Grippy Socks

How 72 hours in the loony bin rebooted my life.

(Hey, remember when you signed up for emails about hard sci-fi? Well here’s some hard non-fi. This isn’t going to be the main focus of my writing, but it’s sort of an origin story. Enjoy.)

Headlights and rage and despair. I remember stomping up the road, into oncoming traffic, yelling, tears streaming down my face like rain. “Hit me! Come on and kill me!” They all swerved. There was one who didn’t see me until the last second, and I braced. I felt the fear of death, but I committed. He swerved at the last second and just clipped me.

I spent that Friday night in the ER. They had me tied to a gurney while I was still drunk, and I thrashed to get out. Shockingly, the doctor was compassionate, and despite the trepidatious looks in the paramedics' eyes, they released the restraints to run tests. But I wasn’t free. They hooked up two pints of IV fluids, and I tried to make the nurse staff laugh while the booze wore off. They scanned my brain with a CT and when it came back clear, no one got my, “It’s not a tumor!” reference. I remember crying to a female social worker, and she didn’t have much to say other than there’s support groups. My dad’s killing himself with alcohol, refuses all medical advice, and… it’s complicated. Ironically, I guess I tried to kill myself with alcohol, too. They would later tell me I had a BAC of 0.30. The limit for driving (I wasn’t driving) is 0.08.

Saturday

Saturday was headache and darkness until it was panic. They had to go through all this red tape to transfer me from the ER to a Kaiser facility. A new social worker, a man with a blond mustache and glasses, looks like like never left 1983, is much more supportive and tries to sell me on how great the place I’m going to is. Never trust what anyone says if they’re trying to sell you on a place that you have no choice in going to. But to transfer me there, they have to do an inter-facility transport in an ambulance. The rules say since I’m a 5150, they have to restrain me again on another gurney. So the EMT’s come and strap me in again, red and blue bands, one side tight as fuck, the other loose as hell. It's a one-hour ride from the hospital to the Kaiser facility in downtown LA. One of the EMTs subscribes to my YouTube channel and tells me about his idea that aliens created us as slaves or something. And I’m the crazy one? I tell him about my RV park membership and he's interested in getting a membership himself. We watched 10 minutes of an episode of The Last of Us on his phone.

They roll me in through the back door, through a series of doors with a sign on the wall that says “Man Trap.” It’s like an airlock for people, though the bars were so thick it could have been used for dinosaurs. Then they give you the humiliating roll through the halls of this facility, strapped to the gurney, looking insane. There is no facial expression you can put on that does not look insane. Detached? You look insane. Bemused? Insane. Happy? Definitely nuts. But no one looks on in horror. They’ve seen it a thousand times. I think I tried to put on the same uninterested expression they had. I wish they would have prepped me, said something like, “everyone in here has done this, the same thing as you, don’t feel ashamed.” Though it does get communicated through the patients' faces, because while the staff is cautious, the patients are curious (later I realize it’s mostly out of boredom), and some are warm and welcoming. A group of young girls sit cross-legged in a circle in the hallway. One see's me, looks longer than normal, and I can tell that she has that look of attraction that I've seen girls give me before. I later learn her name is Sarah. Early twenties, died black hair.

The nurse takes a picture of me while I’m still strapped to this fucking gurney. I fail again at trying to not look insane. We wait some more. "Holding the wall" Firefighters and medics call it. Because they have to wait for the staff to receive the patient. There's an absence of people in the hallways. Shift change. The EMT's have warmed up to me. I look around to see if anyone can hear and I don't see anyone. I say to the EMT's, "Have you guys seen that meme, 'Calm waters have never made good sailors. Give the girl from the asylum a chance. Grippy socks. Grippy box.'" I’m not the kind of guy to use the term “box” to refer to a vagina, but these guys would. They haven't seen the meme. 5 minutes later, Sarah walks past, she's on the cordless phone. She mutters into the phone "...yeah I got the grippy socks too." One of the EMT's jaw drops, and the other one makes a hand gesture of confusion, "WTF?". In hindsight, I suspect she was eavesdropping from her room. She has borderline personality disorder I will later learn.

They release me from the restraints, and the EMTs say good luck and goodbye. "Maybe I'll see you at the campgrounds," the dumb one says. I hope not. I am taken into a room by a huge male nurse and strip searched, no fingers up my ass or anything, but naked in front of a guy who looks like Meatloaf from Fight Club. (“His name is Robert Paulson.”) They take all your shit, give you MC Hammer parachute pants, and an emerald green gown that opens at the back, and the grippy socks. The Lunatic Uniform. Something about the outfit encourages you to shuffle around, making you look even crazier.

Sitting on the bench in the hallway, Sarah walks by and says "Hi" and gives me her name for the first time. The next person to say hi to me is Bruce. Not everyone is wearing The Lunatic Uniform. Most people have their own comfortable sweatpants and sweaters, that’s what Sarah was wearing. Bruce, buzzed white hair in his 60s, wears a black shirt and sweatpants, and has a red and yellow wristbands that says “danger to self” or something like that, I couldn’t quite read it. He’s the only one I saw with that on his wrist. He says something comforting, but I don’t trust him. They put a regular white hospital bracelet on me (no yellow or red), but also some sort of tracking device that reminds me of the ankle monitor people have who are on house arrest.

After sitting around waiting for them to process my paperwork or shift changes or whatever, I get assigned a nurse for intake, she takes me into a room, weighs me, takes my vitals, and makes me sign a bunch of papers. After signing most of them, I realize I shouldn’t be signing anything in this state. So I don’t sign the last one. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t sign them,” I say, “If that was true, then why are you asking me to sign them?” I give her my story, why I’m in there. I got blackout drunk, the first time since they put me on Adderall a month ago, and tried to get run over by several cars to kill myself. I’m starting to not be able to think straight. The anxiety is rising into panic. My palms are sweaty, my knees are not weak, but my BP is 160 over 120. Then she shows me around the place, which, though I don't realize it at this point, is very small, only like 4 hallways, the size of a small hospital wing, maybe 12 rooms. She shows me the patio (which is a literal glass cage of emotion and I assume was used for smoking in ages past), the common areas, my bed, 302 D, in a room with 4 others. Though at this time, only one guy is sleeping in his bed. The door to the bathroom is a padded square, velcroed on. And finally, the common group room, where people do group activities, the TV is, and where they eat meals, which is what is currently going on. Before I know what is happening, they shove a tray of food in my hands and say, “Go ahead, and have a bite to eat.” Everyone is staring at me in my Lunatic Uniform and not speaking. “I’m not hungry,” I say. “Try a little,” she says. Reluctantly, I take the tray and sit down, I open it up and stare at a burger and some green beans. My heart rate is increasing. I don’t see faces only bodies. I take one bite of the awful burger and set it back down. I can’t fucking eat. I shoot up, try to calmly I ask if I can take the food out of the common room, and the Jamaican lady with bad English doesn’t make eye contact and either doesn’t understand or pretends not to. I give her the food back and speed walk through the halls, like a cat put into a new home, Iooking for a hole to hide in. But there’s nowhere to hide. I always assumed if I went to prison, I could get put into solitary confinement, but this place has no walls and people are everywhere. It feels like there are eyes and a spotlight in every corner. I go to my room, there’s the guy still sleeping in it. I look out to the patio, there’s a woman out there reading. I speed walk to the games nook, there are two people coloring. Finally, I go to the nurses' station and I ask for something to write with. I can tell the other nurses are observing me, and aren’t sure what my intentions are. She slowly hands me a half-pencil like the ones they tie onto cards to mark your golf score. And then I ask for paper? What the fuck am I supposed to do with just a pencil… I try again to find a place to write alone. But there is nowhere. I try to move a table, but it's nailed down. Finally, I go to my room, fortunately, my bed is against a wall in a corner. The most isolation I can get. The bed and night stand are nailed down too, but they are close enough I can hunch over and push the paper flat on the playground plastic of the nightstand. I pause my madman scratches and look up. Over my head, next to my bed is a door with no handle and a sign that says, “NO EXIT.”

I gather my thoughts. I take a breath. I write down the series of events, my thoughts on what caused me to do this, and my plans to make it not happen again. To ensure that I will not be trapped here.

Then I lay back in my bed and take some deep breaths, almost sob a little. It doesn’t help. Slowly, the man next to me, who was sleeping in his bed, turns over and in a hoarse, soft voice says, “Hi, I’m Robert.” I say, “I’m Jackson.”

“Jackie?”
“No, Jackson.”
“Jackie?”
“Jack.”
“Jack.”
“Yeah. Nice to meet you, Robert.”

He is very open with me and kind, and he talks about how his family is supportive; he’s from near where I grew up. He’s had depression that hasn’t been fixed. He’s been in there for about 4 days, and he’s going to get ECT tomorrow. Electroconvulsive Therapy (the kind where they electrocute you). I make him laugh a few times, I share my story. He’s very understanding. Kind and nonjudgmental. The only thing we don’t get along on is that he asks if I’m religious, and I say no. We stop talking and he reads his bible after that, but we are still cool. He mentioned at one point, not 15 minutes after meeting him, that he needs to find his purpose. And I say finding meaning and purpose are the only ways to stay alive. He’ll end up getting another round of ECT the next day, but I suspect it didn’t help. He already knows what the problem is. He just can’t find it.

That night I go back for “snack” at 8:30 pm since I’m starving from not eating dinner, and the panic has subsided. I meet Emma for the first time in line for snack, she’s 19, with long curly red hair and square glasses. She looks like the female version of that curly-haired kid from Stranger Things. She asks me if my name is “Bernie”. “No, Jack.” “You sure? You sure seem like this guy Bernie I know. Do you ever get that.” “Pretty sure it’s Jack. Sometimes I get things like that, I must have one of those faces.” For some people that might come off offensive, but she has this innocent childlike charm. There’s a puzzle on the table, and I try to eat my jello with my post-adrenaline shakes and work on the puzzle. Sarah asks if she can work on it with me. I say sure. Her and Emma, and a few others I will get to know later, sit around it. Sarah asks what the tattoos on my hands mean. “HOLD FAST,” I explain, is what 18th-century English sailors would tattoo on their hands to give them supernatural strength to hold on through storms. “Didn’t work so well for me,” I say. Emma and the Boy laugh, Sarah doesn’t. Sarah, I think is sort of flirting, but not in a sexual way. It’s sort of intimate. Both of our minds are working on the same problem. Sharing an experience. It’s nice. Sarah cuts. Self-harms. SH and SI (Self Harm and Suicidal Ideation) as she calls it. Like everyone in here (and outside too), she has certain sensitivities and triggers to the things people say and do. I try to be as sensitive as I can with everything I say, but you can’t know everyone's deal, and I’m still working on my deal. I think had I not worked out some of my narcissism before getting in here, it would have been much worse. There's another boy, I forget his name, also like 18 or 19, he’s teaching Emma to shuffle cards with that ending flourish. I ask if I can try, I used to be able to do it. I fail. I say, “usually it's easier with a new deck.” The boy says condescendingly, “we just opened this deck like an hour ago.” Thankfully I am not in my normal narcissistic, egotistical state, and I say, self-effacing, “Shows what I know.” I can tell he needs the ego boost. I understand his deal.

I go back to my bed, write some more thoughts, and then try to find a book. I ask the people in the games nook if there are any other books, and another young man gives me his. I also do not remember his name. He’s 18-21, got thick glasses and spiky black hair. I try reading the book, and it’s this horrible romance girl-book. There’s not an original thought in this novel, and someone has underlined inconsequential sentences in a book made up of inconsequential paragraphs. In hindsight, it would have been interesting to try to understand what those passages meant to whoever underlined them. Probably not.

Later that night, they check my BP again, and it is still very high. 167/111 while standing. I’m afraid they won't let me out of this place. I am not comfortable here. The lights, the sounds, the people, the doctors. I am terrified that I will not be able to communicate effectively to explain that I am not insane. I’m afraid that what in my head sounds like rational statements, will be heard as wild animal noises. And then I will be stuck in this place. Locked up forever in the loony bin, a hopeless case. I'm afraid of the people, not physically, but I don’t know their thoughts, and what will set them off. I am terrified of setting off people. So I try to make everyone I come in contact with laugh. It’s a survival skill I learned from defusing my parents’ conflicts. But my survival mechanisms are sometimes in direct conflict with other people’s survival mechanisms. My jokes sometimes set people off. It will set Sarah off a little bit later.

They give me Ativan/Lorazepam for anxiety and sleep. Goddamn, that shit works like a charm. They got the good drugs here. I wish they made something like that for depression, but you can’t take a pill to give you meaning or a human connection. I snore a little during the night, trying to find a position on this Lego block bed and a pillow made out of tissue paper. One of the nurses will mention she heard me snoring and ask if I have sleep apnea. This is when I realize that I’m being observed even when I sleep.

Sunday

It’s the next day, Sunday morning. For breakfast, we have a hard-boiled egg, a shoestring of bacon, and French toast in the shape of fish sticks that are so hard they are one step away from being Captain Crunch. I spend the morning anxiously waiting to see the psychiatrist, the warden who holds the keys to my cell. I write, I read. I see the nurse practitioner. She checks my scrapes and bruises, and recommends a low-sodium diet for my high BP... yeah, that’ll fix it. I see the recreational therapist (she was my favorite, she got me a notebook to write in, and laughed at all my jokes). I finally see the shrink, fully prepared to give my own analysis of the events and psychological stressors leading up to my crisis, ideas for preventing it, changes in lifestyle, and even the deep psychological research I’ve been doing on Heinz Kohut’s theory of the self. Maybe that helped, but he seemed to chalk it up to the fact that I had a BAC of 0.3 which caused a manic episode from the Adderall. (Later I’ll learn this is just what the DSM goes on to after you’ve exhausted unipolar depression: bipolar depression! A two-for-one special.) At the moment, I am sympathetic to him, thinking that he’s probably overworked, underpaid, and he doesn’t have the time to investigate every single person's labyrinthine psychology. But in hindsight, and after researching (from within it and without) the bureaucratic structure of the mental healthcare system, it’s not his job description to understand or investigate. His job is to read the manual, identify behaviors and symptoms and prescribe drugs to change them according to how the manual advises, with the least amount of risk. It’s someone else’s job to actually help me consciously figure out what is wrong. Someone less educated and paid even less. In my experience not much has changed in the 50 years since Girl, Interrupted was set, except those two roles used to be combined. That classic image you have of the insightful psychiatrist doing psychoanalysis? They don’t exist anymore. Well, they don’t exist for poor people. That role has been separated into these two roles. Why? The same reason the Soviet Union made Chernobyl's RBMK reactor with graphite tipped neutron moderators: It’s cheaper.

And that is: Fucking Crazy.

He agrees to release me tomorrow at 11 AM, but will hold me overnight for observation. They check my BP shortly after this meeting with the psychologist, and it’s dropped back to my normal 130 over 80. Must have been the low-sodium diet…

I spend the rest of the day socializing. Surprising even to me. I usually can’t stand social interaction with strangers, but I actually enjoy socializing with these misfits. People going through similar things. Almost everyone in this unit is suicidal, though in different flavors. And everyone knows it. We recognize the distant pain behind each other’s eyes. Most everyone is sensitive. Everyone who is willing to talk listens because we’re all looking for answers, even if we do say things that set each other off occasionally. Though I have to admit, I also enjoyed socializing I think partly because they were young people who still had life in them. I was the bridge. There was no one in the middle but me. Either callous, cantankerous old-fucks, or young, naive, borderline girls.

The girls and I are sitting at the game nook, and I’m writing or reading. The game nook has an amazing view of downtown LA. You can see the whole skyline, city hall, the DWP building, that stupid modern art high school next to the 101, which looks like Wall-E from this angle. I can see at least 3 different buildings I have filmed in before. There’s an apartment complex just a few blocks away where I shot a short film in 8 years ago. I have lived a life, man. And somehow it feels like it was all meaningless. The cliche thought, "is my life just starting now?" passes through my mind as I stare out the window. Compared to these people. Yeah, they’re young. But when I was their age I was filming at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, making a fool out of myself with rich and powerful people.

Bruce sits down and just says right off the cuff, “I cut my wrists. It was dramatic. A cry for help.” He was trying to be heard. He was trying to communicate. He was trying to have someone, probably me, help him understand why he is the way he is. But it set off Sarah. “It’s not dramatic! It’s not a cry for help!” I forget exactly what she said, but she ran to her room and gets a book and reads a passage from it. “Bitch. Fuck you,” Bruce says and walks away. I say to Sarah, “You are right, but you escalated it unhealthily.” I try not to take sides, but I understand Bruce a little bit. I think maybe neither of them is aware of where their pain comes from exactly. Or maybe they can't bring themselves to face the pain. I didn’t get to know them well enough to say. I'm not sure I can even say for myself. The nurses threaten to each of them individually that they’ll transfer one of them to Unit 2 if they don’t keep away from each other. Unit 2, I hear, is where the real shit goes down. Where the violent and nonverbal ones go. There is a “Code Grey” in Unit 2 shortly after, and the rumor mill moved fast. Rumor is someone got violent, and a security guard got knocked down and hit his head against the wall.

I tell Sarah later, “Bruce reminds me of my dad.” But I didn’t say, “I hate my dad.” I tried to play the mediator. It’s what I did growing up with my fucked up parents always fighting. I shouldn’t do that. I don’t know what to do. I hate picking sides. So I just make jokes. And end up pissing people off anyway.

Within 24 hours, I am already jaded to the constant stream of people rolling in on 72-hour holds like me, strapped to gurneys, the same disassociated look on their face. We play an alternative rules game of “Spicy UNO” that gets everyone laughing in tears. I haven’t laughed that hard in a while. Zhora, a young black girl, gets half the deck through bad luck and is in hysterical tears. One of the rules is to slap the deck on a 7, and I am always the last to slap the deck on a 7, so I, too, am doing poorly, but it’s not about winning. It’s about making the game go on forever. They all share cards with each other when needed. It’s quite lovely.

Oh, I almost forgot White Chocolate. The previous day, sometime after I came in, a tattooed older guy came in, probably late 50s. His BP low is 89/50. I joke to the nurse, if you average his and mine together, you get a normal BP. She laughed. The next day, Scott (his name is Scott, but you’ll see in a bit) Scott comes and hangs out in the game nook with us after UNO. And Emma, the innocent, talkative youngest of 4, gets him talking. He relapsed and went on a cocaine binge. And according to him, someone, his ex-wife or something, called the cops on him, and they found him with coke and his guns on the bed. “So that’s why they thought I was suicidal,” he says. I doubt his story, but I don't challenge him. Later, when it appears they won’t let him go, I gently suggest maybe there is something else going on under the surface? He grimaces and shakes his head, “No.” There is definitely something going on under the surface, but I don’t push. He had night terrors or something, screaming in the middle of the night once. The reason why he’s called White Chocolate is that he tells us he's in a motorcycle club. An all black motorcycle club. He’s white. So for the rest of the time, little 19-year-old, curly-red-haired Emma would always be shouting down the halls, “Yo, White Chocolate! What’s up!”

Another I haven’t mentioned is poor Valentina. The quietest little Ukrainian girl. So soft spoken and high pitched, someone jokes she was an Eastern European princess. She ambles into the game nook and whispers, “Can someone please kill me today?” Poor Valentina. “Unfortunately, no.” I say. The girl sitting next to me shoots me a dirty look and says something encouraging. But I see a slight smile at my dark humor on Valintina’s face. Her boyfriend visits every day. She’s interested in science, but is looking for help from on high. She has the curiosity in her to be a scientist, I can see the light in her eyes. I can see the intelligence hidden behind the sadness. I can also tell her depression is similar to one I’ve had. Of all the people in here, I think I identify with her the most. I think she might be one of the lucky ones to overcome it. Or maybe that’s just my solipsism.

While hanging out at one point, it also comes up that I was in a Christian cult. “What a cool backstory,” someone says, I think Emma. Sarah mentions she was in a cult, too. Raised by Mormons, she was adopted when she was 13. I verbally agree wholeheartedly that the Mormons are a cult, and ignore the fact that she was adopted at 13. If I was her I wouldn’t want to think about it. I don’t want to think about it. But I think maybe she wanted to talk about it with someone safe, a man who’s safe.

Robert reading the Bible, Valentina searching for proof of reincarnation, and Sarah an orphan raised in a cult. Everyone is searching for meaning, belonging, or purpose and coming up short.

They admit another girl that day, a very attractive 19-year-old blonde Asian girl, Celeste. First-year psych major. She comes in wearing only big gold wire-rim glasses, The Lunatic Uniform, and no bra. She was staying up for days studying and having manic episodes. Voluntarily checked herself in. Said she got diagnosed as Borderline and was on some sort of mood stabilizer, I forget which, and they suggested putting her on another: lithium. I try to understand how she stayed up, why she stayed up. I ask if she used stimulants. “No. It’s why I’m in here, not something I’m trying to do.” I say, “I'm sorry, I’m not trying to glorify it.” I don’t say, “I'm trying to understand.”

Emma says she gets blacked out and has it down to a science. A slightly older girl, maybe 24, sitting across from us says she should be careful with men taking advantage of her. Emma says she can’t dance. I say I couldn’t dance when I was depressed. She eggs me on to dance. I say I can do the worm. And I do the worm. Beforehand, I stand and stretch and I see the male nurse Julio—who is fit and wears adidas and a cross on a gold chain and who all the girls say is “so hot”—look at me in that cautious, “Am i going to have to call security?” look. I explain I have to stretch because I’m almost 40. That’s when it occurs to Emma to say, “How old are you?” 38. Turns out most of them went to or are going to the same college I went to. I say I graduated in 2009. The boy next to me says, ”I was born like 2 years before that.“ Celeste and Emma both hear this, but they are too young to care, or they haven’t lived enough to be like that 24-year-old girl sitting across, giving me the “I-Hate-Men Stare.”

Later on at night, when we’re playing cards, Celeste gets her pills delivered by the nurse like we all do. One of the benefits, I suppose. Like Uber Pills. She gets the new lithium included in her old ones, and pauses. She asks if she can think about it. And the nurse says okay. That’s what progress in the mental health care system looks like! They don’t force them down your throat anymore. Though I heard talk about something, “getting Riese'd”, where they can legally tie you down and give you a shot if you can’t make decisions. But Celeste ponders. She asks around the table to the other girls, and me sitting on the periphery. I don’t chime in. Though she mutters something while reading the paperwork about the “Serotonin Syndrome”, a warning that they always give on pretty much every psych drug. I ask if anyone’s had it. Sure enough, Sarah has. Said it caused hallucinations and mania. Eventually, Celeste decides to take the lithium because she’s in the hospital and it’s a good setting to try it. The other girls think that is a good choice. I again choose not to comment.

Most of the other girls leave, and Celeste and I talk about cats and how they’re the superior species. By now she’s back to her regular clothes, wearing a tank top with a loose shirt over, hanging below one shoulder that says, “Show me your 🐈‍⬛” aka “Show me your pussy.” I get the vibe that she’s attracted to me, so I decide to go to sleep. I can only deal with one 19-year-old who could be my daughter getting attached to me.

I couldn't sleep with just the melatonin, and in the middle of the night, I get a nosebleed from the dry air and the high blood pressure and picking my nose. While sitting in the hallway, one of the nurses that’s assigned to me is helping me, while the other one, clearly a known asshole even to the nurse staff, is just fucking STARING AT ME. Even my nurse, a rad dude with a thick African accent, says, “Bro, I got this.” The a-hole nurse says, “I'm observing.” I'm having an anxiety attack and this guy OBSERVING THE FUCK OUT OF ME is not helping. Eventually rad African guy (I wish I could remember his name) gives me Ativan and Atarax and I’m fucking out.

Monday

Monday morning, I wake up drowsy as hell. I got the Ativan at like 2 am, and it lasts 8 hours, so I’m drowsy until like 10 am. Fortunately, it wears off right when I get to see the psych and all the case workers and bureaucracy. Good timing. Short convo with the shrink, everything good. Slight problem with the case worker cause I told them I have guns. You can’t have guns after getting 5150ed. So they had to figure out some sort of liability shit or whatever.

It finally gets to be my time to leave. It feels like the last day of high school. Hanging around waiting for the bell to ring. I say that to White Chocolate and he seems depressed. I realize he’s probably not getting out with me, his denial of his mental state holding him in. I can only assume. I awkwardly bro-hug the girls, Sarah, Emma, and Valentina. I can tell Sarah is trying to indicate that the flirting was not real, which I knew. Now she’s getting transferred out to a Residential treatment facility. But she did get my attention. She got what she wanted. I think a lot is going on with that girl. I think maybe that was a way for her to have some power, or maybe it's a way for her to have a little bit of intimacy, too, while not risking losing anything. It’s classic Borderline Personality Disorder. But I don’t think she knows I wasn’t attracted to her sex, I was attracted to her honesty. Maybe I’m not a safe person to share it with. Maybe I’m just a lonely dude who hasn't flirted with anyone in a long time, but I felt some sort of kinship, some sort of shared pain, similar to everyone else in the ward, but with her it was more intimately accessible, more powerfully connecting than with the others.

I haven’t been in a place to hear anyone’s deep pain for almost my entire life. But now that I’m starting to be able to accept mine, I want to know. I want to know how to be a better friend, how to be a better partner, how to have meaningful relationships. I understand now what Carl Sagan meant when he wrote, “In all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other”. Guys close off emotionally more often than girls, but I think some girls find ways to isolate themselves too. I don't think she’s ready to know someone else's pain. But she accidentally showed me it's possible for me to love again. Cliche as it may be, it gives me hope. I just worry how much I can really change. How plastic or elastic are my neural pathways? Will there always be a residue of the ignorant narcissist, a smell that repels the ones who I could be closest with?

I wasn’t saved because of the mental health system, I was saved despite it. I felt like I had more meaningful relationships with some of these people I met for 72 hours than some I've known my whole life. My best friend of all of my 38 years drove my truck to get me. He’d die for me, but he struggled to hug me. He hasn’t talked to me in the three months since then.

I got out at 11 am on Monday. Technically, it was only 65 hours and 15 minutes. Some of them got out too. Some of them are still in.

Oh, one other thing. There was this guy who rolled in who couldn't stop hiccupping. All night hiccupping. People asking to move rooms. It's just like the urban legend of the guy who can't stop hiccupping and it drove him insane. He looked worse than all of us.

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