His Savior // H.S. sequel

Chapter 1

This isn't violence, this is just a war in my head
I give it time but it never seems to end.

The aroma of molded walls and anesthetics was strong enough to make someone's eyes water, I've been in this building long enough to know how to deal with the little things like that; I cover my mouth and nose with a nurse's mask they let me keep for emergencies to smother out the sickening scent --  it was like breathing in bleach for too long and you feel like you'd pass out, it's probably the reason why the patients are crazier now than they were when they were first committed here.

It's hard imagining you never know who you really are, it's like you don't trust your own head to spell your name right. I have to constantly tell myself who I am, I write it in a journal and go over it every morning to make sure I don't accidentally imagine I'm someone else. It's hard feeling so irrelevant. 

And the feel in the atmosphere was.. crowded and stuffy -- hard to breathe in. It was like a sticky day where you feel like your clothes are sticking to your body.

Being put in somewhere like this is an eye opener, it makes you realize you're actually crazy, and the people there treat you like it too. Sometimes I wonder, 'am I imagining this?' and I overthink every inch of movement I take, making sure it's real. I haven't made any friends here only because I don't want to have to stress myself over if they are in my head or if they are actually existant.

I think the schedule was the worst part, it had you drained and fatigued.

7:00 am: Morning checks. Someone bangs at your door to inform you that you have to be up for breakfast in 30 minutes. You incoherently roll out of bed and moan something similar to an "Okay".

7:15 am: You roll out of bed, brush your teeth, brush your hair, fix your bed, and put on a sweatshirt.

7:30 am: Breakfast. Briarcliff was catholic, meaning no meat on Fridays, so you choose grits and the wateriest, weakest coffee you've ever ingested that you grab from the nurse's station before breakfast so you don't have to down their pure pulled goat's milk because they decide cows aren't meant to be milked.

The day goes on, health meetings, a nurse by your side constantly due to concerns from the past.

9:00 am: You meet with Dr. Thredson, your amazing psychiatrist. He is a young man who always looks perpetually concerned; he is unbelievably kind and compassionate. He runs through the usual routine of questions: do you feel like hurting yourself, how are you sleeping, how is your mood and he takes you off of your lithium and ups your Abilify.

12:00 pm: A short, older lady who claims to have once been a backup singer for Aerosmith preaches on bipolar disorder.

Your day goes on. The thing was though, I knew there were things I avoided there, there were screams heard from the administrator's office, Sister Jude's.  There were screams I heard from the basement, even. I knew this place was dangerous, so I never looked into it.

At around 3:00 pm, I would go to the common room and position myself at an empty couch, blocking out same song they had on repeat: Dominique by Soeur Sourie, a Belgian Catholic song from 1963 and read old torn up (hardly readable) magazines about Christian belief. I didn't believe in any of that religion stuff, never have, but lucky me, was the most "well-kept" asylum in Massachusetts they could find.

Credit to: A Day In The Life Of A Mental Hospital Patient by Jennifer O'Brien.