Day 1
I am not sure one could ever step into a mental health unit without first thinking of the classic Jack Nicholson movie “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, this was certainly my first thought. Jack Nicholson is here though he does not go by R.P. McMurphy, here his name is simply Mike. He is 26yrs old (though that is debatable because I have yet to hear him say anything truthful) and he is just as loud and boisterously colorful as R.P. himself. He is in “stocks and oil”, his reason for his visit was very simply stated as “I needed some time off to check on my companies”. He tells me that his Wrangler brand jeans are custom made specifically for him and at this point he is only really waiting for his Bugatti Veyron to arrive so he can leave. I cannot help but laugh and to my surprise doing makes him laugh as well. Almost as if he understands the small fables he is telling. Everything seems very surreal but in the best way I have ever experienced. I keep looking around for Chief and Nurse Ratchet.
I have never experienced madness on this level and it is intoxicating to the point of wanting to join in. There is also a bliss in here. A bliss that everyone seems to have. I say this because I realize at this point I am smiling and not an hour earlier I was having suicidal thoughts. Even the woman who took what I could only imagine as a lethal dose of a commonly used central nervous system depressants and still managed to cut both her arms and legs with a razor more than I thought was humanly possible is smiling. Maybe the smiles hide something much more. Much deeper than I ever fathomed of going or would even grasp that another person could. In this moment though none of that matters. All of our strings are broken and we are reveling in it.
Toward the end of the first night I cried again but not because of what was going on in my life but rather because of one of the most heart warming moments I have seen in quite some time. There is a girl with autism here and from what I can gather she does not understand why she is here and thus she is quite upset. Her name is Emma. While speaking of the places in the world that we would all surely visit once we were released into civilized society again Emma speaks a very sobering thought, one that we are all thinking… “I want to go home”. Only partly participating in our talk Mike quickly notices the gravity that those 5 words have and reacts in an way that feels me with hope, nothing more, nothing less, just hope. Mike swiftly grabs Emma’s hand and says ” LET’S DANCE!” and in that moment we were all happy. Looking around and seeing the smiling faces of broken people is truly something to behold. Maybe we aren’t broken after all, maybe we all just needed a break to keep from breaking.
For the sake of the true individuals involved all names have been changed.
Preventing the absurdly unpreventable. 