My memory of it is approximate but most likely not verbatim, as with most things. If I’ve ever been to the psyche ward, it’s been because I feel numb about life. Not destructive but I just don’t care about stuff in the long term. I would learn over time that it’s not a great place to be, and someone from school who didn’t like me wanted to take advantage of this and tried calling me into the ward. She actually called twice before being hung up on because the psyche ward worker thought someone starving themselves wasn’t “urgent” before calling a third time and lying and saying I was doing another method.

A local officer (one of the few who was nice) came to bring me to the psych ward. I didn’t resist (and wasn’t restrained or anything, they don’t do that unless necessary) and he brought me to the backdoor of the place. I guess it was protocol at the time to do a mugshot when someone goes to the psych ward because I had to stand in front of a camera to have a picture taken. The mugshot is still visible on the internet if you live in the general area and look up my name, you’ll notice a lady still in her school uniform smiling like it’s a school picture. I did that hoping they would see me smiling and think nothing was wrong, but in hindsight I could probably guess it only made things worse for me.

The trip to the actual psyche ward was prolonged because there’s a festival that happens for a week or so every year in the area, and they put the festival right outside where the hospital is. I dreaded this intensely as I kept thinking the whole time who could’ve seen me arrive at the psyche ward. So I get to the actual psyche ward and it just became a long waiting game. The period where you wait for your room is long because psyche wards are always overbooked by homeless people who take advantage of the free utilities that come with booking yourself a psyche ward sentence.

I was waiting by the elevator entrance for a room, a few hours go by and a boy comes in. He was younger than me, and this nurse comes running out to meet him. “Mom” he yells. “Son” the nurse responds.

This grabs absolutely everyone’s attention. I’m not sure if this is against protocol to send children to the same psych wards where their parents might work, but there was another guy, one closer to my age, who saw this and he just broke down. In psych wards, despite the long waiting period, they get people a room faster if they’re being hostile or acting erratic, and being jealous that someone was getting love, that hostility is exactly what happened. He (the jealous inpatient) began threatening everyone and then fixated on me because I had been quiet the whole time. He thought at first he could threaten my life, but when he realized I was too indifferent about my life to react, he decided to do something dirtier, he tried doing the R word on me. I was terrified but couldn’t scatter, and the place is horribly supervised. A few minutes of this went by and someone finally saw and gave him a room, and I was crying when they arrived so they got me a room too. They made me take off my school shirt/tie/skirt and put me into hospital-made clothes and those socks people get as freebies from the hospital, and they gave me a room as far away from the guy as possible.

I was not thrilled at how anonymous everything is. They do the group sessions a few times a day, but you’re not allowed to say anything about your life that might identify you, and the rest of the time you’re in a very cell-like room for a few days. The group sessions are usually check-ins where you can see other faces but it’s all feeling-based. If the reason you feel so bad that you end up in a psyche ward is due to a lack of friendship like the guy who wanted a room so bad (and I can relate to that), you’re out of luck. The closest I came to any kind of establishing a foundation for the outside world is trying to use the art sessions to engage in cryptography which would allow me to communicate in secret with other people. Ironically I tried using toki pona substitute characters for this and succeeded, only for the person who understood me to be one of those few very unlucky people who practically lives at the psych ward, so it will be a long time before it amounts to anything.

After a day or two, I was scheduled to go home, and a pickup was attempted for me. However, I was terrified of just randomly walking out of the psych ward and onto the still-ongoing festival, so despite the psyche ward wanting me to leave, I acted up in order to keep my room, which was the lesser of two evils for me even though the place was terrible and even though the guy who tried to violate me was still there. I ended up doubling my time, which also gave my best friend time to set up a welcome home party, after which my other best friend came to get me. He tried making light of the situation by coming by dressed as Don Quixote (I loved those stories) while riding a horse and pretending the psyche ward was a castle I was being rescued from. We literally rode home on a horse… to a welcome home party. I still have feelings of numbness but they try their best.

I later went on tripadvisor and gave a one star review of the psyche ward.