That one Time that I was Jack Nicholson

Do any of you recall the 70’s classic, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest? Well, I was THAT Jack Nicholson – only I was never a criminal. I couldn’t be a criminal if I tried. One time, as a kid, I thought about what it would be like to take a Butterfingers from the grocery store without asking, and I got so worked up over the sheer possibility of stealing it that I almost cried. I felt guilty for thinking about the act, not for actually doing it.

But everything else was the same – I met some really nutty people in the Psych ward of the hospital.

Wait a minute, you say, I didn’t know Kelsey was a crazy person.

Well I’m not!

Eccentric, odd, sarcastic, over emotional, under emotional, and weird, yes, but not crazy.

I also live with a condition called: Depression. Ever heard of it? I’m NOT depressed, I HAVE depression. There’s a difference, you know, and the way you look at it says a lot about how well you handle it. I also have anxiety, clearly, if you didn’t crack the nut on that obvious mystery through the URL of my blog.

But I’m doing okay, I’m doing wonderful in fact, and that really isn’t what this story is about. This story is about my week long experience locked in a small area with people constantly reminding me just how normal and sane I really am. Because, to be honest, a lot of things that happened while I was there were pretty funny.

I was in there completely voluntarily, mind you, after the biggest mistake of my life – just to get that out of the way for all my curious readers.  

So.

I’ve just been checked in and someone points lazily in the direction of my room. My parents and I sit on what we perceive to be an unoccupied bed in the room, and we wait. No one comes to greet us. It starts to feel like an episode of the Twilight Zone, before finally, a smiling young woman comes in and starts to chat with us. While certainly friendly, she’s not actually giving us any direction, and my poor father, who’s been put through the ringer for the last several hours, somewhat abruptly asks her when someone is going to give me something to eat. She looked a bit startled, mumbled something along the lines of, “I’m not sure I can go check?” and tottered off.

We realized a couple minutes later when a nurse came over that the friendly woman had been a patient.

Oops.

My dad is an incredibly nice man, and I think he felt genuinely bad for assuming what we all had.

Dad, have yourself a cookie.

So now that we’ve successfully scared off one of my fellow prisoners, I have something to eat and go to sleep for the rest of the night. What I did not expect when going to sleep in my private room was to wake up with someone standing next to me, staring down at my face.

RIGHT AT THE SIDE OF MY BED.

“Hey,” she said, nonchalantly. “I’m pissed. I can’t even have my mascara in this place. What do they think I’m going to do with mascara, stab you in the eye with it?”

Holy, sweet son of a biscuit. This was not a great way to start off my morning.

As it turns out, she wanted to my friend because she was also my roommate, and when she wasn’t having an episode of swearing and screaming at the nurses as they threatened to “give” her something if she didn’t settle down, she was…nice.

Yeah, we’ll go with that. She was nice, but only to me.

And, to prove to you how nice she could be, the second day I was there I sat down at a table in the common room, prepared to work on a puzzle that was laid out. My fingers hovered over a piece, but before I could pick it up in a sore attempt to amuse myself, my roommate yelled “STOP!” right next to my ear.

I jumped in my seat. I’m glad it’s the only thing I did.

“You don’t want to touch that. You know that other lady who’s always sitting here? Her?” She pointed across the room to an unkempt, fifty-something woman with grey hair. “She never washes her hands, and she constantly puts her hands into her pants.”

Oh my gosh, I had almost touched the “Urine Puzzle.”

Needless to say, I avoided that.

The same lady who I shall call Judy, also did not appreciate the fine art of bath taking. I couldn’t say how long it had been since she last had a bath, only that everyone was immediately aware of it after walking past her. I witnessed a showdown in the doorway of her room as a couple of nurses threatened to throw her into the shower themselves if she didn’t do it on her own.

Judy had the mouth of a sailor.

Having semi-befriended some of the nursing staff (it wasn’t difficult. I simply smiled nicely, said “thank you”, and never yelled at them), I usually got first dibs on snack time.  Yes, I had snack time, like a toddler still in Kindergarten.

Now looking back on it, I feel like I should have milked this. I could have had nap time, arts and crafts time, play time…

Oh wait, that’s right, I had all of those too.

Not only this, but other than a random group session where we watched motivating “Discovery Channel” videos to lift our spirits, it was really quite dull in there.

Good thing I had my fellow patients to amuse me. One girl was sitting at the table for breakfast one morning whom I didn’t recognize, who must have slipped into the facility in the dead of night. She was possibly even younger than myself, and came across, at first glance, as immensely normal.

It wasn’t until she explained why she was in there that it all started to make perfect sense.

“I don’t have anything wrong with me, I’m just in here because of the Saudis.”

My brows knitted together as I looked at her over my pancakes. “Sorry?”

“For my protection, from the Saudi Arabians,” she said matter-of-factly. “I ran in a bad group with them for a while. They kidnapped me, they made me take drugs too. It wasn’t my fault. So I’m in here for my personal safety until the police know where to hide me. I’m only going to be here for like, a day.”

Since we lived in a state that had more white people in it than just about anywhere else, my bull crap sensor was tingling. Though I’m sure there are some people living here who happen to be from Saudi Arabia, I was almost certain there was not an entire gang of them, running around, forcing people to take their expensive drugs for free.

The girl stood up suddenly, turned around to face a decorative plant, and started coughing before she spat a whole bunch of nasty into it. This wouldn’t have been as shocking to me considering where I was, if it wasn’t for the fact that this girl was a dainty blonde, ninety pounds soaking wet, who had just hawked a loogie into a fern.

Wiping off her mouth with the back of her hand, she smiled as if nothing had happened and returned to her seat. Despite all the food placed in front of her, I never once saw her actually eat, well, anything.

It wasn’t until I was leaving the hospital that I saw how Saudi girl’s attitude changed. I was waiting in the commons to be picked up, and the Saudi girl’s sister had come to visit her. The girl was livid, and the sister was calmly if not somewhat apprehensively trying to dodge her questions. “I don’t understand why I’m still in here! Why can’t the arrest them or find somewhere for me to go? SHE gets to leave” she hissed, looking at me with murderous eyes.

I gulped, looked back up at the clock, and pretended not to notice.

Her sister averted her eyes, picking at a spot on the chair. “They’re not looking for anywhere for you to go…don’t be mad…”

My roommate came to say goodbye to me and complained about being left alone with all the crazy people. She said she was going to try to see if she could move into Saudi girl’s room, at least. I wished her luck with that. I reminded her to be nice to the nurses because they were the ones in control of the snacks. J

Judy walked out of her room with her sneakers on her hands instead of her feet, and left. She had been released.

I shuddered.

And then I was gone.

I for one, had a much better ending than Jack Nicholson did. 

*pictures to their respective owners.