August 28th
August 28th
How can people claim to know who they are? What does it even mean to be “who I am.” That’s basically a paradox in itself, isn’t it?
Nineteen years of life and two different visits to the mental hospital later and I’m still no closer to figured out who I am than when I first gained consciousness. Maybe I’m just a combination of all of the antidepressants, weed, and sprite in my system. Maybe that’s who I am.
I never liked being here, in the hospital that is. They basically had to drag me by my hair when I first got admitted six years ago. I know every corner of this place. Every broken ceiling tile, every nurses stand with a wheel that’s about to pop off, which couch to sit on to have the best view of the highway, and lastly… every other patient. The ones who have come for the night, the ones who get admitted then released back in society, the ones who come and go once or twice, and finally the ones who leave and fall off the face of the earth.
Remember in all the 2000s movies where everyone in the cafeteria had their own group and they always had to navigate where to sit? Yep. Same deal here. It’s our own little nut house high school hierarchy. First off you have your normal ones, the anxious and slightly depressed kids whose parents sent them here because they didn’t see the results in regulartherapy quick enough. Then there’s the little ghostbusters, the ones who swear that if they were to jump out their window they could fly over the city. (And now all our windows have locks and bars on them… thank you psychosis kids… very cool.) You got the hot and cold ticking time bombs. You thought the delusion of your high school bully was bad, yeah… try someone who one minute is basically Mother Teresa then within one slight inconvenience can magically shapeshifter into Mother Gothel. Then there’s your manics, think a bridezilla on crack cocaine. And of course, you can have a real mental hospital experience without getting a chair thrown past your face during lunch, which then leads to an all out brawl between somebody who could be the next big competitor in WWE and someone who’s only ever competed in a bible drill. Finally the suicide kids. The one who tried to end it all but failed and ended up in a new kind of hell.
Freestone is the biggest facility in the entire country. There’s entire wards dedicated to different disorders. It’s like being at Hogwarts with everyone’s different “houses.” Except instead of magic, we all share an abundance of mania. My magic wand is all of the pill bottles I’ve lined on my walls to form a mural of defeat. They want us all to “intermingle” though, you know… so the different mentally insane people can take a crash course on how they can be even more fucked up. It’s great though, we all get along really well, and by get along, I mean I don’t talk to anyone.
These aren’t my people. I’m not supposed to be here. I’m not crazy.
I’m not.
People don’t believe me, but I’m not. They’ll say stuff like “well then, why are you here?”
I don’t know.
How am I supposed to know the answer to a question like that when I don’t even know who I am?
