Bipolarland, Texas part 9

 7

The NeuroPsychiatric Center is a building of its own on the site of the Ben Taub General Hospital. A lit-up, white, rectangular sign, with a MHMR logo and “NeuroPsychiatric Center” on it marks the area near the entrance.

One of the support group leaders, Rachel, the leader of the bipolar group, enthusiastically agrees to drive me there. Instead of blasting dirty-South rap music in the car like my boyfriend Jakub does, she actually talks to me, which is nice.

“I was in there myself twice, once when I was really high and once when I was really low,” Rachel prattles in a bubbly, genuinely friendly voice that should be making me feel better, but my damn depression is getting in the way. Why do I have to go down when I’m talking to such a nice person? It’s not fair. I could have had a lot of fun talking to her. I probably seem totally unfriendly and indifferent.

But I can tell her that. I do. And she says soothingly, “That’s alright; that’s totally alright. I’ve totally been there. I’d give you a big hug, but we’re on the highway.”

Finally, we turn into Hermann Park. A girl sits under a tree smoking a cigarette. Two bags sit next to her. They look exactly like the bags they gave Jules to put his stuff in when he left the Harris County Psychiatric Center. Square bags with handles, woven from plastic ribbons in black and white and pink and brown and darker red.

A group of black kids and another further-away group of white kids stand around in two circles talking and laughing and making stupid noises, hollering and hooting and yodelling and whistling and screaming and shrieking and “whaaaaa-ooooo”ing. All of them have backpacks. I can smell pot. I breathe in deeply. I don't do drugs, but maybe this will help my nerves.

A Hispanic woman with her two kids in a stroller who happens to be passing by rushes to put her scarf over her baby’s face.

We pass through the rest of the park, dotted with the homeless, the druggies, the runaways, the hookers, the teenagers, the pimps and the nutjobs, and we’re on a busy street again.

And then, we’re there.

This time, it’s surreal. I’m actually going in. I mean, I’m actually going into the psych ward to stay for maybe days... through the doors, through the metal detector, over to the desk. Rachel tells them I’m on file; the latest info has been faxed to them. They tell me I can go right on upstairs since it was already arranged for me to be here. A warm, grandmotherly black lady tells me to follow her. I ask if I can fill out an advance directive form first. I expect them to give me shit, and I’m ready for it. But they don’t bat an eyelash. The young Asian girl, so young she might even be younger than me, hands me the papers and I grab the pen on the desk and she’s even nice enough to tell me to take my time.

I envy her.

So young and with such an interesting job.

Mind you, she’s only a receptionist.

But still. In here it’s got to be interesting.

What is she? Seventeen?

I’m twenty-two and the best job I had was shredding papers in the welfare office.

Anyway… concentrate. The advance directive.

I check the box to revoke my consent for electroconvulsive therapy. I order those numbers so that it says that I would rather be medicated first if I got rowdy, and if that didn’t work to use seclusion, then restraint if that didn’t work. Even though I THINK that the last two are unacceptable and even illegal unless the person is not suffering, and that it’s only acceptable to medicate someone if the meds make the person feel better more than they restrain the person.

So anyway, I forbid male staff to search or examine me naked, and I forbid anyone from giving me Haldol or Seroquel. Same old questions, same old answers. It hasn’t changed since my last time here, except that this time I’m actually going in and this time I had to ask for the advance directive booklet, and they really need to make a better one. My mind is already churning and turning again, figuring out what questions I would have in my advance directive if I were to make an AD form myself.

I wish I could just shut off my damn brain!

One slightest bit of stress and it goes into overdrive.

I hand my papers in. Rachel is still standing there. She smiles at me. I thank her profusely for listening to my complaining and offering her support, and she tells me no problem, she’s been there, and that she’s looking forward to seeing me again in group. Then the black lady takes me up to 2 North.

People. So many people; such a diverse crowd of people! Sitting, standing, walking around, in one case doing pushups on the floor.

A pregnant Spanish girl. A geeky guy with a Jewish nose and taped-together glasses. A gangsta-type guy in a baggy red football jersey, the waist of his jeans starting at his knees. I wonder how often he trips and falls.

An American-Indian woman sitting in a corner all by herself, on a chair she must have pulled up, guarding the little kitchen area behind her, with its microwave and little fridge and coffee can thing and water jug with a spout.

A white person whose gender I can’t tell, in a dress, wearing makeup, but with a beard, his/her/their hair up in a ponytail starting at the top of their head. A black woman with a red weave, talking to the whole room literally, just standing, walking around, gesticulating dramatically and laughing, making eye contact with every last person in the room as she tells of how her boyfriend sold all her shit at a garage sale. Some people pay attention, some half pay attention, many don’t pay attention at all.

A boy who looks no older than thirteen, though I know he’s got to be at least eighteen because I heard somewhere that this unit is for people eighteen and older.

A wrinkled old lady, seventy-five or so, dressed like a whore, resplendent from permed white hair to black fishnet shirt to lacy red bra to red leather skirt the size of a dish towel to black knee-high leather boots.

A guy who weighs at least 500 pounds.

Two hard or at least ignorant-but-streetwise-seeming people; the girl in simple, non-stylish poor-people’s clothes, men’s clothes, the guy in second-hand or just very well-worn but stylish clothes. That guy and that girl, along with the boy who looks thirteen, stare at me, feeling me out. So do a handful of others: the girl whose fake hair looks like it's made of acrylic, Gangsta Guy, an old man and woman sitting together, the girl with the red weave. The red-weave girl is now going on about how she was a “brewmistress” in jail somewhere in Canada in the 1980s. She says she’s Canadian and illegal in the country, having come in illegally with her American boyfriend.

I stare right back at all of the ones who are staring, my eyes passing over their faces. Me with my social anxiety, and here they are thinking “What’s the new girl like? How can I peg or label her?” Immediately, I feel ashamed. I was the one pegging and labeling THEM a lot of the time over the last few minutes. The damage having racist, sexist, ageist, sizeist, classist, everythingist parents can cause!

“Anne-Marie, come here. I need you to fill this out.” It’s a smiling, round-faced, short-haired, middle-aged woman in a bright red business suit. The tag hanging from her neck says her name is Marla Goethe, and she’s wearing pretty gold earrings, each with a red heart-shaped stone set into the bottom curve of the ring. The stones match her gold-buttoned red suit perfectly, as do her red Stilettos with gold buckles and her red lipstick. I wonder if someone custom-designed and custom-made that outfit for her.

I also wonder how the hell she'd be able to break up a fight on the unit wearing that outfit.

She notices me looking at her outfit and gives me a broad smile, but doesn’t say anything. So I sit down at the low part of the staff desk and fill out the consent form. I feel like I'm signing my life over to the military.

Giving myself over into the NPC’s custody means that they can keep me for as long as the doctor thinks is necessary, up to seven days… and that if I’m still not good to go after the seven days, or I become unmanageable, they can transfer me to another facility, like the HCPC, which Jules was in for twelve days, and one can be held at the HCPC under a court order. Because the HCPC is the real psychiatric hospital.

But that won’t happen to me. I’m not that far gone. I’m probably the sanest person in this place.