4:25am June 27, 2013

Reply to warlocksexalways about institutions

Since my tumblr client won’t let me post it to the thread.

I think institutions in general tend to suck, even when nothing obviously awful happens in them. Actually I’d say especially when. Sometimes the worst parts are the parts you can’t name, rather than the Part where they try to murder you and then torture you for fun when they don’t manage to get away with it. (Everyone acts like that’s the worst thing that happened to me in them. No, the worst stuff is stuff nobody can see.That’s one thing that can make the obvious hellholes sometimes better than the ones where nothing obvious goes wrong)

The last time I was in, I got out faster than ever because they decided I was the DD system’s problem rather than the psych system’s.

So…

What I noticed more clearly than ever (because I was an adult and had now spent some of my life not living in places where awful things happened to me, so more basis for comparison…)

Was that the psych ward was swirling with violence. It was everywhere in the air. I saw no physical violence, although I heard a little through the wall adjacent the men’s ward. And I saw only a bit of psychological violence because I wasn’t there long.

But the violence was everywhere. I could even see it. It was hard to see through the air itself, because of it. And I could feel it, beating against me, trying to get inside me, trying to make me do things that could ensure my death or a very long stay depending.

It took every ounce of energy I had to fight it. To not let it get inside me. To do nothing but sit and rock back and forth in the dayroom. I didn’t even have the energy to type, I was so focused on keeping it out of me. I don’t think I’d have won that fight if I’d been there for long.

I could see it swirling in and out of everyone else there, the patients, the staff, everyone, but having different effects in each person.

And that stuff is why institutions are so awful. It’s not what happens there as much as the stuff in the air, that does horrible things to you without anyone saying a word. It exists some other places too (including the house I grew up in, hence not noticing a big contrast as a kid - I later found out the people there before us locked their kids in their rooms, my parents had to switch the doorknobs around, so I assume it had an institution-like feel).

I don’t really know what it is, I just know I’m not the only person who picks up on it. Well everyone seems to pick up on it, but a lot of people assume it’s something internal rather than external. Which is easy to do in a place where everyone has emotional problems. Assume you feel bad because of the reasons you’re there. But it’s not that. Being suicidal in there isn’t like being suicidal just before you go in or just after leaving, although the stuff does cling to you for a bit.

Being in there made me feel like I was made out of Swiss cheese, and the violence kept going THROUGH me.

Anyway, whatever that is, is hands down the worst thing about institutions. The more obvious things that go wrong in there just seem to be manifestations of it. But it’s there even when they aren’t obviously doing anything wrong. Even in some of the better ones.

(Actually the best one I ever went to had a nurse with a talent for chasing that stuff away from you.I’m pretty sure given her background, she knew what she was doing, but would never have said so because she was bipolar and they’d have treated her like one of us. You’re not ever supposed to talk about that stuff after all, it’s just proof you’re crazy. Except all of us noticed it. Especially at the places that had been institutions since forever. Like this one place that was a TB sanitorium and then a psych institution and then a nursing home specializing in Alzheimer’s. So it’s over a hundred years old and been an institution the whole time. Places like that collect violence like food collects ants.)

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