Hello. Just a story about an experience I never forgot, and never will (unfortunately.) Before I entertained at the State Hospital (ha ha), I inhabited the likes of four or five different community psych wards. In York, PA, where I originated, I ended up on York Hospital’s psych ward more than a dozen times.
Lions, and tigers and bears that shit in the woods, oh my.
The most heinous experience occurred when they placed me on the B side of their ward. B was for Bad i think…so I’m feeling fucked up in the head people…just not even human anymore, but the elemental shit, like I knew to shower still encroached on my brain. So I gathered my “shower, shit and shave” stuff like shampoo and soap and headed to the only shower on the “B” side of the ward.
I knocked on the door. No one home. I opened the door. Something smelled…Well, just so you know it usually does…so I entered the shower anyway. My eyes adjusted to the fluorescent lights, so I looked around to see what is where. I noticed something wiped across the walls, and it appeared to reminisce the color brown.
I glanced at the toilet, and shit laid in it. I took one step towards the shower. I don’t know why. Its white walls somebody streaked with this brown stuff too. It took me a few moments to register exactly the situation. Some one just came in and shit in the toilet, then this person used his or her shit as finger paint. Brilliant?
I felt contaminated. I do all over again as I remembered this disgusting moment for you:)
I began my illustrious mental health journey at The University of Pennsylvania Hospital in their rehab facility. I left the rehab three times to get high. I confessed once and the councilors caught me twice. I drank a bottle of Robitussin DM each time. Nothing illegal, barely a bleep on my mind already saturated with a history of drug use. This older man, who complained of his gout, Dr. Ottenburg, the one with the nude female sketches covering his office walls, he told me about my transfer to a locked ward. Relief, like a gas station in the middle of nowhere to feed gas to your beast, overcame me, because I wanted all of it to just stop. A locked door, I soon figured out, was not the ideal in my head. It became the turd in my bed.
Remember “Natalie Merchant,” the female singer? She played a show in Philadelphia during the summer I “resided” at the hospital. In fact, my brother graduated from Drexel College in 1993. I spent 6 months of that year at the hospital. The hospital bragged an indoor and outdoor swimming pool. It showed movies every weekend in its theater, had a mini-golf course and a paved track with a grassy knoll in the center. Stone walls, like I imagine in King Arthur’s reign, protected us from the gun shots the residents heard at night during the last smoke break.
I almost missed my brother’s graduation. I asked a girl with multiple personalities (14) if she eventually enjoyed sex with her father. The sick ass part (If anything is ranker than that) is her mom took her to 5 abortions, in which the father of this woman also fathered the children. Very rich, and a very rich cover-up.
She received a pass to attend a family wedding. I sat in the “living room,” when she arrived at the ward safe and sound. The staff checked her soda into their registry, and I heard her ask for the sprite, and she offered me the coke. 2 liter bottles people. She opened up the sprite quite a distance from the staff, and I caught a strong smell of vodka. A knowing smile crossed the bitches face, because she knew, if anyone, I would never turn down a stiff drink. We got bombed in front of the entire night staff, while we sat out in front of the TV in the common area. I blacked out–til the next morning.
The staff knew, and investigated our little drunken party. They told me she targeted me due to her anger. But they weren’t sure about allotting me the pass to my brother’s graduation the next Saturday. Oh, well, I thought. Due to my good behavior for the rest of the week, I in fact, earned back the pass I lost.
I attended the Drexel graduation, but I hated every minute. I wanted to go home. I meant back then, back to the hospital grounds. There, for the first time in my life, I felt at home. At the time, that did not seem too fucked up to me.
No blood spilled just a change thru my affirmative action.
Dear Kim (Head nurse on one of my units at Hospital),
In this story I compel myself to write, in spite of the fear you shoved up my ass everyday under “your roof.” You see, now I live under my roof–surprised, because I never believed with God all things are possible. Your violation of the HIPPA law, in place in Pennsylvania to protect the privacy of the client, brought me to my knees. I prayed for your reign to end. Through my persistent action, you pushed pills on the geriatric unit until the Hospital closed. Your welcome, for that.
A very brave patient approached me one day outside. She said, “Kim said something about you in front of me and asked what I thought, but I said nothing. I wanted to tell you, but honestly I’m afraid of what Kim will do to me.” Rightly so, because as head nurse, punishments she delighted in rendering.
The patient said after a little coaxing, “Kim said that your relationship with your father is sick and incestuous,” Tears started to pour down my cheeks, My Father visited me three times a week, because he actually worked right down the street. Let me say that certain things my brain denied until my emotional maturity strengthened One of the facts of my entire life, that I recently started to accept, regards my father and I. So, the information left me out in the desert naked and afraid.
Kim, the head nurse, slammed a door in my face, threatened me daily, that if I mess one thing up, she relished at the thought of taking away all of my privileges, and enjoyed telling me to shut up. This intel sent me straight to the president of the State Hospital’s office. I bawled and I sniveled while I informed him of Kim’s indiscretions. I confessed that at night, when she left, I worried she may run over me with her car. I said, “I called her from the library and asked if we could agree to disagree,” but she replied, “Oh is that not sooooo nice Jessica, I wish more patients were like you,” with molasses dripping from each syllable.
The President affirmed that he heard my plea, and felt my discouragement. He promised to make inquiry’s. So the next day, an investigator knocked on my door, and several others to include the whistleblower’s. It liberated me to tell the hospital’s investigator every violation Kim executed in my care. It took about two hours. This man, then, interviewed a dozen or so individuals not aware of the situation. He thanked me for my honesty, and said, “I have to show my findings to a board of individuals, so something should transpire in a week or so.”
I thought the week lasted longer than Dirk Diggler’s dick in “Boogie Nights,” but then, the angels sang. Kim, escorted off the floor by two security guards, landed a splendid position as a pill pusher for the geriatric unit for four or five years later. The State Hospital closed, and my wish, for real, is that she learned a lesson from that entire experience, and that today she runs a unit with compassion and insight.
As for the allegations, yes, she said a correct statement about my father and I. I have PTSD and other diagnosis’ that stem from my genes to my fucked up childhood. But, I seek to conquer my demons. Sober 5 and one half years, and taking one day at a time, helps me to put the past behind me slowly, but most definitely.
Stop Addiction before it begins. In this entry, it’s not about true “dope.” Read and learn.
At the State Hospital, they designate a building’s wing for sex offenders and other comparative crime critters. E2 wing controlled the flow of these gentleman by only allowing them to smoke outside the E building, and not permitting the scoundrels to go cross the grounds to the Hospital store to purchase things like coffee (instant) without the male staff present. Plus, it took each guy months to even attain a level that allowed them outside.
Meds, behaviour on E2 ward, and regular psych evals all pointed the way of the con in or out of the building. Fresh air and freedom, by the time 6-8 months rolled around, got the nuts high by themselves.
Yet, my friend saw money to be made, and she made a tight bundle.
Off of…yes, instant coffee. Folgers, the real deal. She bought the jars, like two or three at a time, and purchased baggies to put an allotted amount of instant coffee into them. I believe she put about the equivalent of 4 small cups of coffee in each baggie. I observed and participated to speed the process along.
We ventured over to the E building during our free-time outside. We practically ran, because the E building’s free-time only slightly overlapped with ours for our protection. She sold Folgers instant coffee grounds in baggies for a dollar a piece. The E building residents bought it all. That opportunity she provided for them several times, and no one got caught or gave up where the “dope” supply originated.
She made almost seventy dollars for the runs over to E building. That counted out the cost of the jars of coffee and the baggies.
At a State Hospital, with a little initiative, a profit awaited.
At the State hospital, when a new patient arrives on the ward, the nurses put his or her name up on the dry erase “notes for the ward” board. When my soon to be husband arrived, I read his name and thought, “I’m going to marry this guy.” I never met him before then and it turned out to come true.
When I spent two years at the State Hospital, my check for disability ended. Of course, now the State “took care” of me. Well, I maintained a lovely smoking habit of no less than a pack and a half a day. I bought soda from the coke machine for me and my future husband three times a day. I walked to the store for coffee with sleepy dust in the cracks of both eyes every morning. Needless to say, I required money to navigate my days in this gruesome place.
So, the State Hospital provided an out for poor folk, such as myself. Seriously, they named it WAC, and yes Iobtained a WAC job. I worked in the “accelerated” program where we put things together such as beaded key chains. My 19-year-old buddy and I raced to see how much in 3 hours we could do. Oh my, we outdid one another until WAC paid each of us over $13 dollars an hour. Shameful huh? We worked before lunch for 3 hours and after lunch for two hours. We sat upon our asses and became the Queens of the Wac jobs. Unfortunately, my asshole future husband spent most of my hard-earned cash. Yes, back then I could have been labeled as “docile.”
The State Hospital housed a library in what they called “The E” building. I finally found out an opening existed for the library to help the librarian with putting together packets of information that the doctors requested. So I gave up my rich bitch job, and went to work for the librarian for possibly minimum wage, but I do think I earned a little less than that.
I quit the library job after several months to keep an eye on my future husband. Why? Delusions led to confusion which bred distrust and hostility. Please know, that my ex never lied to me about his drug habit. My history consisted of drug and alcohol abuse too. When we left and moved into a one bedroom apartment, before everything else, he found a doctor to dispense opiates to him. Soon, he and I traded benzodiazepines for methadone or muscle relaxers. I became hooked on opiates. Every day felt laborious, because if I failed to find my drug of choice, I annihilated sobriety with cough syrup (robo tripping) or abusing my meds.
I have five years sober now, but it took a long time to do that. So I live 24 hours at a time, cause the past dissolved, the future is a theory, but the present, well it’s a gift. Have a happy 24!
Okay, this entry is a quicky so all of you can proceed with your festive weekends. I’m pretty sure everyone knows about famous sex tapes. Pamela Anderson enters my mind immediately, and I believe Kim Kardashian “starred” in one too. This detail of my life devastated me for a minute. I shared in an earlier post, I think, that I married my ex-husband while I resided at the State Hospital. Yes, patients have the right to marry, but try to divorce a husband while he lives in a State Hospital…Lawyer refused because he said my ex could claim he signed the papers “out of his mind.” Fucked up, right?
Even more fucked up, when he and I walked around the grounds together we did engage in sexual excursions in bushes, behind rocks, in the woods or even in one of the few bathrooms that locked (like at the State Hospital Store.) Apparently one of our “outings” composed of me performing an artistically, perfect blowjob while he sat on a picnic bench. I found out one morning when I walked to his building to meet him, and a pain in the ass tech said, “It’s the porn star!!” I thought WTF?
The Nurse from my building pulled me aside and requested an interesting suggestion. She said, “You and B—- were caught on video camera by the office buildings (that intermingled with Hospital Buildings, but still were sate jobs.)” She asked, “Please go to a deserted, and well shaded area to do your thing.” So the security officers who patrolled the grounds saw my performance, knew it was B—- and I, told the “person in charge of that shit,” who told the nurses, who told the techs, who called me a fucking porn star for a month. The other fucking idiots that I loved for each of their magic howled.
Should I laugh like a hyena or cry like a baby goat? How can I merge the two? Not with the chords of my voice. Taaa-Dahhh. Have a great weekend “peebles.”
(Behind deserted strip malls I found in the past provide a private and fun place to “get it on.” “FUCK” in plain english. ) Chow.
The Recovery of a Mad Woman 