Institutionalization Stories

She had an average life. An average apartment, an average job and an average truck. She liked the way it was: Wake up, get ready for work, eat something, leave to work and come home from work. She worked for what she had, damn straight. She was fine without a lover and fine with only her best friend as a companion. It started out as a typical day, she got ready, went to work and stopped by the store to pick up the items for dinner. But things changed, in the blink of an eye. Next thing she knows, she's placed in a care facility for schizophrenia. But what if the disorder isn't what they say it is? What if it is a gift, a gift that turned into a curse?

They saw the behavior. They saw the breakdown. They saw the girl who was "too much." What they didn't see was the abuse. The silence. The way trauma was mistaken for drama. This is the story of surviving what was never seen - and becoming more than the labels that tried to bury me.

In a crumbling long-term care facility where silence weighs heavier than words, Andy arrives for her first day as a CNA. The stench of neglect clings to every corner, the staff watch her with measured indifference, and the patients carry secrets etched into their frail bodies. When Andy is handed a clipboard marked with a single name in bleeding red ink, Irene. What begins as clinical duty quickly unravels into something more unsettling: a place where patient charts carry hidden codes, where cries echo long after they've stopped, and where Andy must decide whether she's there to care for the living or witness the haunted truths the others avoid.

December 20   COOCOO’S NEST     I ran away to join the zoo hoping a life contained would calm me.  The segregation hit me first; isolated exclusively with those of my stripe drove my thirst for diverse scents and opinion.  Next, the monotony of the landscape bore into my brain.  The well-meaning effort of the keepers bears the mark of folks who go home at night.  The blandness of the food and music lent nothing to the experience, and antiseptic could drive anyone wild.  The final blow, the one that struck constantly and coldly, was the stream of observers waiting to be entertained.     Embrace plain tools and fine minds.   *   Home Fires Burning   I have trouble living with myself, that is why I live with you. It takes my mind off the things I don’t wish to face.   What I can busy myself within your service lightens the load of expectation heaped in my DNA by my Higher Power and Fate.   Worry is time consuming and I wile away hours fretting over you and all your unresolved trifles while turning my back entirely on my life.   I couldn’t be happier to have you, though from the corner of my eye I glimpse God packing your bags.   Vlog: http://youtu.be/EPIQNgKAmmY   You are reading selections from Sober on the Way to Sane and More Lines From My Life by Sherrie Theriault http://www.amazon.com/Sober-On-The-Way-Sane/dp/1440417342/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1388576888&sr=8-1&keywords=sober+on+the+way+to+sane http://www.amazon.com/More-Lines-From-My-Life/dp/1448677203/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1388576956&sr=8-1&keywords=More+Lines+From+My+Life

Twenty years ago, Dan Cole discovered a blood-covered boat drifting alone on a quiet lake. By the end of the day, he was accused of murder. Convicted on circumstantial evidence and sentenced to twenty years to life, Dan survives prison by adapting to it - until the routines, paranoia, and emotional distance of incarceration become more familiar than freedom itself. After his release, a forgotten detail from the shoreline leads him toward an impossible truth: The dead man never died. Presumed Dead is a slow-burn psychological thriller about wrongful conviction, institutionalization, revenge, and the terrifying reality that some damage arrives too late for truth to repair.