Bipolarland, Texas part 15

 13

The recreation group is fun, though only nine of us attend. We have to sign our names on a paper to show we attended. Then the therapist, Amy, has us draw a picture of a room where we would feel 100% comfortable and have everything we needed. I pause. What do I need? I need my friends. I draw little stick figures and label them with the names of my friends: Jakub, Jules, Geoffrey, Filip, Don, Zygmunt, and most recently, Sarah. They really are all I have. I can’t believe I agreed to go to that UN meeting with my brother Ira. I can’t believe I gave him a key to my apartment, after he defended Uncle Matt for stabbing me, even though that was last year. I pause. I also want to add people I met here. So I make more under “acquaintances”. Johanna, and, who else? The others I never really talked to. Kenisha a little bit. The others, no, but I still want to write them down.

It’s excitement I want.

But I also want safety, so I make a bunker and write that it has all the survival supplies for every life-threatening disaster. Including all medical supplies and equipment. Including my antidepressants! Since I’m nervous about ever getting any of this, let alone all of it, throw in some Ativan too.

Now what else?

Now the extras. My beautiful eccentric apartment! I’ll build a house instead. A beautiful yet eccentric house, full of people who are mentally ill but not in any way inferior. My drop-in center! The one I wanted to start. What would be in my drop-in center?

Antidepressant samples. Magazines about mental illness. I have a bunch of pamphlets, actually, at home. And Autism Asperger’s magazines Zygmunt gave me. Zygmunt says he has something called Asperger’s and his little brother is autistic. I think I probably have a little of that too. Along with Borderline Personality Disorder and schizophrenia and everything else. I’m a real mess. I looked at all the criteria. My friends all have something and they all think I have what they have. Besides Zygmunt, there’s Don with his schizophrenia, Jules who is also bipolar, Jakub who is schizoaffective and Geoffrey who is on pills for depression but not depressed right now.

I also suspect Jakub is a kleptomaniac because he’s the kind of guy that has me stand guard or hold the door closed as he rummages through the contents of the doctor’s office cupboards. Jakub has designed a pair of shoplifting pants (with special pockets) and sells them on e-Bay. Jakub has stolen posters right off the walls and other stuff off the desk of his caseworker’s office at the mental health clinic, and nobody even noticed. Jakub is not an asset to our own clinic we plan to set up, because he’s impoverishing the resources we need to make that happen… I mean, couldn’t we just make our own posters? Couldn’t we ORDER medical supplies if we need them? The little he manages to steal is not enough for a clinic!

I only realized that now.

“That’s interesting, Anne-Marie. What are you drawing?”

“Nothing,” I say, suddenly embarrassed. I flip my paper over fast. Then I realize that’s a sure sign you’re embarrassed, so I pretend I was flipping it over to write my name on it.

Then we have the Coping Skills group. Today we have to solve each other’s problems.

Anisha draws a strip of cardboard from the paper bag. “I just need treatment for my depression, not my happiness,” she reads. Hey, that’s mine!

“So what do you have to say to the person who wrote that?” the facilitator, Joan, asks.

“I say— I’ve felt like that too, sometimes. But when I was manic, you know, I don’t remember what I do, and I do things I regret later. I once had sex with the greengrocer and didn’t remember it until he showed me a video tape of us… I really don’t know how I managed to do that or why I did it. I didn’t even know him that well. He was an acquaintance. And I never had feelings for him.”

“And who was that? Did that help anyone here?”

I sit still, saying nothing. I’m really scared now that if they put me on a mood stabilizer, it will take away my happiness, my creativity, my disregard for inhibition that only makes life miserable. I want excitement and unpredictability. Forgive me, but I’m just not ready to settle down yet.

But I sit here saying nothing because I’m embarrassed. She made me seem so stupid. I’m not going to admit to everyone that I wrote that, hence basically telling everyone at the table that I’m stupid, that I don’t understand. Anisha told everyone about her adventure with the greengrocer, but she thinks it’s stupid now. That’s different. They’re all thinking she’s smart now.

I’m on the phone with Geoffrey, crying. I told him (very quietly) about all that I’m nervous about, including what Anisha said in the coping skills group. Now I’m telling him about my involuntary hold. It’s going to be three days, at least, unless the patient guide they gave me is outdated.

“Whoa; calm down… I understand what you mean. The thing here is—the problem is that you missed out on your adolescence. I missed out on mine too. So I have to live it now. It’s not optional or something you can or should control. It’s necessary. How can you move on with your life if part of it is missing? You can’t. It’s nature. And if nature made me immature, it’s for that reason. Fuck all them people that call me immature. It’s the way I am. Take it or leave it, but if you pick on me for it there’ll be trouble.”

“I’m too cowardly to cause trouble with others, remember?” I’m resenting my friend calling me immature too, though I know it’s true and he admits he’s immature. But I’m too embarrassed to tell him or anyone else that, so that little tidbit of information about me, it seems, I will be taking to my grave.

Then I get a revelation. “Zygmunt!” I say out loud.

“My name is Geoffrey, remember?”

“No, I mean, I wanna talk to Zyg. I want to ask him if he’s like me in this way.”

“One sec. ZYGMUNT! ZYG!”

Then he’s there, and I’m talking to him. I tell him everything. Even what I was planning on taking to my grave.

I’m sitting in the day area with the chaplain and about ten other patients, talking about spirituality. He’s asking us to tell him, one by one, if we believe in a higher power. I do (why not? And if it’s in my head, it is. And if I feel it outside my head, it is too). But I still have this problem and I don’t know why.

Then he says “Sometimes you have to surrender to that higher power and let it help you. You have to admit you’re broke, or addicted, or depressed, or undervalued, or underprivileged, or black, or Hispanic, or overweight, or schizophrenic, and discriinated against because of all that, and realize it has power over you, and there’s not a darn thing you can do about it. You have to look to that higher power.”

I know all this.

I’m waiting.

The lunch is wonderful. I wish life could be. Lunch is a chicken leg with a salad and some inedible stuff like seaweed, but most of it is edible. Dessert is pecan pie! I actually get to eat three slices, because one girl can’t stand sugar and another is trying to lose weight! I don’t mind fruit punch either; it’s quite good; and I even get a milk!

It’s halfway through the meal. We’re all sitting at the plastic tables chattering about our problems and what went on today in group. I realize I’m doing it with them without even thinking about it. Is this what Sinequan does to you?

“Anne-Marie Kornek, the doctor would like to see you.”

After I’m finished eating I go with the doctor. It’s a different one from last night. It’s a female, old and fat, wearing huge glasses that make her look like an insect that ate too much. She and Frank take me into a room.

The room is full of people.

I start to choke. Will I vomit in front of all of them? Is there a restroom around here, on this little corridor inside another little corridor?

The doctor I saw last night is sitting at the table. The nurse introduces all of them (except Frank, who I know). The doctor I saw last night turns out to be a student. His name is Mark Karmel. Then there are the two techs (I guess that means psych technicians or something). Frank and the guy from last night in the black scrub suit. Is he working two shifts? This could mean something sinister. Fed-up staff is noooo good. His name is Marius Edison. The two nurses are Bambi Cornelison and Ima Mann. At first I thought she was saying she was a man. The two nursing students are Julissa Standish (a woman I see surrounded by patients all the time asking questions and telling their problems) and Euphemia Gump (whom I wouldn’t want to be restrained by… she weighs about four hundred pounds). The doctor’s name is Maria Podemskaya.

Why so many people? I try to count the people without looking like I’m counting the people. I get to six or seven before they usher me to a seat at the freakin’ head of the table between Dr. Podemskaya and one of her students (who are at the ends of the sides of the table). I have social anxiety, you know!

Well then, tell them. It’s part of why you’re there.

So I tell them. “Um, sorry, I have social anxiety.”

That’s not enough. Are they looking at me funny? Better say more.

“Um, so if I look or sound odd, it’s because of that.” The last thing I need is to have them write me down as psychotic.

“Just relax,” Bambi says with a genuine smile.

They ask the same questions as last night, and what do I do with my life and my spare time? and have I been in trouble with the law? and have I ever used street drugs? and when? and why? and how many times? And I have to repeat the stupid story about my uncle Matt again, telling them some of his favorite phrases for good measure: “God burned the bush for a reason”, “I will not say the Pledge for the horrible hedge”, “No more BU** SH**”, “Those people are hedge huggers, I’m a hedge hater!” Soon the whole room is laughing. I never knew I had the capacity to make a room full of people laugh. Not just ordinary people… medical people, who are supposed to be smart. They must be laughing at me, as opposed to with me.

It takes a good two minutes for the room to quiet down. Then Maria Podemskaya, the doctor, asks me, in her heavy Russian accent, if I’ve ever done any prostitution, and am I sure I never? She looks me up and down. Asks why my hair’s a mess. I just never had the chance to comb it, or forgot. She asks about the clothes. I say it’s all I have. She tells Bambi to get me a pair of scrubs to wear. Frank says they have many donated street clothes and that he and I can look through them after the meeting. I tell them my friend brought enough clothes to the NPC for me and that they are probably still there. So Frank goes to get me something to wear in the meantime, until I can call the NPC and my friends to see who has my clothes.

Then Dr. P. opens her mouth again and says, “If I were you I’d get my act together and go back to school or get a job. There is no future on welfare doing nothing and sitting around the filthy apartment doing drugs.”

What?

I raise my hand to hit her, then remember where I am and sit on my hands. “What the fuck is the matter with you?” I say. “We clean our apartment all the time! And we only did drugs once in a while. Me and Zygmunt don’t even do them any more! Pot makes me depressed and I don't do it any more! Acid made me psychotic and I only did it once and I don't do it any more! Nitrous oxide is harmless! And I only took one Ativan that wasn't prescribed to me! And I don't even drink or smoke cigarettes!”

“Excuses!” she shouts, holding up her hand. “I keep you here until I can transfer you to a state hospital where you stay until you work out your problems.”

And I get up and run from the people that were so nice until now, professionals who are now not even saying a word to defend me when I’m right, and they damn well know it.

They’re just cowards. So why do I care so much? Because my name will be smeared in my files. I need to do something, but I’m totally at a loss. I need to call my friends. I need to call Jules, who’s been in here before and might know something about this. I need to call Zygmunt, who’s used to discrimination. I need to call Jakub.

Geoffrey answers the phone again.

“Put Jakub on the line.” I better tell my boyfriend first, since he’s the one I care about most.

“Damn, Anne-Marie, Jakub went out.”

“When’s he coming back?”

“Look, can you please let me give you some good news first?”

“I’m too depressed for that.”

“Then you need it. I got the autopsy slab up and running!” I can feel his wide smile from here.

“Okay. So now you have bad news? Well, fuck that, just put Jakub on the phone when he comes back!”

“Anne, Jake’s been going out with another girl while you were in there. He said he’s had enough of you being high-maintenance with your bipolar shit.”

Ohmygod. “I never asked anything from him!”

“I know. He’s an idiot. Anyway—”

“You’re a liar and a loser.” I am not going to believe ANYONE who says MY boyfriend, my precious sweet baby Jakub, has been cheating on me!

“I’m not, babe. I’m telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

“So WHO THE FUCK DO I GO TO WHEN THE DOCTOR WRITES DOWN LIES ABOUT ME AND I CAN’T DO ANYTHING BECAUSE I’M IN A MENTAL INSTITUTION?”

“Mary Anne, people are sleeping, please—” a tech begins.

“Anne-Marie, keep the phone call private, please—” a nurse begins.

“SHUT UP!” a patient shouts.

Shouldn’t have shouted. But what could I do? Just stuff it inside me and pay for it later with my happiness and mental health?

“Listen, Anne-Marie, just listen here,” Geoff says. “I’ll take care of it for you if you want me to. I’ll bust his face open. He shouldn’t be doing that to a bipolar chick… especially his own girl.”

But I still love my Jakub, and I’m still calling him my Jakub.

As tempting as Geoffrey’s offer is.

“Can I talk to Zygmunt?”

“Sure.” He goes and gets him. Zyg is always home. He prefers to hole up in a closet and read a book than to go out partying, or even to an abandoned morgue just to take pictures and help us steal an autopsy table.

As I’m telling Zygmunt everything, a nurse (thankfully not one of the ones that was in the conference room with us) brings me two Ativans and a cup of water.

I’m already feeling like I’ve had a few drinks when I get off the phone with Zyg. I feel better, but that crap is still on my file and I need to get it off. Zyg, so kind and caring and patient and gentle and sweet and kind, told me he’d call and tell them what I was unable to express due to my shock and anger. He also told me he’d help me sue them if they didn’t correct my files.

Zygmunt knows everything. And no, he’s not arrogant about it.

I feel safer now, even when a woman comes and tells me she has to give me an IQ test.

Apparently, Dr. Podemskaya decided that I might not know what I had gotten into on the outside (like I wouldn’t know if I was a prostitute) and ordered an intelligence test to rule that out.

So right there in the dayroom, at one of the tables we eat at, I take a short, compromised, incomplete, quickie version of an IQ test.

When three hours later I’m finished and go and tell Zygmunt, he blows up. Has one of his meltdowns over the phone. Apparently, he says, I’m too upset to take an IQ test. Apparently, one’s mood has to be neutral when they take the test. Apparently, they’re setting me up for failure so that they can call me retarded and humiliate me even more.

The shower is cold. So cold. They hardly let us use any hot water because we might scald ourselves, but they don’t care if we die of hypothermia. It makes no sense; they gave us hot coffee at snack time. But at least the sound of the water muffles my sobbing, so nobody shouts at me to shut up.

Frank and I are going through shelves of clothes. I find a pair of pants that looks my size. They’re expensive-looking cargo pants too. The least I can collect as compensation for all this awfulness is a nice outfit. (Wow-- I sound so prissy! What is happening to me?)

We look and look, but don’t find a shirt my size, or even a little too big or too small. Finally, Frank finds a girly-type black shirt. The collar is cut out and even though it’s black I can see the bloodstains on it, like it’s been in a few fights or maybe suicide attempts. “Hmmm… not perfect, but I guess we’ll make do for now until you get your stuff.”

Geoffrey is looking concerned. He sits across the table from me in the dayroom, wearing a suit… I just could never imagine Geoffrey in a suit. He says it’s because Zygmunt was not allowed to talk to them about my file, so he’s going to court at my request, to get my files purged of all the shit Podemskaya put in them… most notably the referral to the state hospital. But he needs a note from me first, with my signature on it.

Writing my story is easy. Telling it was impossible. I forgot what happened when and got it mixed up, or would forget the whole thing. But when I’m given time to write it, I remember everything.

The nurse— one of the night nurses— comes over to me with two papers. One is a consent form that, if I sign it, allows Zygmunt to view my files and talk with my treatment team about me. Geoffrey and Zyg don’t know about this! I add a few names—Geoffrey’s, Jules’s—then sign the paper, allowing them to see and talk about everything.

The second paper is a consent form for lithium to be administered to me. It says I understand all the side effects and contraindications and all that crap and was given a verbal explanation, when actually I ran out of the meeting and wasn’t given any explanation that I would even be put on lithium.

I don’t sign the form. I hand them both back to her. The nurse looks at me funny, picks up the two forms, and walks away.

Five minutes later it’s another nurse: “This is for your lithium.”

This time I tell her why I won’t sign it. I can just hear it already: “If you don’t sign it, we’ll get a judge to sign it.”

But she sits down with me and we talk about lithium. In the end I agree to take it. But even if Podemskaya turns out to be a good prescriber, she is not a good doctor. Because she does harm. By possibly sending me to a back ward somewhere for life!

It’s already nighttime, and I get my first lithium. No Sinequan. What happened to my Sinequan? Shit! Once they hear “Bipolar”, it’s no more antidepressants for you. Except for my two doctors on the outside, my psychologist and psychiatrist. They’re special exceptions.

I go to complain. The nurse says, “Talk with your doctor about it. She’ll probably prescribe something else tomorrow if you don’t do well without the antidepressant.”

A girl is sticking her fingers in all the cups of coffee someone brought in, the graham crackers they give us for a snack are nasty and make me want more milk, I’m tired but can’t sleep because I feel there’s something I have to do first, dinner is disgusting, etc., etc., etc.

I’m laying in bed. Reading the Patient Guide again. It tells me who to complain to. I get up and go to the phone to complain to the rights committee about Podemskaya. Note that I’m not calling her Dr. Podemskaya any more.

They write the complaint down. I can’t believe I did this. I can’t believe they’re actually writing it down! I can’t believe I have this power that makes people actually write things down that I want and need written down, that other people want and need written down too.

I didn’t think people listened to me. Well, sometimes they do. I did get Sarah to come back with me to my apartment.