 selfie, 2023, @ MSP airport I am trying to tell a peek into my first hospital “mental ward” experience (introduced in Piece #2.) This is all real perception, but I do not have medical records to connect it to any real people. Style Disclaimer– 41 years later, it is surreal yet still in me. It will read more like a poem without form, a tangential conversation. If it was a video, maybe a series of slightly related YouTube “shorts and longs”. I got to publish a song for my 55th birthday that has layers in it related to this experience. (link) High School context: Go to school. Try to make sense of it. Running practice. Go home. Do homework. Practice clarinet. Repeat. Day in day out. This was my 14-year-old choices and routine. Chose to accept “exciting opportunity” because was “accepted to” a “Magnet” “Advanced Program” in a high school. Incidentally without the siblings. Not their school; without the 8th grade kind of friend group, because they chose Tennis and I chose a sport not for friends, but for interest. So again-Do. Repeat. Do. Repeat. Snippets in the mind one day: Wow, there are so many people, I wonder why they are laughing, how are they being friends? I wonder if I can make a friend? Ooh, I actually got my locker to work today. I hear the teenager strangers talking about parties, getting drunk, fast girls. Is that fun or do I want to steer clear? This math is pretty hard, I am trying to follow. I feel tired. I should be better at this with two math parents. I better stay awake. Oh the bell rang. Lunchtime surroundings daily: Balconies and stairs with orange railings. No sunny windows. Lunchroom. Lots of concrete and a line. Lunchtime thoughtscape on repeat: Should I get a rice crispy treat, or not today? Where should I sit? Will the people I sit with talk to me? Wow look at that tight friend group up there. If I could join it, would I even want to? Then I would have to exclude other people. Oh I think someone across from me just said something… Next class setting of the actual day: The hippie like guy teacher in the small, carpeted room seemed giddy about getting “Dune” to play on a 32 in TV and VCR. He wheeled in the cart, chattering about it while trying to get the viewing screen to work. I felt tired of having to find some kind of right answers in school work, and the sand reminded me of post apocalypse scenery. I decided to detach for a moment and let myself be in my own head. The swirling dust on the screen matched the swirls of thought in the mind. Swirls in the mind of that moment: Atom bombs might go off, they said on the news. Oh, the teacher in Social Studies read that from the newspaper too. Wow, will Russia work something out? Will we be ok? What will happen to everyone? Will the earth hold up to our abuse? Will the population be fed? What’s with this actor guy being president? Is he really that great? and what is recession? There are so many people. Will they be ok? Swirl swirl, can’t explain. Is it worth this daily grind? Should I keep going? Dust just like on the sand dunes. Gray. Windy, scary. I decided to try to do something about this. Maybe a home person can help. Maybe I can just take a nap. Next move: “Can I step out for a minute?” Pay phone on the wall. Use that quarter in the pocket. “I don’t know what’s happening, I feel scared, it is like my head is spinning and it won’t stop.” Don’t remember what was said, the sound is like a dial tone in the memory. Next place: I don’t remember how I ended up there, but the next day or so I was in the upstairs bedroom of my parent’s best friend’s home, around the other side of the block. I was asked what I wanted there to be comfortable. What I remember having is my clarinet, a journal. I think I asked for school assignments, but “they” told me not to worry, to rest and take care of myself right now and call if you feel like you might hurt yourself. Or something like that. I remember slanted ceiling from a cape-cod style roof overhead. Flowered vases and oak furniture. Definitely not our house style. I remember asking if I could go outside, and silence. I feel faint whispers still. There was a landline phone in the room (it is 1984 after all, ha ha. We even still had a yellow rotary phone back at our house). Certainly, did not feel like I had any choice except what to do with each minute of nothingness in front of me. So I decided to go for a walk whether it was ok or not. It felt cold. My photos from the hospital say February 1984 so in the Midwest, cold makes sense. Moving along-I put on the poofy coat, mittens, foamy boots, and set out. I don’t remember any other person being outside. Just snow, some shoveled sidewalks, some not. Scrunch scrunch scrunch on the sun-glared snow. Listening to the radio in the mind: I wonder what will happen next? I wonder what is wrong with me? Is there something wrong with me? I wonder how my parent and this friend met and got to be friends? I want to feel better. The cold air feels fresh. I wonder if the snow will make my head slow down and bring me back? Will that work? Well, I don’t have many choices, so let's try that. Under the old pine tree: I found a spot under a big pine tree across the sidewalk from a the corner house. This block was familiar. Halloweens, bike rides, walks, quite a public space. But today it was empty. I lay down in the snow under that tree, saw the underbelly of long green needles and pinecones. Closed my eyes. Sensations: cold and relaxing. dark, quiet. away. car road noise in distance. Back to the swirling mind alas: Did it feel better? Should I get up? Am I crazy? Well, that seems the clearest option, but I don’t really like that option. Oh well. What can I do next? I have no idea. The only options I have are to stay laying down or get up. To walk or run. To go back to that house I was donated to be in today or not. To play my clarinet there or not. To think or not. To write in that journal or not. To open my eyes or not. Not sure how long I lay there. Aware of how it may look. Aware that I could not control what adults chose to do with me. I am at the mercy of kid-ness. Of adults. I don’t know why I did not feel connected or feel like I had friends to turn to. Just lay there with weird empty peace for a moment. Just weird inside my head-ness. Well, may as well get up now. The snow is soaking into my coat. Keep going: I walked back. Went inside the vestibule, the spot with mats and a little bench to take off snow clothes. Took the snow wear off and returned up to the assigned room. Looked out the window. Played a scale and a tune. Accepted the hush and the unknown. Maybe I took a nap after that. Yes it was like in the movies: I don’t remember exactly if I went home next or if my family leader picked me up and drove me quietly. I do remember being talked to by a doctor across a desk then being in a hospital gown and bed. Quite sleepy, druggy I think because I think I wet the bed, and I think an orderly changed the sheets by morning. Then being there alone. Just being there. Not exactly sure why. Did someone tell me why? People came in and out with clipboards. They had scrubs and nametags. They checked pulse, heartrate, talked to each other, maybe talked to me. The daily routine: In the morning, they brought in a scale and put me on it. The number went on a chart. Then they announced the activity level for the day. IF my weight went up, I got to roam freely in the halls, go to the Occupational Therapy class, keep the activities I brought from home. Good girl. IF my weight stayed the same, there was chatter and hovering over the clipboard, but they let me keep my supplies, just banished me from going to the Occupational Therapy Class. Suspicious but we’ll let it slide for one day. IF my weight went down or stayed the same 2 days in a row. That was bad. Bad girl. No activities, no leaving my room. All day. Very Bad Girl, what have you done? I think on those days were the ones I decided I better really try to gain weight somehow, I guess I’d better comply. There must for sure be something wrong with me. If this is my way out, let’s try. Even though it may have been good to rest, it felt like punishment. Like straps holding me in place. Like shame. I did not really want to stay in this cage forever. Sensations: I don’t remember the food there. Surely there was a brown rollie adjustable table for hospital food. Probably things on foam trays and a pink plastic pitcher for water. Maybe liver and onions, pudding, cereal, milk. I don’t quite recall. Not sure how my weight went up and down. Well, I do remember doing jumping jacks and wall sits, some running up and down the stairwells to try to stay fit for cross country. And, in a sense to say “Fuck you” to the rules, whoever was treating me like a lab rat. I had to have SOME control. There was a little scab on my knee upon arrival. Picking at it felt interesting when bored. Curious. I did that enough times that it got a really deep little circle there. Had a scar for a long time. Barely a shadow of a scar now. A sensation that actually seemed to help: Someone, not in scrubs I think, or at least they felt like a person rather than a hospital employee, came in and actually spoke in a regular voice with me. This person, I think female with a deep voice, actually explained what they were doing. They said “I am assigned to help you relax, to learn a strategy that may help you now or not. You may choose to use it later on or not. But it may be worth a try. Can you humor me and try it once?” Maybe a little chuckle emitted from this teen human. The strategy was like a kind of hypnosis they said, but nowadays it would be called a relaxation technique in an app lol. Anyhow, in the 80s it was taught by a lady at the hospital. She had me imagine a quite happy place, then tense each of my body parts, then relax that body part, going from bottom (foot) to higher (leg) to higher(buttock) and even doing toes, fingers, eyebrows, etc. along the way. It seemed a little minor or silly at the time, but it also kinda worked. I think in large part because the person said I had a choice to use it or not. Like a person. I did try it on those punishment days. Nothing else much to do. Seemed to clear my head, make my body more relaxed, and have a sense that someone (me) was taking care of each and every part of this person I had to take care of. The cave sensation: I remember hearing someone across the hall also being asked to eat. It seemed an older lady, a mom or grandma. A fragile one. Deduced because of voices in the hall of adult children, saying “She just won’t eat. She wants to die, should we let her?” “I don’t know what to do” ”She is so stubborn” or things like that. The voices lessened over a couple days. It got quieter. And one day the room looked dark and seemed sad. Like a cavern entrance. I think she died. I never met her, but did imagine her as a human in pain. Connections? I have a photo of two girls standing outside that hospital. It says, “Friends from hospital”. Frankly I have no memory of having friends there. One time I think a friend from school came to visit, said hi. Was awkward. I think my parent visited, left a card or said a few words. Nutritionists visited, told me how to get a lot of calories, like from frosting in a tub. That’s the suggestion I concretely remember. Probably they said milk and stuff like that too. Art maybe human? The Occupational Therapy class felt like normalcy compared to the rest of the experience. I think we put on our regular clothes to go, and were simply given clay and some ideas of what to do with it. There was a break to look at other people, maybe that is where the people called friends in the people were encountered and connected with humanly. I still have the ceramic 5 inch plaque I made there with 2 colorful glazed hot air balloons floating on it. A tiny fun. I remember trying to play my clarinet in the hospital room. The air flow was usually comforting across that reed. I had learned from my wholesome beautiful warm clarinet teacher, who played duets with me and seemed to genuinely like having me come over. She taught that when you put your whole air into it, the sound that comes out is alive, rich, full. I normally loved making that sound, something I could bring into the air waves, into ears, into harmony with others. But in that hospital it felt weird to play it. Fake somehow. Forced, maybe even dirty or undeserved. These is a memory there I don’t like, but can’t help knowing happened. The clarinet was laying there across the gold felt lined case, staring at me. My parent had bought this and supported my learning. We actually had some pleasantries around it. I knew it was expensive. That day, anger was welling up inside. Nothing new really, I was an “emotional teen” that was “talked about in hushed voices”, who had tried to get out of the car while it was driving in anger, who was trying to get rid of herself in many ways. But anyhow, I swiped that thing in a fit. And down it went, busted. May not seem dramatic to some, but seemed violent to me at the time. Side note of Art humanity--Later, after hospital, a cool seasoned repair guy, gave the horn some love and my little heart some grace. He pinned it back, glued it back. I still have that horn in all its scarred glory. It has a sound with character. That horn got me through high school, a full solo, first chair in youth orchestra, Dixieland band that allowed me a first boyfriend and a small sample of freely making up my own music, fun, crowd pleasing gigs, some wild high school times. It got me through winning getting into a music college, and a year of fun trying that out. I still have that horn. It was a connection to something to be proud of, something that felt like a human young lady. This concludes the memories I can extract from that first hospital. Fast forward: One day I left that place. I think maybe my weight was higher. I think I accepted that. And knew it was my job to manage that. Went home to quiet. Went to school with quiet. Very strange. It may have been two weeks or a month. But in my mind it is still in me. To this day I still often have the sensation of being punishable. banishable somehow for having swirling thoughts. I still have them. Often really. Tried to make them go away so many ways, So many rules, systems. But they are part of me. Their flip side is compassion, creativity, flexibility, perspective. If I was in the shoes of the people around me and saw what they saw, and had the options they had, likely I would have chosen the same response. I have no issue with the individuals. It must have been weird for the people around me. Perhaps I need to let go of that punishment. Forgive the weirdness of all this. A part of me imagines an alternate universe or timeline. One where I could just have gotten a hug, a listening ear, a “yep this world is confusing, we are going to get through it” and watched a funny movie together or something like that, no drama. A part of me has education. The lab rat got a dose of behavior modification. Brilliant scientific data discovered to improve life. I left with the statistical outcome that made the hospital look good – more weight. That was it. The rest of me was mildly put, still a bit confused. copyright Lynn Jodeit Ouellette, 2024 | ___Says it better than I can. |
