Bipolarland, Texas part 12

10

Day three.

So we talked incessantly about what happened last night. We have a group with the guy I saw before, last night. He introduces himself as Jim, then starts writing on a huge pad of papers on a stand.

He draws a triangle. Writes “thoughts” at one point of the triangle, “emotions” at another point, “behaviors” at the third. He goes on a little while about obvious things like “thoughts, feelings and behaviors rely on each other.” He calls what he is going to do today Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, says a form of it is more recently known as Rational Emotive Therapy.

He hands out papers telling us how to be more constructive and less negative, listing and explaining examples of things we say, think, feel and do that don’t get us anywhere.

When we get to the “should statements” part of it Jim says passionately, “'Should’ing is a form of violence. It really is.” Finally, I can confirm that I’m not the only one that thinks so, but that professionals think so too. Going “You should do this because it will be good for you” is a “should” statement and an assumption. An assumption that they know better than you what’s good for you. And when you are right, “should” statements are often misconstrued as trying to teach the person something he or she already knows about their own life, which can be insulting to the listener and embarrassing for both of them.

There’s a lot more I learn in that class that day. I don’t remember it right now. This class is followed by another one, one about coping with getting in trouble due to your mental illness. “Most of you already have coping mechanisms, but those methods are often not the best ones. You get arrested. So you act all crazy and say, ‘I’m hearing voices.’ ‘I want to kill myself.’ So that hopefully they’ll take you here instead of to jail.” The class brings so many of our issues to light and helps us solve them that we all pretty much stand in line to thank Jim when he's done.

As we all head back into the dayroom, Nadine and Marla call me over to the desk. Nadine says, “Get some water first. Your pills just got here from the pharmacy.”

When I present myself at the desk with a cup of water, Mr. Clean comes out of the back room behind the desk and places two paper bags in front of me. They have my name on them. I look inside. Whew! It’s my stuff! Clothes, toothpaste… even my shampoo and makeup are in there! One of my friends, or all of them, are probably hanging around town waiting for the visiting hours!

“Here you go. Ten milligrams of Sinequan,” Marla says, dropping a pill into a little paper pill cup.

I swallow the pill apprehensively.

The shower gets the whole bathroom wet—the toilet, the sink, the mirror, the shelf with Johanna’s and LaShonda’s toiletries. Lucky the toilet paper is in an enclosed dispenser. But I feel good. The warm water feels nice. I have towels to mop up the bathroom floor, and I’m cleaning the bathroom floor with my foot and some soap from the dispenser next to the sink. My mood is on the way up again.

After I dry off myself and the floor, I check my two paper bags. It appears Don just grabbed any random clothes of mine, so some of them are my weird clothes. I find my little Dutch girl outfit, minus the wooden shoes; my American Indian outfit complete with the headdress; and thankfully three normal outfits, though they’re still themed. The doc will probably diagnose me with Borderline or Multiple Personality Disorder. (Is Borderline a multiple-personality disorder? It sounds like it. I’m not sure though.) But I don’t have personalities to go along with my outfits. I swear it’s just for style, and to confuse people that don’t know me.

I put on my hippie outfit: the tie-dyed shirt and my flimsy, floor-length skirt with dyed stripes in every color of the rainbow. The dangling peace sign earrings are nowhere to be found, probably too sharp. I put the two thin strings of beads around my neck. (I had five, but the three longer, thicker ones are probably behind the desk with my wooden shoes et al, because I’m still on precautions.) The rope I normally wear around my waist with this outfit is also not there.

I stick the tie-dyed bandanna back in the bag for after my hair dries, and even take the time to tie the ten or so friendship bracelets woven out of different-colored string around my arm, and that’s tricky to do with one hand. I giggle because I realize that I could make a rope out of them and hang myself, though of course I don't want to.

It’s lunch time. Better be something good. I hate sausages and breakfast biscuits so I gave mine to Johanna and had no breakfast this morning.

For lunch, it’s disgusting quiche. But the dessert is okay… jello, big deal, but it’s something. I also eat the little bun that’s like those cheap little buns that come in plastic bags of about twenty in the grocery store. Normally I wouldn’t have eaten that, but it tastes good with butter because I’m hungry. Then I go around to all the tables and ask point-blank if they want their bread, their butter, their jello, until Nadine comes to me and says, “If you’ hungry just ask us. There ain’t no reason to be bummin’ off the others.”

“You mean I can have some more?” I jump up and down in excitement.

“I’ll ask if there’s any extras. In the meantime, take a chill pill.”

“Yaaaay! Thank you so much, Nadine!”

People are staring at me, but not with meanness. Some are curious. Others have that “Been there too and done that when I was manic” look. Kenisha comes out of her room with a paper bag full of something, I don’t know what. Damn; she’s probably going to do a show and tell and I’ll just have to stand or sit quietly and listen. Wait… I can do a show-and-tell too! But with what, though?

“I was just about to take a shower and found this in the restroom!” Kenisha suddenly shouts. She removes a plastic jar from the bag and lifts it high above her head. It’s one of those jars you have to piss in for a pregnancy or drug test.

I lean in closer to look… and then smell the most awful smell… it smells just like…

“SHIT!” I shout, and I leap backwards, fall over an empty chair behind me, and shout “SHIT!” again because I must have broken my ass bones, or whatever.

“Is it really?” Stunted Growth Boy asks with genuine curiosity.

“You sure it ain’t yours, Kenisha?” the middle-aged woman with the last name Delorme says. "I mean… you seem to get off on really SHITTY topics of discussion.”

“It’s hers,” Diamond Girl says with finality. “She found it in the restroom, alright… she put it in there… then picked it up again! I KNOW HOW SHE OPERATES! She even admits she smeared shit all over a restroom before.”

“No, it ain’t! It’s Mrs. Roundtree’s! I swear to God the Holy Father that she told me last night she had babies in her shit! Then she dragged me into the restroom and SHOWED ME! She said, ‘You see here? You see here, Kenisha? You better see here!’”

The Indian woman, Mrs. Roundtree, just sits at a table all by herself and says nothing. She sits ramrod-straight, trying not to move or else she might give away what she’s thinking, or her guilt, or her embarrassment, or whatever.

“It’s Kenisha!” Johanna says. “Who vould pick up such a dirty thing? Even if it was their own! Who else would—who else would pick it up? Unless they’re manic! She’s manic! She vill do anything!”

The jar is cracked. Pretty soon the whole unit will be puking up the quiche they just ate or are still eating. Quiche vomit must be the nastiest thing ever, right up there with shit.

Fumes from the awful most Godforsaken biohazard ever are taking over the entire room. Whoever’s shit it is, what in the holy HELL do they eat?

Finally, I get the sense to run for it, or rather, from it, and the others are getting up too, trying to wave the smell away from them, pinching their noses shut, pulling their shirts up over their faces. I run into my bedroom, slam the door shut, run down the longish room to the bathroom. And shut myself in. I can hear other doors slamming shut too. I remember that song from Bible camp: “Shut the door; keep out the devil. Shut the door; keep the devil in the ni-ight. Shut the door; keep out the devil. Light a candle; everything is alright.” I mean, if I had a scented candle and some matches I would light it in an instant. I mean, normally I would have opened the windows, but the windows don’t seem to open.

Hmmmmm, how about I just stay in the bathroom and clean it up? I mean, there's no shit in the bathroom, but I just feel like being clean suddenly. At least I’ll have some place that isn’t gross and disgusting.

I get the towels out of my cupboard and use the shower to wet the floor and then use up half the soap in the dispenser on the floor. When I’m done with the floor, I clean the mirror with paper towels and soap and water, then the sink, making sure not to miss the taps and faucet. I let soapy water run down the drain for a while to clean out the pipes. Out of soap, I borrow LaShonda’s shampoo (I’m guessing it’s hers and not Johanna’s because it says it’s for certain types of fake hair. Johanna’s hair is real and LaShonda’s is very obviously made of plastic, or at least something that contains plastic. Not that it matters whose shampoo I use; I’ll make it up to them by being the happiest and most manic and most likable and lovable person ever and make the world a better place for everyone!)

I scrub the outside of the toilet until it shines, then do the floor under and in front of the toilet and sink again. I take the toiletries off the shelf and scrub that down, on both sides and the edge. I dry everything with more paper towels, then wash the bottles of shampoo and stuff and put them back on the shelf.

Now what about the bedroom?

I get twenty paper towels from the bathroom and then realize I have no soap except for my roommates’ shampoo. There must be a laundry room here. There must be soap in there. I find the laundry room. They have a nice washer and dryer. There’s a jug of laundry soap but I can’t take the whole thing. Okay, I’ll just fill up the cup that’s the cover of the bottle and take that.

I start with my side of the bedroom, the inside, and wet the paper towels and put some laundry soap on them and scrub the floor with the towels for the next two hours. Johanna comes in and asks what I’m doing.

“I’m cleaning up. I wish I had some bleach.”

“Vat hass gotten into you?” she asks with concern, amusement and irritation in her voice. She just wants to lay down in a nice, dry room. I don’t blame her.

I use up all the paper towels in our bathroom and the little restroom off the dayroom. Just as I’m getting the floor washed, Mother Hubbard and Marla come in and ask, “Are you alright in there, Anne-Marie? Is everything okay in here?”

I just continue to scrub the floor dry with the terry cloth hand towels. “Oh, everything’s great!” I chirp. “I just washed the fl—“

“You don’t have to do that, honey; housekeeping does that,” Marla says.

“Well, now they can direct their attention to the REAL problem.”

“Do you need something to calm you down? You seem a little bit excitable today,” Mother Hubbard says.

“I’m fine. I like to be productive. And I want to make sure that my room is at least not as gross and disgusting as whoever shat in that plastic jar.”

“We found out who, um, did it,” Marla says. “But we can’t say. It’s confidential.”

But it becomes obvious who shat in the cracked plastic jar by the time dinner rolls around (and Diamond Girl, annoyed at Mr. Delorme blowing his nose at the lunch table and then running to the bathroom after telling everyone he had the runs, started calling him a crackpot).

Mrs. Roundtree, apparently, the quiet aboriginal woman, left her shit in the toilet to show the doctor, insisting that there were babies in it, but having no access to any container to put it in. Kenisha kept flushing the toilet (until she learned that Mrs. R. had a problem that would not go away with anything but kindness, but Kenisha had limited kindness… even without her own issues and with the fact that she herself had smeared shit in a restroom before). After that, Kenisha just used the little restroom I was searched in, letting Mrs. R. do what she damn well pleased in their private bathroom.

After Mrs. Roundtree snatched the piss jar from behind the desk and kept it (with its stool sample) in her bed with her, her roommates (Kenisha and the Muslim woman) were already sleeping on couches in the dayroom.

But now, there’s another problem… they need to take a shower but can’t get into their bathroom because it just smells too nasty. Kenisha and Mrs. R. shout at each other at the top of their lungs, standing with the ten or so round tables between them. Before, I had thought Mrs. Roundtree was mute, or too concentrated with her Indian life and thoughts and meditation to care about us.

Maybe that was the problem.

“Go put your shit in the doctor’s office, not in my room!”

“I need to spend time with my babies! You already killed most of them! You’re killing my children!”

Kenisha looks at the desk and shouts, “I wanna change rooms! Or let me sleep on the couch again! Or she’s gotta change her room, because I ain’t sleeping with perverted shit weasels no more and I gotta take a shower too!”

Nadine: “We’ll see what we can do, Kenisha. But don’t count on anything.”

Kenisha hangs her head, rolls her eyes, shuffles away, looks at the rack of magazines. She picks one up, then another, then a third one, saying “Boring” with each one, then drops it on the floor. “Boring… boring… boring… damn, I need to watch some TV! Hey, homies, talk to me, I’m bored!”

Gangsta Guy: “I’ll talk to you!”

“Cummon then; let’s walk and talk.” Kenisha yanks him up by his hand.

The Delormes are talking about how they heard that poor Mrs. Roundtree had a miscarriage after her drunk stepfather beat her once when she was fifteen and her mother unceremoniously flushed the baby down a toilet. Even though sanitation workers found the baby and the mother was charged with abuse of a corpse, Mrs. Roundtree never got over it. “It was on the news and everything,” Mrs. Delorme says.

Johanna is writing a letter on fancy designer stationery probably made in Germany.

Jingling Jangling Jewelry Girl is going around asking everyone if they have an extra change of clothes she can wear until the Muslim lady (pinching her nose shut) goes into her room and comes back with one of her floral-print one-piece Muslim costumes, this one red and orange.

The geek with the taped-together glasses goes around to every table asking everyone if they know how satellites work. They all say no, or not really. “Well, this is how they work,” he says, cutting off their previous conversations to explain.

All in all, things are getting sort of boring.

“Group time! Group!”

You know what? My mood is going down again. I’m too tired to go to group. I go to bed instead.

When I wake up, feeling no better, and go out into the dayroom for supper, Kenisha and Mrs. Roundtree are both nowhere to be seen.

It turns out that (according to Johanna) in group last night all they talked about was how what happened with Mrs. Roundtree affected us personally and how we saw that she was a danger to herself and others, as shit is a biohazard. Then Nadine, apparently, went around asking all the patients how they were dangerous to themselves and others, and a fight broke out, with Buzz Cut Boy and Diamond Girl insisting they had just been offered help with their homelessness and depression, and that they were not dangerous. Satellite Boy had then joined in, saying they had promised him help with his social issues but all they were doing was giving him meds and making him attend therapy that didn’t apply to him. Then the others had insisted that the CBT had helped them… it helped everyone… how could it not have helped him? They were offended. So was Satellite Boy. He went into a rage never before seen coming from a skinny geek, a rage that knocked over a table while Diamond Girl and Sean (I finally remember Buzz Cut Boy’s name) were still sitting at it. Group was adjourned.

I came out just in time to see two police officers leading Buzz-Cut Boy, Diamond Girl and Satellite Boy out the door, perhaps never to be seen by us again. Sean and Abromowicz (I can finally remember Satellite Boy’s name too! My memory and mood are getting better already! I love excitement!) are in handcuffs. The girl’s hands are free but she’s crying. She says, “We came here to get better!”

And then they’re gone.

Johanna says, “Shes going to ze ‘ospital. Zey are going to the jail.”

My mood is going up again. Then suddenly, it goes down. She’s going to get help, believe it or not. But what will happen to me?

“Where are Kenisha and the serial shitter?” I ask Johanna.

“Oh, zey went. They took zem to the ‘arris County.”

“We’re in Harris County.”

Then it dawns on me she means the Harris County Psychiatric Center.

Two new girls that replaced them, Ja’Bria Sanborn and Ciara Kershen, are talking about how Ja’Bria has to go home to feed her cats, turn off the stove and pick up her kids from daycare, and how Ciara is worried about how she’s going to water her plants.

My depression knows no bounds. It’s everywhere. It affects everyone, making them hate me. Making me hard to get along with. My father was right. I’m hard to get along with. My mother was right. It’s always my fault when there’s an argument. My brother Ira was right when he said there’s something about me that turns people off. My aunt Rosalie was right when she said people had a right to hate me, yet at the same time that I was a hateful person. When someone abuses or picks on me, it’s always my fault. I had to move out and I got shit for doing that too, but I’d have gotten shit and more shit had I stayed. Mother said God would punish me for abandoning my family. I said that God doesn’t punish but that the devil would punish her for saying that to me.

But I want a life. I want a life beyond this depression. I want a life beyond them. But I don’t deserve it. They all said I don’t deserve it. They said freedom comes to people who respect their families. I tried, Mama, I tried. But you didn’t respect me. Isn’t THAT disrespecting your family? Your anger knows no bounds either. “No, that’s YOUR anger,” she said. “You’re projecting your meanness and ugliness onto me and everyone else in this household. GET OUT!”

Good idea.