Mitigating the Madness

I’ve never been to jail or prison before, but from the stories I’ve heard from those who have, they’re treated drastically better than patients in a mental hospital. Yes, you can murder someone and get better treatment than if you have a depressive episode that you need to be hospitalized for. Let that really sink in…

And we wonder why the mentally ill don’t want to seek out help when they really need it.

Back to the portal into hell.

There are two things that really stand out as having made an everlasting impression in my mind about the place that I was take to.

The smell and the noise.

The smell was something akin to antiseptic and desperation mixed with the ever present scent of the dead, dying and newly birthed that hospitals always have. It’s a particular scent to say the least, but I could tell I was in a hospital just on smell alone should I ever go blind. The emotional discourse for those trapped within the walls of the place that touted itself as somewhere to get help was almost nausea inducing. It wasn’t the same as the nursing homes I had worked in before, the smell of human excretions was thankfully absent, but it was still not something that you’d want to be forced to breath in day in and out.

The noise, I think that is what bothered me the most. You see I am very sensitive to sound, and as a result of past trauma when someone starts screaming, let’s just say it’s a trigger for me and leave it at that. Even in the late hours of the night when it was supposed to be quiet there was usually someone crying, the nurses making unnecessary noise or the sound of the lights buzzing that were always on. It made it difficult to get what little sleep I did.

The worse part of the whole experience wasn’t actually the other patients that were there. It was the staff. That isn’t to say that there were a few good staff members, but most of them were apathetic at best and downright abusive at worse. The head nurse, a woman who I will loathe until my dying breath, refused to call me by my given name and use the correct pronouns. Even after I addresses this with a patient advocate nothing was done. In fact she made a point to say my dead name with this insidious smirk like she was winning at being the biggest cunt contest. This woman also threated to assault one of the other patients for asking if they could get a shave. Seriously, I hate you Wendy and you’re an abusive bitch.

Now then.

Despite the fact I was supposed to only be held for up to a 72 hour observation, I was in fact held for nearly a week before I was allowed to see the people responsible for my release. I lost nearly a week of freedom just because of a transphobic mental health professional. This experience also left me with another wonderful amount of trauma that I’m still working through to this day. I don’t trust people anymore, and I always have that nagging feeling that if I open up and tell anyone the truth they’ll try to send me back to some hell like this place was. Especially in today’s political climate where the government is making people just disappear.

After the Hell Hospital

After I was finally released, even the judge was confused as to why I was there, I stopped trying to get help for my depression and anxiety. I felt like the best way to keep my freedom and sanity was to pretend like nothing was wrong. I kept most people that weren’t my family at arm’s length, because if no one knew how bad I was hurting inside they couldn’t use that against me for whatever reason.

Looking back now I am both livid and so sad for the person that I had become because of the trauma that I was forced to endure at the hand of others. Part of me wishes that I could go back in time and hold that fragile person that I was and tell them everything will be okay. Not that they would trust me, but I still wish that I could.

I lived that hell for nearly ten years after I was released from the mental hospital. Shoving my emotions down, bottling everything up until I couldn’t do it anymore. I wanted to lash out at everything and everyone around me. I wanted to hurt people for no other reason than to make them feel the pain that I was feeling and didn’t know how to deal with. In short, I was afraid of the person that I was becoming.

I was just lucky enough to find a doctor around that same time that actually listened to me, and gave a damn. I love this woman for everything she did to help me while I was her patient and I wish I was rich enough to hire her as my personal physician, but alas I am not.

It took almost two years of trying different medications before we found something that just eased my depression. Of course, one of the side effects of a lot of anti-depressants are weight gain, and I gained seventy pounds trying to find a medication that would work. After all the work I had gone through with my doctor to find something that would help, I lost my home and was homeless once more.

It would be about another year before I was able to get back on medication for my depression, but now my new doctor made me choose between medication for my pain and medication for my anxiety. I wasn’t allowed both. Then I was finally able to find a mental health professional that would oversee my medication and actually cares about me. She was the one that helped me get into the Spravato treatment that I’m currently undergoing and the people at the clinic are wonderful. They always have smiles when they see me, and I can feel their love and care for me.

I had always hoped that there were still mental health professionals that cared about their patients, but I never thought that I would be one to experience that care until I started at this clinic.

So that’s where I am now, and if anyone that knows me reads this and works at said clinic. Thank you. I love you all, and I am so grateful each time I come in and you all are nothing but smiles and positivity. You are the standard by which others should measure themselves.