I had been seeing a therapist for six months when I was 19. The therapist was young, pretty and (to me)sexy. I had quite a few lustful thoughts about her.
But I never told her what was really going on with me. I was in a prodamal stage and thinking and doing weird things but I was such a good actor that I went into my weekly sessions seemingly happy and just chatted and kept it light. I didn’t tell her that on the way to and from my appointments in my parents car I tried to come as close to oncoming traffic as I could get because I was suicidal.
I didn’t tell her I was taking the bus at night to strange places where I got out and had no idea where I was or what I was doing. I just like being with her and looking at her because she was so sweet and nice. And she was 30 years old and at that time older women were what really seemed sexy to me.
But then the head psychiatrist called a meeting with me, my parents, my therapist and him. And he talked to me and my parents for just a short while and quickly said, “He needs to go immediately into a psyche ward.” I remember my therapist started crying because she had no idea how bad off I was. I felt bad for her but she did nothing wrong. In those days I could fool anyone into thinking I was normal (normal for me, anyways).
So I spent two weeks in my first ever psyche ward. It was over a hundred miles away and my parents drove me there and checked me in and talked to me and then left. I was thinking about myself so much that literally right now is the first time that I thought of how they must of felt. I knew they were worried because I saw it on their faces. But looking at it now they must have been devastated. Nothing like this had happened in my family before. And they had almost no warning about how far I had sunk.
The hospital was nice, I’ll give it that. It was a small ward, maybe 15 patients. In fact it was beautiful and it was in an unincorporated area in the hills. Which meant it wasn’t exactly out in the country but there was no businesses or office buildings around it, or anything. The land all around it was not developed. It was near a park and a 7-11 but no other construction was around it.
It must have been spring or summer because the weather was perfect, no rain or clouds. The food was good, there was both a ping-table and a pool table and a volleyball court and a recreation room.
There were showers and baths and a washer and dryer. And for an added bonus, some girl I liked there came up to me one night and started kissing me so I got to make out with her! But last but not least my mental state was terrible. I was not psychotic when I got in but after they gave me medication I entered a whole new state of being and sure was psychotic when I got out. The symptoms were horrible.
It was weird because one week I’m living with my parents, still going places and doing things on my own, didn’t feel crazy, staying up late most nights watching Johnny Carson and doing yard work at our families friends houses for $2.50 an hour picking up an extra $10 or $11 dollars for pocket money… And then the next week, I’m in a psyche ward, shuffling around barely able to walk where every step brought on mental agony.
It was weird, and very new and painful. This was my introduction to the mental health system. And thirty eight years later I’ve come out the other side to an extent. But a couple years after that first hospitalization I was in a vocational program and some of us were saying, “Once you get in the mental health system, you never get out.”