Story Peeps Change Lives

Finding Freedom in a Locked Ward

Member: JustJump

As a child my soul was destroyed by a dysfunctional family. As a result, the first decade of my adult life became a revolving door of locked psych wards, involuntary committals and intense therapy. I was hospitalized 9 times in 6 years. In the short interim of sanity between hospitalizations I struggled to keep a marriage together. After the 8th hospitalization he left and I officially failed as a wife. In hindsight I'm surprised he stuck around as long as he did. I suppose that's one of those silly things love does to a person. My divorce was short; no assets, no children, no shared debt, no connection. In the days following the divorce I took on the task of punishing myself for being such a waste of a human being. Lower than low. Scum. Scarred and unwashed for days, my therapist arranged a voluntary committal. I was more than ready to crawl in a hole and die, it was almost comforting to know there was a place I would be safe; the ward. When I arrived the normal psych ward had no available beds. As a result I was assigned a room in the geriatric psych ward. During check-in I found it odd the hospital had a separate psych ward for the older folks, but after I was shown my room, my assigned locker and my fellow patients, everything started to make sense. It took only a few hours to distinguish the dynamics of the ward. In a normal psych ward activities are scheduled in an effort to get people up doing things; craft, emotional lessons, therapy, group activities... it was designed to help people get well, or at least on the right track. This geriatric ward was much, much different. The geriatric psych ward was one of three things: 1. For crazies who were medically close to dying 2. The interim between residential psych care and nursing home psych care 3. The wanderers: homeless, no family, no were to go. The permanent crazies. It was #3 that gave me the epiphany that changed my life. There was a woman there, I would guess late 50's, who fell into category 3. She and I had the same hair color, same fair skin, same retro-style (although for very different reasons), same general body build... she was me, 30 years in the future, IF I didn't make a serious effort to get well. I watched her wander the halls, peeking into occupied rooms, running her hand along the wall's trim as she paced, mumbling, shaking, occasionally bursting out with a long, indistinguishable rants and then retreating back to her own assigned room, only to be seen again at meal time. After dinner she would sit in the small TV room with a plastic knife and make weak, pointless jabs to her arm. Even though her efforts were obviously in vain she was still somehow comforted by the punishments of her past. She was alone, her mental illness had swallowed her like a vindictive snake, piece by piece. She was me, but in the future. I was watching myself do all these things. It was the epiphany I had been looking for for YEARS. I couldn't become that future me. I wanted to become something more, something better, cleaner, purer, more whole. I could not, WOULD NOT, allow my mental illness to swallow me. That was four years ago and I haven't been hospitalized since.

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0 #2 Thank you. — m.fermo 2011-12-14 22:09

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you. Thank you so much for this.

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0 #1 Thanks for posting your story — kobra000 2010-07-06 11:17

I too have been hospitalized for mental illness many times,and have came to more than a few truly shocking epiphanies. i think one being that we BS ourselves so much in life, ie telling ourselves we're worthless,no good,unlovable, etc etc,that we start believing it,but way down deep inside us is that tiny little part that refuses! to accept it,and i truly believe that's where all the problems come from,that constant struggle with our own selves. I thank you for sharing your story and i hope you continue to lead a happy and better life.

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