2004 - Vol. 1, Issue 2

Since the police dropped me at the door, I was told that no matter what I did, I wasn't going home until the "involuntary commitment" was up. I had been imprisoned in the state mental health institution for three weeks when it first happened.

If you were "good" and did everything they told you to do, you could get "special privileges" and go across the street. They called it "central programming" or "cp." I suspect it was called programming because they thought we were not human beings capable of rational thought or basic life skills; therefore we had to be programmed to brush our teeth or comb our hair.

At central programming time, the privileged and compliant recipients were lined up by the door, just like we were in elementary school, and had to be walked in a group of six or less to CP Area 1, CP Area 2, or CP Area 3. These program sessions were designed to teach us how to read a newspaper, how to address our hygiene needs, and how to be assertive. The problem was that if you were assertive, you were "noncompliant" and would probably not be allowed to be programmed again until you were more "cooperative and less argumentative."

As the daytime horrors weighed heavily, the nights grew longer and I slept less and less. Other patients wandered into my bedroom more times during the night than the staff did. Nightmares plagued and woke me. The rest of the night I was startled and frightened. I was afraid to close my eyes and re-experience the nightmares; the more nights I stayed awake, the more wicked the cycle was. I was terrified by my aloneness. But I was not even allowed to turn on the light to read and distract myself.

The night shift slept more than most patients did. On one of my first sleepless nights, I learned not to step into the hall where the staff slumbered. Irritated at being disturbed, they barked, "Go back to your room!"

Occasionally I slept. I have occasionally walked in my sleep. I have always talked in my sleep, and almost every night, I thrash. One night was very different. I had finally made that uneasy transition into light sleep — the points where reality and dream meet and the difference cannot be easily deciphered.

I awoke a nurse dictating "code blue" into a handheld radio and a uniformed security guard, a big thug of a guy. "You need to come with us," he rumbled. I wiped the sleep from my eyes. Momentarily I thought I should be assertive and say, "I am the only one who knows what I need and no others can dictate that to me." But the thugs stepped forward and were on both sides of me. I reached into the dust under the bed for my black satin ballet slippers. The guard shook his head "no" and growled, "Just come on." And without asking anymore, I did.

They guided each of my steps with a firm grasp on my elbows as I trudged the long dimly lit hallway. As we neared "Stimulus Reduction Area," other thugs magically appeared out of other doorways to join the march. I had been in the Stimulus Reduction Area before — when my yelling from the nightmares had been too loud.

They jingled their large set of keys until a loud click of the lock violated the silence of the barren inner hallway. After the door creaked open, there was a second door with a tiny square window. It, too, was still locked; from the outside all that could be seen was a gaping hole of complete darkness. The keys jangled again and the door of doom opened. The frigid air rushed in in a wave and hit my face.

Glaring fluorescent lights were switched on from somewhere outside the room, temporarily blinding me. When the room began to come into focus again, I could see the puke-green walls with black marks on them.

In the middle of all of this cramped wasteland of bareness was an island: a steel metal bed frame. On top was a thin green mattress that had stuffing sticking out every which way. The mattress was well worn, without any covering of sheets or blankets.

I shuddered. It could have been either the coldness of the space or the premonition of my future crawling under my skin.

The nurse looked at the thugs and said, "She's going to have to change into our pajamas." It was a wintry night and I had been sleeping in my standard garb of sweats and a T-shirt.

The thugs nodded and one growled, "you heard the nurse."

"Why do I have to change? I am wearing pajamas."

"Put them on now or we'll help you put them on." In the tight space they shifted their weight towards me.

"In front of all of you?" I was horrified. Silence. Someone muttered a direction and the male thugs started sifting towards the back of the room as the females inched forward.

Soon they surrounded me in a tight circle and a male voice said, "There. You got what you wanted. Now get changed and hurry up about it or we're gonna help you."

I grudgingly pulled the T-shirt over my head, exposing my bare breasts in the harsh lights. A hideous V-neck top was tossed at me. I scrambled to cover my nakedness with it. The large size dwarfed me and revealed the whiteness of my chest.

I slowly peeled my sweats down. With all of the men around me, I felt small. I stood alone in my socks and underwear and the pajama top that hung below my waist. The nurse across the room critically scanned me from head to toe, then judged: "She can't wear underwear. She's got to take them off, too."

My heart beat even faster. I already couldn't wear my own clothes and had to change in front of a gaggle of thugs. Now I had to strip out of my underwear, too.

"You heard the nurse. Get 'em off. Or we'll help you get 'em off."

I searched for any kind eyes in the women that stood before me. Anybody to make eye contact with. Anybody to bond with. Any look of sympathy. Anyone who would remind them that I had done nothing wrong. Anybody that might be willing to protect me. Any recognition that I was a human. Finding none, I made eye contact with the only body who was not glaring at me. With this solitary connection to humanness, I removed the underwear and hoped that they weren't staring at the stark contrast of my pubic hair against my skin. Grateful for their little warmth, I pulled the scratchy pajama bottoms up to my belly.

"Just get her down and get it over with. We've gotta go."

"Yeah, you're gonna have to lay on the bed now."

My stomach quivered, thoughts rushing in. Lay on the bed where I couldn't fight back? Lay down with all of these thugs circling me? At three o'clock in the morning, already they had forced me out of my sleep, out of my bed, and out of my clothes — unpredictable, demanding, threatening . Nobody I knew was there. They could really hurt me if I lay down. There were so many of them and only one of me. I had no shoes, no underwear. If they wanted to do something to me, who would stop them? If they did do something to me, who would believe me? What were they going to do to me?

"This is taking way too long. We've got things to do."

"Get on the bed. Now. Just do what we tell you and hurry up about it."

I felt a push from behind. As I fell towards the bed, I knew I couldn't fight them. I knew whatever they were going to do, I could not stop. I remembered how other "recipients" fought and how violent it got before the door shut, blocking the sounds.

I stopped questioning. I would not fight and make it worse. I simply gave up.

As my body hit the bed, I immediately retracted into a fetal position. I brought my legs up towards my chest and curled in a ball as I desperately tried to bury my head in my arms and in the mattress. Suddenly, there were hands everywhere on my body.

They towered over me and reached into my protected space and unwound me. All of my limbs were being untangled at once. One last time I feebly tried to recoil. There were too many hands and forces pulling and tugging at me. My arms were wrenched past my ears and stretched as far as they could go above my head. My legs were abruptly split and my hip popped in the spread-eagle position.

Hands pressed heavily and moved quickly. There was a moment when the movement ceased. I felt the weight of their bodies as they lay across my limbs to hold me down. When I tried to see how many bodies were sprawled across mine, my head would not move. It, too, had been captured. I felt pressure on my sweaty brow, and strained my neck, struggling to see what had happened to me. And when I looked up, I saw male and female faces who weren't seeing me.

An arm flashed and I caught a brief glimpse of it all, then: Fat plastic cuffs attached with metal locks to wide strips of leather. I did not know how these primitive, ugly devices were used, nor did I want to learn.

My trembling body ached for escape. The fear was too much. If I could just stand up and run far away from these thugs, in this room, void of warmth. I do not want to wait for what happens next. I longed to be safe, away.

The hands grew tighter and firmer as they pressed me harder into the mattress that had long ago caved into the steel below. They were pulling and twisting and wrapping and pulling and twisting and wrapping. They encircled my wrists and ankles with three-inch-wide impersonal plastic bracelets. The skin on my right wrist was painfully pinched between the grip of plastic and metal. My nerve endings fired; I winced. They continued working on the body that seemed so very far away from me. Their keys echoed in the hollow space and the metal locks on the plastic clicked with loud finality. They were done.

Exposed, alone, locked up — the silence filled me with dread. I scanned the room. There was a large window with an extensive cage barring any glimpse of the outside. A ceiling with soundproof tile. Puke-green, but very bare, walls. The door was still open, propped up by a hairy arm.

I tried a cautious breath, but a thick cloth band constricted and deflated my abdomen. My shoulder joints screamed from their hyperextension. A strap tied to the bed thwarted my attempt to move from the pain. All of my legs and arms and I were locked to a steel bed on a bare mattress that reeked of urine.

I so desperately wanted the solace of lying in a little ball. I cowered under the naked lights as the red eye of a camera watched me. My legs were spread so wide without any underwear. My arms were stuck up way above the shoulders. The cold air quickly turned my uncovered skin blue.

Suddenly, three men reentered the tiny room. Two of them grabbed the waist edge of my pajama bottoms and pulled it down to show the buttock. They pulled at my body and it arched against the straps that bound me. Finding little room for turning me, they nodded to the nurse outside the room.

She entered — with an alcohol wipe and a needled syringe.

She loomed nearer. The question that could never be asked aloud churned inside the terrified girl, her life so far away: What have I done wrong? What have I done wrong? What have I done wrong? We were trying to ask, will there ever be an end? when the last prod of the evening pricked my skin.

And the experience jolted me forever.