The Past Begins

I want to go back to talk about BPI a bit more. This is the short name for the Psychiatric Hospital my mother dumped in that was in a previous post.

I really thought that I was done with it, but, over the last week I have thought a lot about what I wanted to post about and my train of thought led me back to this place and I made several startling discoveries.

I've always thought of it as a stepping block. This wasn't a place I spent a lot of time in. Matter of fact, I completed a 30 day evaluation and that was it. Just 30 days.

During those 30 days however, some things happened that I think now, set the building blocks for the foundation of my life.

I recall that they ran a lot of tests on me. I do mean a lot. Head scans, x-rays, blood work, along with all the regular tests that you think of when you think psychiatric testing.

Ink blot tests stand out in my mind. Other then that, not many do with this one exception.

It was late at night, perhaps even early morning, when a nurse came into my room and roused me from my sleep. In my tiredness I followed along pretty quietly, my eyes glancing around the empty hallways.

Her shoes made that click click sound as she walked and it echoed in the dimness. I had to squint to cut through the shadows to make sure no one was lurking there.

She led me over to a chair and instructed me to sit down. It was like one of those old fashioned school desks that have the swiveling arm. She pushed it in front of me and instructed me to place my arm on it and so I did and she tied the tirniquit.

I stared at the blue and white stripes on my standard issued pajamas and after a minute she pushed the desk arm away and laid my arm on my own lap, giving me stern orders not to move. I glared at her, simply because I had not moved in inch that she herself had not facilitated.

In went the needle and I watched the tube on the end. I was used to having my blood taken and knew that once the bottle began to fill up I was almost done. Only problem was, is that the tube was not filling up.

I shifted my gaze further down to the needle and I watched as she pressed harder into my arm, then harder still and I don't recall the words, but I know I mentioned that it hurt and she told me to shut up. After about 2 minutes of this the needle began to come out and I let out a relieved breath, only to suck it back in as she shoved it back in without ever fully pulling it out.

I watched the blood begin to trickle down my arm and I tried to pull my arm away and the woman hissed at me to hold still and gripped my arm with an iron grasp. The trickled turn into a steady stream and I began to panic.

The blood seeped down into the pajama bottoms creating a rather large circle and for a moment I stared at it in horrified awe as it spread out before I found my voice. A colorful string of words insulted her, though I think she was more pissed because I demanded that she stop and I had the nerve to suggest she didn't know what the hell she was doing.

This one single incident, has left me with a life long fear of needles. I don't mean just, I don't like needles kind of thing. I mean a deep fear of them that sends me nearly a panic every time I have to have blood drawn. I cry and shake horribly.

The second and third things are tied in with each other and even know I can't recall exactly how it all went.

I do recall running into my room and slamming the door shut. My roommate Lori looked at me as though I had lost my mind even as my frantic gaze moved around the room. The closet, no, too obvious, under the bed, again, to obvious. The desk though, under the desk isn't somewhere they would look and so I crammed myself under the desk.

This set another life long habit, one of hiding from bad things. For the next several years, this resulted in a literal manifestation. I would climb into cabinets under the sink, or in little cramped areas and spends hours there. It was my sanctuary. I felt safe. No one could find me. More then once they had to write up a runaway report and call the police. As an adult, I shut myself down, hiding within my own mind. Many times I will refuse to talk when I get upset, I hang my head and let my hair fall over my face to shield me from the world.

The third thing is tied in because when they finally did find me, they drug me out from under the desk and I fought and screamed and kicked back at them. In the end, the only way for them to settle the situation, was to let me go, or hold me down and I can assure you that a bunch of overpaid assholes were not about to let a little girl get away with screaming at them without some form of punishment. They must have held me down for a good three hours.

I was sweating and crying, fighting until my body just couldn’t fight anymore. This to has affected me as an adult. Many times when I begin to loose control Chris will try to take me into his arms. More often then not this results in me slapping him away. I can’t stand to be touched. I become furiously enraged.

Even during our playful times, if ever, I feel pinned, I get panicky and he has to stop or it results in me breaking down in tears. We’ve learned not to wrestle anymore.

This leads me to wonder. Is bi-polar genetic, or is it life circumstances? Had I grown up in a normal childhood, would I still be like this? Would I be able to have a normal life without the darkness always lingering? Would I feel like everyone is against me when all they want to do is help me and love me?

People are constantly telling me what a great family I have. How lucky I am and how perfect my life is. These are people I never let in, never let them see the darkness and I wonder what they would think of me if they knew.

Over the next couple of weeks, I am going to be delving into my life at Western Academy, which is where I lived from the time that I was 10 until I was almost 16. It is one of the most influential chunks of time in my life and I feel the need to go back and take a deep look into it.

There was a lot of bad stuff that happened, but, I can’t say that it is all bad. I found a lot of love within the confines of those old brick walls and sometimes, I find myself thinking about the people I lived with there, asking myself if they are all right, if they are happy now, if they have good lives. I may never know those answers, but, I think it will help to tell these stories.