Quiet Room - Lori Schiller [67]
But most of the others seemed cold, indifferent and hateful. Everyone, it seemed, had simply decided I was a problem that had to be solved. So everyone was extra tough with me. One of the nurses sitting supervision at my door almost seemed to hate me.
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” she barked in my door when I was sitting on my bed one day crying. “You're acting like a chronic mental patient.”
Another woman, a social worker, seemed to delight in lording it over me. I tried explaining to her how badly I wanted out of the hospital.
“Well, if you're hearing voices, you belong in a hospital,” she said coldly, in a snippy, social worker voice.
For his part, my psychiatrist had decided that I could control my behavior but had chosen not to.
“You're not cooperating with your treatment,” he said.
I fought them every way I could. Underneath, far from where even I could become aware of it, the Voices and I were collaborating on a secret mission: to act up so badly that I would be kicked out of the hospital. For just as the last time, I firmly believed I was not sick, and did not belong in a hospital.
The problem was, as I let the Voices gain power over me, I lost all power of my own. I started out not wanting to control myself, and ended up not being able to.
Impulse became action.
At first, I was simply provocative and rude.
At community meetings, I would spray the room with my hostile comments.
“Who's going to miss that big cow anyway?” I'd say when a nurse's departure was announced. “Big deal. A load of stupid cookies and brownies for $37.50. Who cares?” I'd respond to the bake sale announcements.
After a while, my behavior escalated to violence. I threw a backgammon set that other patients were playing with across the room. I banged on the walls and windows. I overturned furniture. I was constantly trying to escape.
Once I ran away to Dr. Rockland's office. It was early evening but the sky was already dark and there were no stars. Someone going in or out of the unit was careless; the door was open a fraction of a second too long, and off I went, down the stairs, down the halls, and then outside the hospital. The ground was cold under my feet. I had no shoes on. The staff had taken away my shoes as a precaution against just this kind of escape. Luckily, I didn't have far to run outdoors. Dr. Rockland's office was just in the old 2 North Annex.
When I arrived, I thought I was in luck. For there, still working, was Dr. Rockland's secretary, Elaine. She was a friend of mine and I was glad to see her. My whole body was trembling. She gave me a cigarette.
I thought we would keep on sitting and talking until Dr. Rock-land arrived. After all, it was what we had done so many times in the past. When Dr. Rockland was late for sessions, many was the afternoon I sat chatting with Elaine while she offered me coffee and candies to make up for his tardiness. I could trust Elaine, I thought.
How wrong I was. She was just like the rest of them. She called the unit. Almost immediately, they came from the unit to carry me back like an animal. Why did Elaine turn me in? I was only trying to get help. If I could only get to Dr. Rockland, he would tell them I was fine and didn't need to be in the hospital anymore. He had put me in here, and he could get me out. I felt like Elaine was a traitor. My Voices were harsher.
“Witch! Bitch! Sorceress!” they shouted at Elaine as the burly staffers lugged me up the stairs and back to the unit.
My Voices egged me on, but they never seemed satisfied. I was never good enough for the rude chanting demons in my head. The only thing that really seemed to placate them was when I hurt myself. At their orders I twisted the cord of my lamp against my neck to try to strangle myself. I unscrewed a light bulb during the dark night hours when no one could see and hid it in my room, intending to break it and cut myself