And The Pandemic Wasn't Even the Worst Part

Content Warning: story contains details of psychiatric hospitalization for mania and psychosis and may be triggering to some readers

It was 12am on a Thursday and I was standing in the middle of a psychiatric hospital, muttering about The Hunger Games as if I had personally lived through it. Was this the start to some horror-comedy film? No, it was just the start to the strangest Thursday in existence.

I didn’t know why I was there, but I was too tired to question it. The first ambulance had taken me to the wrong place, and the second ride felt even longer. The people at the emergency room didn’t even tell me where I was going, and by then I couldn’t muster up the effort to ask. When I finally reached my destination, they took my belongings, made me shower, and gave me teal scrubs to wear. I complied because there was no alternative.

I’m surprised I was able to sleep that night. If they gave me medicine, I couldn’t remember, and I didn’t fight it. The fighting would come later, back when I was grounded, or as grounded as I could be, in the reality of my situation.

That first night I slept from exhaustion alone. Not because I felt safe, or peaceful or like I needed to sleep, I slept because there simply wasn’t anything else to do. When I awoke the next day, it was to a world more confusing, more surreal, and more terrifying than I had ever known.

You start with the facts: Name your current reality and try to backtrack. Try to make sense of a world which cannot make sense. Piece together the thoughts of a mind you’re unsure you can trust anymore. Start with the basics:

Your name is Jordan. You’re in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. You’re in a psychiatric hospital, somewhere, you’re not exactly sure where. You came here in an ambulance. You wrote on the walls in the ER. Your mind was on overdrive in the ER. Your mom and brother visited you in the ER. Your brother said mom wanted you to go to the hospital. You fell asleep on the couch. You were in the neighbor’s yard looking for something. The police weren’t understanding. You were scared of something. You had to leave. You were triggered. Something scared you Sunday night. You ran out of gas Sunday night. You were in a parking lot Sunday night.

You don’t belong here.

Though there were gaps in my memory, I knew enough of the basics. I knew enough to know that I did not belong here, in this psychiatric hospital an unknown distance from my home. I did not belong here and I had to tell somebody.

I met with the provider and she told me I had to stay 14 days, that there had been a trial to determine my mental wellbeing, that I couldn’t be released any sooner. I didn’t understand and tried to explain to her that I had to leave, that I hadn’t gone to any trial and that I had to get out of here. She explained that I had to be stabilized on my medications, and that I had been involuntarily committed for 14 days. There was no way that I was getting out.

“You can’t hold me here,” I pleaded, “you have to let me leave.”

But it was out of her hands.

I was confused because I did not understand how they could legally hold me there. Bits of my memory from the emergency room resurfaced and I vaguely remembered saying I would voluntarily commit myself. I didn’t understand how they could force me to stay there against my will. They didn’t understand things how I understood them.

They didn’t understand that my thinking wasn’t disordered, it was just on a level it had never reached before. They didn’t understand that everything was connected, and I was able to see those connections. They didn’t understand that every character, book and movie had come alive in my mind as if I had lived through them. They didn’t understand that I didn’t belong here.

Not once did they tell me my diagnosis: acute psychosis brought on by a manic episode. I didn’t see it coming, how could I? No one suspects anything is wrong when mania manifests as motivation and a good mood. No one anticipates the crash from the high, and the spiral into something much, much darker. Like your own personal horror movie you don’t realize is a horror movie.

I don’t remember the first week that much. My brain fogs with the memory of the mundane. You wait to eat. Wash yourself but don’t step in the shower. Make conversation with the other patients to show you’re not closed off. Go outside when allowed because staying inside could be seen as bad. Ask when you’ll be able to leave. Color or read to pass the time. Try not to make a scene. Trust no one and nothing.

The problem was that I was upset. More upset than I’d probably ever been in my life. All I wanted to do was leave, but every time I told them that they couldn’t keep me here, they looked at me with mask-covered faces and said nothing. Instead they told me:

“Just keep taking your medicine and try to get better.”

But how could I get better if I didn’t know what was wrong with me?

The first week I didn’t trust that they were trying to help me. Perhaps I had done something wrong and that was the reason I was here. I did swing at a police officer in the ER, but I didn’t hit him and only did it because they were crowding around me, making me feel unsafe. That couldn’t be the reason I was here. Still, as my court date to determine if I could be released got pushed back further and further, I felt like they would never let me leave. I was a prisoner and the key to my release had been thrown away before I even got there.

The worst scenarios ran through my head. In the ER I had been speaking very fast and repeating myself, a result of my OCD and psychosis combined, and drawing conclusions between things at a rate that made me feel like an AI. Maybe this was a government facility and they needed to study me. I made sure to rinse my scrubs in the shower as to get rid of any DNA they could harvest. It seemed laughable, even in my psychotic state, but I felt it was better to be safe than sorry.

Or maybe, another thought I had had in the ER was more plausible: I was immortal and the year was no longer 2020, but far in the future. That would explain why no one was allowed visitors, and why they couldn’t let me leave. Maybe we were really in space, on another planet, and all the staff members with masks and keycards were human, opening the door locks with pictures of Earth, and the patients were aliens. This didn’t seem likely, but it stuck in the back of my mind.

“When it rains on Jupiter, it rains diamonds!”

I let out a confused laugh at the Go-Gurt slogan. Was this a sign? No, it was just a coincidence. I tried to remind myself that correlation didn't equal causation, and that “signs” were often perceived coincidences. Try to focus on the facts of the situation.

As much as I knew I needed to comply and fit in, that first week I was still very much in the midst of psychosis and very upset that they were holding me against my will. I felt like my rights had been taken away from me and I had no voice. These feelings would occasionally surface as a raised voice, crying, or refusing to take my meds. As for the meds though I couldn’t refuse, if I tried to dissolve them in water they caught me, and if I said I didn’t want to take them they said that they would force me to. Defeated, I took the pills despite not knowing what all of them were.

It wasn’t until the end of the first week that it started to click:

I had to get better. I had to fit in.

Even if I didn’t trust the medicine they were giving me, even if they were violating my rights, even if I didn’t want to go to group therapy, I had to fit in.

I had to at least appear to be getting better. And by the end of the next week, I was leaving, one way or another.

No more raising my voice. No more ranting phone calls to my mom. No more skipping group therapy. No more refusing to take my meds. I was going to be a model patient. I was going to get out. Being released would be preferable, but in the back of my mind was always that readiness to escape. Despite my turn towards good behavior, I still had doubts that they would ever let me out.

I wish I could say my second week was miles better than the first, but it mostly consisted of playing the waiting game. Agonizingly counting down the days I had left. Still feeling like when my release day came, it would be a sick trick, and something would happen to make me stay longer.

Despite this, I focused on appearing to get better. Heck, actually trying to get better. I took my medicine without hesitation. I tried to think that whatever it was, it was helping my mind stop spiraling so fast. I apologized to staff members I had raised my voice at. I went to group therapy and participated. By then, patients I had talked to had actually started to feel like friends, I looked forward to talking and interacting with them. And through it all I colored pictures with crayons to pass the time and channel any lingering upset feelings that I had. I smiled and laughed.

“We’ve been blessed with good weather,” I told one of the other patients I had gotten close with, channeling June from The Handmaid’s Tale.

“Oh no, I forgot to pray,” I exclaimed when I took a bite of my breakfast, reciting a line from Miss Congeniality. I wasn’t very religious, but the staff at the hospital clearly were, mentioning God in their group sessions and activities. I internally laughed at my acting. I would show them that I could be religious too.

I put on a show, and yet, some part of it was true.

When it came time for my check-in with one of the nurses, she was happy with my progress.

"Jordan, you're doing so much better," remains in my mind in her thick African accent.

I was better. Maybe I wasn't doing so much better as the nurse had said, but I had actually put effort into my recovery and hopefully had shown the staff that I was stable enough to leave.

And then it happened.

That Thursday at 11am, 14 days since my intake day, I was going to be discharged. I had set up follow-up appointments with my psychiatrist, therapist, and primary care physician. I was going to look into outpatient treatment. My meds were going to be adjusted and refilled. My mom was going to pick me up.

I was still in disbelief Thursday morning when they gave me back my things, my things that one nurse had told me were lost, that I had screamed at them to show me. They were all there. For the first time in 14 days I was able to wear my own clothing. I put on my bag and gathered up my two folders full of drawings and worksheets. Then the most wonderful words I had heard since I'd been there registered in my ears:

"Jordan, put your shoes on, your mom is here."

I hurriedly put my shoes on and said a quick goodbye to the others. I followed a nurse through hallways I did not remember, that perhaps I had walked through to get there, but now it was inconsequential. I didn’t cry, I wasn't happy, I was just present. We reached the main lobby with doors to the outside, and there was my mom. They gave her my discharge paperwork and sent us on our way.

"Don't come back unless it's to visit."

I got in the car, still surprised to be free. In my pants pocket were broken bits of crayon and crumpled pieces of paper, a reminder that I had actually been there. My mom said it was nice to see me, and then we drove home.

Over the next couple weeks I readjusted to life back at home. Remnants of my psychosis popped up but ultimately didn't cause any issues. I tried to solidify the whole experience in my memory so I wouldn't forget it. How could I forget it? The year 2020 was halfway over, and for me, the pandemic wasn’t even the worst part of it.

One thing was for certain amidst all the uncertainty I faced:

I was never going back.