Where Will You Be For The Revolution?

[geoffox]

Where Will You Be For The Revolution?

“We’ll figure it out.”
The words are written next to “BENJY WAS HERE” and “CONNECT the CUTS” in a friendly, loopy scrawl. It sticks out, surrounded by other faded notes under the desk. They never clean under the desks, so cluttered memories lie.
You walk. You walk and think about what’s underneath the desk and wonder what to believe. The staff opened up several doors so that everyone can walk in endless circles around the unit.
There’s a black radio playing the Beatles.
You walk and think.
This psych ward is not like the stories you’ve read. There are no painted doors or particularly funny, quirky, cute people. There is no outside, or wires, or color. There are four hallways, three telephones, two time shifts and one TV.
It is not what you’d expect from movies, books, or television shows. It is a place set in limbo, with too many ladybugs trapped between the barred windows.
You start a new lap.
The first thing they make you do is sign a stack of papers. Then you’re sent to a bare white room with the sparsest of furniture. The pillow crinkles uncomfortably and the adjoining bathroom flushes too loudly. When you stumble into bed, bleary eyed from exhaustion, you’re aware that everything feels blisteringly, searingly real.
There are posters on the hallway walls. They all say “Sunshine from Darkness, Mental Illness Awareness October,” followed by a specific year. They all have pictures of puppies, or kittens, or flowers on them. They are all equally ineffective.
During sessions, everyone is told to examine their thoughts. They are told that things won’t stay bad forever.
The words under the desk—”MY SCARS BLEED”—written by the many patients that have lived in your room—”it hurts”—show a different side of things. You wonder whether to believe that things will be better, or that you are simply too dark for the sun to reach.
Left turn by the nurses station. This place is all left turns. Never right.
They said you’d be out in a few days, now it’s been five. There are new patients almost every day. It’s a cycle. That’s what you learn after a day or two. You wake up and you go through the motions like the schedule says, constantly drift around in a half drowsy state—
You stay there in that constant cycle and people give you different directions but in reality you can only make left turns in a lopsided square until structured free time is over. In reality, you sleep on an uncomfortable bed, surrounded by uncomfortable people, living an uncomfortable life.
In reality the words under your gray desk with corners clamber on top of each other, shouting for your attention with faded pencil and stark pens that you’re not allowed to carry.
It’ll be even harder when you finally reach the outside world, to meet your triggers and stressors head on. It’ll be harder when you’re allowed to make more than three phone calls a day, when you’re allowed to make friends with the people you meet.
But since reality is a white hallway and dark carpet, you listen to the Beatles, and keep walking.
Because once the music stops, you’ll have to decide, for real, if you want to go left or right.

[geoffox]

Um. this is based off an actual event in the psych ward I went to, where I essentially walked in circles around the ward while listening to the Beatles. Then I asked for paper and wrote this. and it happened.