kathyrinehankin

[kathyrinehankin]

A BETTER PLACE

Dear Nurse Mike and the other nurses who's names i do not remember.

I remember the walls of the prison called a psychiatric unit like what I ate for breakfast -- it's clear and hasn't settled in my stomach well. Periwinkle painted on these walls, a sickening green within group rooms, colors unknown in one of them for ages. Only when the man who occupied it was transferred, struggling and writhing because her had been interrupted from his daily sprints, did I see the color of those inner walls, the light streaming through them as group became:

"Who can create pain with their words the fastest?"

It was in group and in seeing how they handled the man that I began to learn the extent of the evils of humanity. When there were no more questions to ask and no more answers to give, he was shipped away like cargo to:

A BETTER PLACE.

What is a better place? It should be safe, butter yellow, good food, a vacation from the mind. Not filled with monsters with PhD's and uneducated guesses as they smoke and sign death certificates before looking me over, 14 and not anorexic enough with an atypical (Bipolar) depressive disorder , for not more than five minutes before taking chart notes and ignoring the signs.

Signs of rapid cycling due to anti depressants. Cycling in general because depression is not the only state. Mania, served on a silver platter but ignored.

Because ignorance is sometimes A BETTER PLACE.

Nurse Mike, the good ones, the two Nurse Becky's -- Becca's? Taking me seriously, Becky/Becca 2 holding me in her arms as waves of panic and undiagnosed mania crashed over me. Mike guiding me to the lounge chair as tricyclic death became a possibility, blood pressure akin to a car accident victim but really, I was only a victim to poor choices of pills.

A BETTER PLACE, where all of the nurses are like Nurse Mike and Nurses Becky/Becca, where the food tastes like melted sunshine and I am not threatened by tasers and security when the overwhelming inundation of panic and manic waves becomes too much.

Perhaps that is the problem. These zombies, banshees, and goons that call themselves, nurses, social workers, and doctors are reflections of being undead in a ward of dying. A spin cycling situation in which it only really ends when they sign the piece of paper that confirms another aching brain and perfect soul left. Are you numb, doctors? Are you bitter, nurses? Why not follow those who walked me through the ward with gentle smiles and a determination to get me out-of-this-place.

A BETTER PLACE. Not back-at-home, not anymore, but rather a reprieve from the memories, the half dreams, the darkness that found its way into my bedroom after spending six weeks tied to my own misdiagnosis.

Depressed and terrified, because something else was wrong, voices hiding in my thoughts and hallucinations leaving my nightmares, walking on two feet and standing taller than me.

Nurse, nurse, nurse, living among undead, good still carried in your heart and the dying not lacing the perspective in your head, you saved me from myself, in the Ungodly time of parents frustrated to the point of leaving me in a world where fears came to life, doctors so convinced that they were good people that they couldn't see past their nose and process the pain, the other nurses and social workers acting out beyond their parts in a play that was already macabre.

I wish you could see me now Bipolar I and proud. My disability is my super power and I have the capability to create past the walls that trap medical staff and patients both, concoct A BETTER PLACE and write the bastardly demons away. I am alive and not undead any longer, like you, you, you, who helped me live among the darkness and death

- by Kathyrine Hankin, based on my time spent in an adult psychiatric ward at 14.

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