​Essay: Five Days in a Mental Hospital

SELF ESTEEM BINGO IN HEAVEN

By Christoper Sloce
QuailBellMagazine.com

​
Thursday
I would have taken a picture but they took my phone so I wouldn’t hang myself with Tetris. First group activity: a 5 x 5 bingo board with platitudes in each square. It was called Self-Esteem Bingo. The group counselor called them and we had to search for the aspects of self-esteem so we could get a piece of candy or something.
   
I thought we were supposed to mark down things we thought we saw in ourselves. I ended up sitting and staring at a square reading “an attitude of gratitude”.

 
Saturday
They turned the phones on and a lady from acute sat on one for 30 minutes while I waited to call my best friend. The loudmouth country girl I was attracted to until I figured out how much a loudmouth she was decided to fight her. I sat and waited. Time doesn’t matter much inside. Days and dates weren’t worth keeping up with.
    
She cursed out the girl in a different language. Somebody called it Chilean.
 
Friday
After they diagnosed me with major depressive disorder, anxiety and PTSD, we had lunch. I ordered “Asian beef salad” and instead I got a house salad with chopped upndeli turkey. The lady across from me told me it looked like I had her lunch. I thought it was because she was diabetic. She wanted the salad.
 
Saturday
The doctor hit me off at the pass when I went to get my medicine. I was bad off that day and afraid I’d lose my job and become homeless. I hadn’t had a decent paying job in all the two years I left home and I knew deep down I wouldn’t have one when I got out.

He approached my fear like it was a symptom of my depression. I asked if they could help me with some resources to find a job. He said no. I called him a fucking prick under my breath and slept the day away in a Vistaril haze.
 
Friday
Dream: I’m dragging the aluminum loft-bed down a mountain in exchange for free housing in an RV. In a clearing a circle of kids in red cloaks like Goya’s witches worshiped something I couldn’t parse. Then they all descended on me.
 
Monday
My friend Elly picked me up and when she dropped me off I left my keys in her car. I broke in through my bedroom window. It was the same mess I left it. I went through my phone as soon as I got a charge. Turns out I was fired over the answering machine. No answer why. I guess they thought I was an incompetent. I’m glad nobody knew I was in the mental hospital. It might have been a handy justification for abusing me.
 
Wednesday
In triage when I got to add my weight to the stack of humiliations I suffer they said the hospital Starbucks had a lot of turnover. I don’t know if that was supposed to make me want to die less. I don’t know if I was supposed to tell them that the job was the only thing that had made me cry in a couple of months. And I had cried about it more than once.
    
They took my blood, which has always felt like a burning and polluted river.
 
Thursday
Part of the boredom was no books, just bad TV. I asked if they had a lending library and I seem to remember the answer being more condescending than it actually was.
 
Sunday
Home Alone 2 was playing and Donald Trump was directing Kevin McAllister down the hall. Even a mental ward’s walls can’t keep out Gog and Magog.
 
Friday
I heard the loudmouth say the hospital was the first time she met a mean Asian.
    
“Jesus Christ.” I said. The nurse asked what was wrong. I told her nothing.
 
Saturday
The night ward lady gave us all our snacks. The loudmouth told a story about a unicorn that got raped.

Sunday
My roommate ran me by Letters from the Earth and the collected Arthur Rimbaud. I read Letters from the Earth and remembered he said that man decided to interpret heaven and leave sex out, the one thing he derives the most pleasure from, but put in all the things that bore him, like church.

Monday
My copy of Letters from the Earth didn’t have “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven” and the Rimbaud collection didn’t have “The Drunken Boat”. The New Testament in my room only had Psalms from the Old Testament. I wrote this essay in golf pencil.
    I skipped group activities and the nurse told me it would count against me. An hour later I got discharged. I guess nobody needed my hand turkey.
 
Sunday
Heaven is a place where nothing happens. A mental hospital is one where only the people and the channels change.
 
Monday
Time is never as long as waiting for your ride home from heaven.