“We’ll figure it out.”
The words are written next to “BENJY WAS HERE” and “CONNECT the CUTS” in a friendly, loopy scrawl. It sticks out, surrounded by other faded notes under the desk. They never clean under the desks, so cluttered memories lie.
You walk. You walk and think about what’s underneath the desk in your room and wonder what to believe. The staff opened up several doors so that everyone can walk in endless circles around the unit. There’s a black radio playing the Beatles, perched on a worn chair, stained with faded marker.
You walk and think.
This psych ward is not like the stories you’ve read. There are no painted doors or particularly funny, quirky, cute people. There is no outside, or wires, or color. There are four hallways, three telephones, two time shifts and one TV.
It is not what you’d expect from movies, books, or television shows. It is a place set in limbo, with too many ladybugs trapped between the barred windows.
You start a new lap.
The first thing they make you do is sign a stack of papers. Then you’re sent to a bare white room with the sparsest of furniture. The single pillow crinkles uncomfortably and the adjoining bathroom flushes too loudly. When you stumble into bed, bleary eyed from exhaustion, alive, you’re aware that everything feels blisteringly, searingly real.
There are posters on the hallway walls. They all say “Sunshine from Darkness, Mental Illness Awareness October,” followed by a specific year. They all have pictures of puppies, or kittens, or flowers on them. They are all equally ineffective.
During sessions, everyone is told to examine their thoughts. They are told that things won’t stay bad forever.
The words under the desk—”MY SCARS BLEED”—written by the many patients that have lived in your room—”it always hurts”—show a different side of things. You wonder whether to believe that things will be better, or that you are simply too dark for the sun to reach.
Left turn by the nurses station. This place is all left turns. Never right.
They said you’d be out in a few days, now it’s been five. There are new patients almost every day. It’s a cycle. That’s what you learn after a day or two. You wake up and you go through the motions like the schedule says, constantly drift around in a half drowsy state—
You stay there in that constant cycle and people give you different directions but in reality you can only make left turns in a lopsided square until structured free time is over. In reality, you sleep on an uncomfortable bed, surrounded by uncomfortable people, living an uncomfortable life.
In reality the words under your gray desk with corners clamber on top of each other, shouting for your attention with faded pencil and stark pens that you’re not allowed to carry.
It’ll be even harder when you finally reach the outside world, to meet your triggers and stressors head on. It’ll be harder when you’re allowed to make more than three phone calls a day, when you’re allowed to make friends with the people you meet.
But since reality is a white hallway and dark carpet, you listen to the Beatles, and keep walking.
Because once the music stops, you’ll have to decide, for real, if you want to go left or right.
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Canary word: Present
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125,020 Literary Works • 672,861 Reviews
Wow...this is one heck of a story. o-o
Well done, geoffles! You've managed to take a serious, and often bleak, topic and portray it in a vivid and fascinating light. In the second-person point of view, of all things! It's hard enough to visualize a story and its audience in such a fashion, so I must credit you for crafting such a beautiful (and sad) work in the manner that you've done. At its core, your analysis of a psych war and its components provides an dismaying view of the quality and activities of such areas. Though it seems that they care, or that they make an effort to provide some form of regular activity and a slice of life, it falls flat in the midst of a droning routine, the boredom of constantly drifting about the area, and the generally unsettling quiet and emptiness of the place. On the other hand, reality is interpreted as something that poses potentially even more challenges, so there also comes the fear of stepping out into the world and facing its many choices and problems. So, in that respect, you manage to paint a fairly dreary image for your readers, yet also one complex enough that it moves them forward in the story, wanting to learn more about the psych ward and its components. Thus, thematically, I find this story to be an exceptional one.
With regards to the emotions and wording throughout the piece, I also have no complaints. I admire your ability to craft the scenes that you do through the general atmosphere and mood you create. This, in turn, comes not from an emphasis on the main character of their dialogues, but on the words that they see and what they come across as they drift along, as well as the nature of the ward, the patients within it, and how one comes to enter and live in such a place. In all, you managed to take a unique emphasis on setting, and build it into something evocative and strong, which is probably the greatest perk in this story. There's that feeling of hopelessness, of being trapped in a perpetually dismal situation, trapped in an environment that you don't want to be in, yet there's this "out of the frying pan, into the fire" element to it that sticks in the reader's mind. Clearly, you convey a wide variety of sensations and emotions into your audience, and manage to get your main point and ideas come across profoundly and clearly.
All in all, well done! I don't have any complaints here - this seems to be a solid and vivid story, with a clear organizational system that provides a perplexing, and a sad, view into a psych ward. This is further augmented by the fact that these were your actual experiences, which makes it even more realistic and tragic. In conclusion, thanks for this story! I enjoyed reading it from start to finish, and I'm impressed with your writing skills. Great job!
thank you so much! I'm glad you enjoyed my work~,
I love the writing in this. The second POV works really well, and you've managed to create an eerie tone throughout it. My only wonder is that is this what a psych ward is really like? I don't know anything about them, but logically, they're there to help you, which your psych ward definitely isn't.
Factual inaccuracies aside, I found this really interesting and I would like to know more about it. You've written it in a way which is it clear that it's standalone, but I think many people who read this will look at your other writing (myself included).
Thanks for your review.
I actually wrote this originally in my first time in the ward. The whole walking around in circles thing? Actually happened. The pillow was covered in crinkly paper and the writings under the desk are word for word. I actually got the title of this story from above the side of my bathroom mirror, which also happened to be bolted to the wall. I guess what I'm trying to say is... No real factual inaccuracies here. There are things I didn't mention, such as the hourly group sessions and the sometimes fun lunch, but in that moment where I was walking around the unit in circles. Those were my thoughts. After they closed the doors I immediately went to my room and wrote this. ^ they're trying to help you, but it doesn't always work right away, or in the right way.
-cheers,
Geoff