This is a poetry/journal book about my experience in the Psych Ward.
It's all true accounts with names changed for privacy. I wrote this while in the ward, except for the last day.
Please take care in reading. If topics of suicide, depression, rap...
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Nobody leaves the Psych Ward on the weekends, but once Monday comes, all Hell breaks loose. The ward is never as legit crazy as the days when people go home. It's the perfect time to show you're in control and also the perfect time for people to lose it.
Many people went home on this day. You could hear people yelling, some like Rose were crying because they want to go home as well, and when the exodus is complete, everyone just sits quiet and depressed in their rooms.
On Day Four, I was still depressed and only just placed on my new meds, so I was pretty much untreated so far. I didn't feel an inch of bother seeing people leaving and it was mostly because I couldn't find it in myself to care about anything.
Besides the mass exodus, I was able to call a few people on this day. I had to call my brother and ask him to give me the phone numbers of my family because I hadn't memorized it. To call people, you have to tell the front desk their number and then they'll type it in and hand you the phone. So no, I still hadn't touched or seen my own phone at this point.
Otherwise, I hung out in the Sun Room coloring. Billie was here with Rose and I. Only now she wasn't acting so normal. She kept going on and on about how there was poison in the vents. The nurses were going to kill her in the night. How people were creeping around her room. I finally realized that Billie must be here because she's obviously paranoid or delusional.
It was also on this day that a girl named LeeAnn went into a manic episode. I noticed she was demanding her makeup from the front desk and in a surprising move, they actually gave it to her. Not long after that, she painted her face like a clown and lost her shit. We were all locked in our rooms and in the Sun Room while the staff "secured" her and sent her to the "quiet room". Which is a nice way of saying a padded room of isolation.
Surprisingly, LeeAnn didn't end up in the "other ward", which was the more intense Psych Ward for criminals and more dangerous mental health patients. I would end up seeing her again the next day where she'd once again paint her face like a clown. The staff never learn, apparently.
