hurt his loving father. Bottom line was my Dad was an abusive piece of shit during this time. As I got sicker, he got angrier and more demanding and I couldn't do it. He lied at my short trial and he lied when people asked about me. The public father was phony and I bore the abuse in private. As my Dad is a Republican, it was during this time that I started to reject them. All the "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps!" rhetoric and "You're a deadbeat!" shit was proven to me to be a lie. The ream world of mental illness had been opened up to me and that right wing nonsense only made the situation worse. I see this as the beginning of a very long and painful journey that continues today. I wish I could say this was the rockiest time in my life but it wasn't, specifically because my health would decline even more seriously at various times in the future.
At the end of the clinic stay, I was to be released in August of 1998. I was told about disability insurance the day before I was released. By that time, they had racked up a $50,000 debt on me that remains to this day. I was put in halfway house where I was given two weeks to solve all the world's problems. That meant getting a job and a place to stay and all that because my family didn't want anything to do with me. I tried but wasn't remotely well enough to make it on my own. I was kicked out by the head of the halfway house after two weeks. Panicked and not knowing what to do, I went back to the psyche clinic to tell them what happened. I was pretty delusional and said something to one of the desk workers that she took as a threat. It wasn't and I was never asked about it. It's not like justice or closure was important to anyone besides me at the time. I was just seen as another nut. I was put back into the clinic for a time though I don't remember how long. The funny thing was I was blamed by the person at the halfway house for leaving when the person had thrown me out! I was firmly wedged in cracks in the system that good, well meaning people fall into occasionally. I think we all grow up knowing there are bad situations like this and we rest on the knowledge that it will never happen to us. Yet, there I was. It was happening to me.
Thanks for reading.
