Editor’s note: Here is another satirical piece by the Front Porch Talker. For background, see “My life with a sociopath.”
By The Front Porch Talker
“And, they endured.” Wm. F. Faulkner
I was committed.
I remember several poignant moments on the night I was committed, against my will, to an in-patient, lock-down mental facility: the Dalai Lama was in town, and was giving a speech on the television I watched in the Emergency Room, hours BEFORE I had been committed. His message: peace and forgiveness. I have not yet forgiven, but I do feel peaceful.
Also: My close friend and her sister had brought me to the Emergency Room of the hospital. They and all the medical professionals in the Emergency Room acted as though I had been invisible. Whenever I tried to explain: I am having a PTSD Acute Panic Attack (and need medication), not a paranoid, delusional manic episode—everybody ignored me as if I weren’t in the room. I was: I have never been more present, in a room, in my life.
And, to stop myself from hyperventilating and crying I had tried leaving the ER; but instead, I was wrestled to the ground by two or three security guards, and tied down to a gurney, and not allowed to even use the my friend’s cell phone to call a trusted person to help me out.
The problem was a matter of confusion rather than any conscious attempt to harm me personally. Or rather, a specious syllogism. They saw what they wanted to see and were used to seeing in mental health. That is, the mental illness of the day: Bipolar Disorder is often confused with PTSD and other disorders associated with real traumas.
So, I plead to the psychiatrist, nurse, doctor, and my friends for a rational response: I wasn’t paranoid. I then explained why I was having a panic attack, in the most simple of terms: that I was having a panic attack because a real trauma had happened to me, and incidentally, a real reason to panic! Anybody in that position might cry and hyperventilate.
How else should one respond when somebody you’ve supposedly known well for nearly ten years steals your identity, your bank account, your retirement account, your house, your car, all your possessions. You have been abused by your partner who is a drug addict. And, the police don’t take it seriously. In fact, nobody takes it seriously. Not the FTC, the FBI, the State Patrol, etc. In fact, this person still uses my identity to commit frauds and forgeries.
How should a person respond to such an event?
Seeing a hole of vulnerability, the domino effect takes place: my job as a tenured professor at an Arts college for nearly twenty years takes a political turn for the worst: it is this moment, while I am reacting to trauma and stress, that they force me to take disability. It is a college with a very bad reputation for how it treats teachers, especially those like myself, who demand a higher standard of competency from students, while the private college worries about its bottom line: private tuition.
How else should one respond to such events?
There is nothing worse than trying to convince somebody that you’re not paranoid or delusional than by saying you aren’t. Just the word ”˜paranoid’ harkens visions of paranoia. Even if you have a history of occasional panic attacks during such traumas; even if you are well-educated in psychology and have an advanced graduate degree. And that sometimes people mistake mania for panic attacks.
None of that matters. All they hear are two words: paranoid and manic. Or, version two: a danger to self or others: Committed!
Plus, your concerned friend and her sister have had plenty of experience with mental health commitments. For most of their childhoods, their family had had their father committed to mental hospitals for his delusional and paranoid episodes from a serious mental illness. They believe that you are manic and paranoid. They’ve discussed it at length, outside of the ER room (where you can’t hear) with all the “medical professionals.”
Finally, after another hour or so, the psychiatrist comes into the room, while you are listening to the Dali Lama speak. He, the psychiatrist says: “We are going to commit you to an in-patient, lock-down mental facility: Fairfax Hospital.”
Since your therapist and anybody who could ever vouch for your sanity is out of the state presently, you have no choice: you are tied down to a gurney and taken, by ambulance to Fairfax hospital. They take the shoe laces out of your shoes, and anything else you might use to “harm yourself or others.” (I wonder if bra straps could be used as a weapon against self?)
The staff checks on you every fifteen minutes while you are in your room. Personally, I took plenty of very long and very hot showers just to worry the staff.
I was committed for over two weeks in our particular wing. After that, I was heading to the state facility for seriously mentally ill people for an even longer and more restricted stay: at Western State Hospital.
The psychiatrist, who visited weekly, told me in no uncertain terms: “unless you finally admit that you have Bipolar Disorder, and are ”˜manic,’ we will not release you from this hospital.” But, I protested, “I have never been diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. I have a lifelong diagnosis of Complex PTSD and occasional panic attacks. Just call my therapist who is in Florida!”
Okay, so now you’re probably thinking: this sounds like one of those Sunday Movies of the Week on the ”˜Lifetime Channel for Women: all true, all the time!’ True.
It’s so surreal really: like the ”˜Sunday Night Movie of the Week’ on the ”˜Lifetime Channel for Women.’ Of course it all turns out okay in the end. Or, better than ”˜okay.’ Maybe they start a new foundation to prevent this from happening again; or, a poignant reunion with loved ones is in order. No matter.
So, I try to see the best of any situation, Fairfax lock-down, in-patient mental hospital notwithstanding. I try to see it all as a joke, or a fodder for my writing (which I am making full use of now). Surely I thought they would see the mistake and release me.
Not that I didn’t have a great time during my “stay” of over two weeks. There is plenty of entertainment, and the usual “busy activities” and multiple “check-ins” with group therapy and all. I don’t think kindergarten has more structured activities, which go from the moment you wake to the moment you pass out at night from all the “medications.”
This was not, as you might suppose, for drug addicts or alcoholics; they had “free passes” for themselves and a “guest” to eat in the cafeteria, while we ate in our own “unit;” together of course. I didn’t earn my way to the cafeteria until the last few days of my “stay” at the spa for the mentally exhausted.
Anyway, it’s like a vacation, in a way. The place is a little bit like the Holiday Inn, maybe. If the Holiday Inn management locked you in to the unit and insisted that you eat all your meals with the others on your unit. However, there isn’t a pool, for obvious reasons.
And, it’s a “small world,” as they say. A woman whom I went to college with, in Illinois back in the 70’s, was now a psychiatric nurse in Washington in the other unit. Just by looking at me she could tell: I was definitely manic. I had a certain bright look in my eye, she thought, which I thought was abject FEAR and PANIC! She and her partner have a musical act that parodies Operas, which still offends me to the bone.
You meet many very interesting and intelligent folks in the lock-down facility that is your “unit.” I mean, where else can you go besides to your room with your roommate; to the community room for group therapy, or outside in a fenced and locked area about the size of a maximum-security yard. It does have a ping-pong table too, I might add.
And, I even had several suitors while I was there. How good can it get? A gentleman who had been “released” to the less-secure wing sent me some wildflowers. My roommates were gentle and sweet. My first roommate had the Norton Anthology of Poetry sent from home to our room and read poetry to me nightly. My second roommate explained to me how a cat could use a toilet. I had many phone calls from friends around the country. My family was unaware of my circumstances.
“Group Time,” as I’ve explained, met four or five times a day. It began with us all sitting around a table, with one of the Psychiatric workers as our leader. Most surely, they each had soothing voices, as smooth as Cool Whip on Green jello.
We would be instructed, calmly and smoothly, to look at the “emotions” page in front of us, which consisted of smiley faces with words beneath each face that identified certain emotions: confused; angry; confused; happy, etc. We then went around the room and explained our emotions in smiley faces. I believe I was a trouble-maker in that regard.
The next order of business was to go around the room and discuss “where we were at.” I told them: “I am at Fairfax Mental Hospital being held against my will.” Wrong answer. “We want feeling words!” “I FEEL FRUSTRATED BECAUSE I AM BEING HELD AGAINST MY WILL”¦.” I then sat there with a sheepish look on my face while the leader explained in clearly enunciated and simple language: “What I mean is HOW are you doing today?”
We were then instructed to “move on.” I tried. But, “move on” signified HOW one should move on with their lives SHOULD they one day be released back to the REAL world. “For example,” our instructor said, “How will you go back to your job at the gas station or maybe you are a nanny.”
A young man with Schizophrenia spent all of “group time” coloring in complex fuzzy cartoons with pens that his mother had brought him. A woman who had been living in a van spent her time hoarding the yellow cake served the night before for dessert. She generously offered herself and her boyfriend to me, should we ever get out of the hospital.
My favorite activity, besides “group,” was the time we painted each other’s toe nails. I read all the New Yorker’s I could get my hands on. And all of the NYT crossword puzzles considered contraband by some. It wasn’t a “calming” activity.
However, there is a story to this: one of the women in our unit (I’ll call her Cindy) was being held in the “secured” area of our “secure” wing. She was considered actively psychotic and dangerous. We “heard” from her every so often rattling the double-doors, like saber-rattling, every time we had nearly forgotten her.
A few days later, coinciding with the time I began working the NYT Crossword puzzles, Cindy had a “visitor;” her estranged husband, Henry. They’d dress Cindy in her street clothes and parade her out to the day room for her requisite daily visit with Henry. Henry left the newspaper on the table before he left. Thus, my crossword habit.
And who could forget the “Aerobics Class” one of our instructors led in the group room. A friend of mine knew her as they both took dance lessons on the “outside.” When he visited me, this instructor chatted with him a bit. I should not have “acted the part” of a crazy person, even though it humored me. I was written up for dancing to George Benson singing “This Masquerade.”
And who could forget the graduate student from the school of Social Work (Social Work was my undergraduate degree, ironically)? She (I’ll call her Amy) spoke to us a little too loudly, as though maybe we were deaf too. During “check-in” and “group” she stared down the table at us in secret terror of what we might do, the way Bette Davis’ sister (name?) looked at her in “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” Or the crazed way Billy Bob Thornton looked in “Sling Blade.” Or maybe the Borderline personality that Angelina Jolie played in that movie. (name?) We were, in effect, all Baby Janes , Billy Bob’s, and Angelina’s to her. (Come to think of it: wasn’t Angelina married briefly to Billy Bob?)
Amy then told us in her condescending and patronizing tone that we would cut out pictures and words from the magazines stacked in the middle of the table. We were to paste these, in collage form (of course she defined “collage” for us) on pieces of construction paper.
I protested. Cutting-up my precious unread New Yorker magazines was tantamount to making me crazy. I immediately grabbed those for my “project.” During “share” time, Amy nodded her head in approval. Mine was a depiction of Alice in Wonderland, of Alice going down the rabbit hole. Amy found this interesting and duly noted it in her notebook. Mental illness at its height!
Amy then asked me to “share” my reasons with the other twelve or so participants at the table. “Well,” I said, “there are theories to support the thesis that Alice, of Alice and Wonderland was groomed by the author, Lewis Carroll, a.k.a. Dobson. He was a pedophile in real life. Some have even proposed that he was Jack the Ripper and that “Jabberwoky” was proof of that. So, I think this picture depicts Lewis Carroll’s state-of-mind regarding Alice.”
“This is not a calm thought!” Amy said. “Let’s move on.” She ended “group” abruptly.
Having “family time” together in our little wing was the only touching moment of my stay, besides my nightly poetry readings by my roommate, I mean. Our favorite psych worker, Betty, gave us motherly looks and listened to us with real empathy. Then she’d head to the store and return with “fun” items for dinner: and, we had ice cream sundaes on movie night.
My fun was short-lived. Unfortunately for me, one movie night, as I was doing my daily NYT crossword puzzle that Cindy’s husband had left, everything came to a halt. We heard her back in the most “secure” area of our secured unit, rattling the doors and calling out obscenities at us. Her shouting was so loud that it blurred “movie night” into a horror show.
Intuitively, I knew what was next: Cindy broke through the doors when a nurse checked in on her. She bee-lined straight for me, and for my crossword puzzle. Considering I struggle with PTSD and fears of raging women, this was not easy for me. Cindy shouted obscenities I’ve never heard before, and they were aimed at me. I moved just in time to avoid having her hands around my throat. I offered her the Sunday NYT crossword puzzle as a symbol of peace. I couldn’t finish Sunday’s anyway.
It was soon after that night that I was given cafeteria privileges in the less secure unit. This meant the world to me. I could now sit with a “visitor” in the captain’s chairs with my tray of the evening’s entre without fears about Cindy taking revenge against me.
But by the grace of God, I was lucky: I had a few dear friends, a great therapist and a great attorney who made my release possible. On my own, I would not have fared so well. Now, I am thankful for small graces: a few dear friends who called me daily and visited me. Some brought their dogs to the window of the “day room.” Some ate with me when I had advanced to the “less secure” wing where you could pick your own food choices and sit in Captain’s chairs, instead of folding chairs.
And, thanks to a diligent attorney. On my fourteenth day of commitment, my “concerned” friend who, along with her sister, had had me committed in the first place, then testified against me in court. She thought I was a danger to myself and should stay even longer.
How should I respond to that event? To a friend I had trusted for twenty-five years?
Thank God for my attorney and for the judge who quickly dismissed the case. I walked across the courtroom after the hearing ended and addressed the judge: “Your Honor, I know I am wearing a white linen lined jacket, and that it is after Labor Day, but: if I had known that I would be committed against my will for two weeks, I would have dressed more appropriately.”
The judge replied: “I am sure you would have. I would have made the same faux pas.”
If not for them, I would have surely been sent to Western State Hospital in a “more secure” lockdown, where I would still be today.
On the last day of my stay at Fairfax Mental Hospital, the whole psych staff gathered in my room to wish me well, I suppose. Instead, they said: “We just wanted to tell you what a great pleasure it has been to have worked with you these past weeks.
“You’re one of the most brilliant ”˜clients’ we’ve ever had here at Fairfax!”
Of course, they tell me I’m “brilliant,” I am thinking to myself as I make my way through the front doors with my friend. They think I am “Bipolar brilliant” as it fits the definition in the profile of the DSM IV.
As my friend arrived to “escort” me from the facility (a condition of my release, according to the Fairfax psychiatrist), I asked him: “So; am I or am I not brilliant?”
Just then, the cake-hoarding woman who’d offered herself and her boyfriend to me earlier, was also being released at the same time.
“Yoo-hoo!” she called after me. “Yoo-hoo!” Her boyfriend was sitting in the van.
I heaved myself and my bag of stolen New Yorker magazines into my friend’s Jeep and locked the doors and windows to blur-out the sound of voices. Real voices; not imagined.
As William Faulkner wrote on his acceptance of a Nobel Prize: “And they endured.”
So, I too endure, while others I’ve known sadly have not.
To all the people who are committed against their will, who endured…. and then others that were not so fortunate…my heart goes out. This is a testament to your strength, your sanity and your courage.
I was thinking about this very thing this morning, synchronicity bringing me to your amazing story. How many women were gaslighted into mental institutions where it’s a creeping realisation, one I can barely sit with, that many of these people were innocent empathic and sane and most likely pushed into post traumatic stress, pushed into craziness in that calm and calculated way only a sociopath can execute….it’s heinous.
I believe the rage goes on even after death as some of these people suffered years of imprisonment in these institutions for “nothing”…I can tune into it, it’s very sad and very heartbreaking and something we need to wake up to and stop happening.
Sociopaths do push the people they USE to the brink on every level, let’s look very closely at what constitutes “crazy” and it seems to me, someone normal who has been tortured to the brink of confusion, bewilderment, bamboozlement, mind-screwed to such an extent they appear crazy…look again, maybe we could begin to suspect behind EVERY crazy person there is possibly a sociopath pulling strings??? It HAS to be investigated, because as far as I can see from my own experience at the hands of an absolute CREEP, I was going crazier and crazier…he stood absolutely calm and just ignored my pleas for mercy and stuck the psychological knife in through daylight robbery, trickery and deceit…but because he was CALM while he did it, people believe HIM….let’s remember this old saying…”it’s the quiet ones we have got to watch” watch and watch again. It’s not as it appears.
Thanks you for your story, thank you for enduring and succeeding and surviving. I wish you a happy fulfilled life and really want to say…I am so sorry for your suffering and the ignorance that prevails out there…you have to have felt it, experienced it to know just who the crazy ones are..thanks for expressing it, going for it and allowing feelings so compassionately after such an ordeal.
The Front Porch Talker,
If you don’t have a sense of humor, you will go nuts. After exposure to a sociopath, you are never the same again. I feel compassion for every unfortunate sane person who ever ended up in a mental hospital against their will. It’s an uphill battle to get healthy and whole, that’s for sure. I think that we’ve all experienced the trauma that hits you when you discover some of the spath’s shenanigans, just blowing you away, doing a job on your mental well-being. There’s a whole range of emotions that are triggered, flattening you out for a period of time.
Wow!!!! a wonderful story of courage and survival! I ended up in hospital after the ex h S! I couldn’t even articulate in words where I were emotionally & spiritually then. What I do recall is when I went back home to my parents after hospital the CAT team visited daily for assessment. Initially they wanted to medicate me. I took 1 tablet and could not move for 10 hours, I was a zombie!
I knew one thing very clearly back then and that was I could not function as a mother of 3 young children, one of which was only 6 months old in this zombie like state and 2 I knew my condition was environmental not chemical!
I had escaped a war zone of terrible atrocities, I felt like I had escaped from a concentration camp and I was feeling the aftermath of this very acutely!
I refused medication as I needed to think and feel the moment, no matter how excruciating and unbearable that was at the time.
I found a Brilliant therapist that found me to be suffering PTSD and taught me all about the minds of a Psychopath.
It is so unreal the life with a S and so surreal coming out of that place.It is a very dark place they send us too and I love all us survives.
Some stories like this throw me back to a very bad place in my own experiences but it also shows how far I have came and I don’t live with that daily agonising despear any more. Thank you for your Story Front Porch Talker
& hi bullet proof, how have you been?
FPT, I’m so glad you endured and were released!! What a story! Thank you for sharing. Have you finished a NYT Sunday crossword puzzle yet? I certainly haven’t!!
Hi Dani S
was reading your post on another thread where you are discussing the ‘cull ‘of friendships…and you are now surrounded by beautiful people and in a new relationship for a few months now. That’s fantastic! happy for you..you must have come a long long way. I’m still ‘recovering’ meaning looking after myself, friendships are currently being culled…even family members. It’s become very clear to me where I need to to say NO and distance myself from people who are obviously toxic….(never was it so clear)
A very old ex boyfriend re appeared suddenly (20 years late!!!) NOT the spath…. maybe narcissistic, anyway he was toxic.. but we were together for a period of 10 years, when we were in our 20’s…he had a drug problem and I was young enough to think my love would cure him!! (a long hard lesson in itself)
I do not want him back in my life BUT he wasn’t taking no for an answer. He bombarded me (felt like an attempted love bombing…) with phonecalls and texts…I answered him very clearly…that while I was flattered he realised just what he lost, I was not getting back with him and please leave it as it is..but no still he persisted, the texts turning very sexual and it occurred to me this was actually sexual harrassment….so I said texted back continue this ‘sexual harrassment’ and I will call the cops….he then apologised and asked me to please call him, he was ‘tormented’ over the texts he sent….I said one last thing I do not want you to contact me again…..and then a couple of days later he knocks….(yes knocks) on my living room window…I am in there on my own…suddenly looking though the window at this man I asked to leave me alone more than three times now.
I ignored him. he went off. 3 days later he knocks again…..I ignored him…he went off…last text was call me for fucks sake….I ignored it….it’s a week now and nothing…..but it really scared me, that this guy wanted his “goal” so badly he didn’t even HEAR what I was saying to him, he couldn’t care less about my responses!!!!! I’M NOT INTERESTED I think in his later years he probably wants me back to look after him….well he can take a hike! unbelieveable.
It was like the universe testing me to see if I really mean business. I feel great, for handling it so assertively. My neighbour was a great help as she knew what was happening and that call to the police may happen yet.
I’m starting my self defence classes monday night and I suddenly understand why!! stay safe out there….
Geez Bullet proof! you are really starting to become your name sake lol Well done! God don’t we get sick of the lessons the universe throw at us!!! Feel empowered girl friend you have done everything right! any wonders he is an (ex)lol
There is nothing worse than living in fear…… It astounds me that after being rejected and told to take a hike he knocks on your window! What a fool!
When we are such trusting people we let anyone in and that has been the hardest lesson for me and even harder letting go of the ones that are not healthy. And even tho the people we once trusted, liked,even loved and were apart of lives for a while or a long time turn out to be toxic and bad for our personal growth you have to let them go or you go banana’s.
It’s a scary world out there and you never know what or whom is just around the corner, I love that you are taking self defence classes, the more powerful we became physically and emotionally the less attractive we are to the predators out there!
Take care, Stay Safe and all the very best wishes and hope the ex leaves you well enough alone because before long you will be able kick his ass to the curb in more ways than one!!!!! 🙂 🙂
bulletproof, great post! I have a spath popping up at my front door, I’ve told him to leave me alone. Could you pass some of the anger you’ve been dealing with… over here?? Sometimes I feel like a zombie, because I can’t feel anything.
bp – one thing i see missing from the equation is you logging his behaviour with the police. If people harass us, that’s part of what we need to do – because if they come back there is prior record with the police.
i know that many police forces don’t care/ aren’t effectual – but I would call the cops in a situation like this, so that it is on the record.
hey thanks guys, appreciate your responses, it keeps me on the alert, in fact if it wasn’t for all on lovefraud I do not think I’d be as awake as I am.
Hi Shabby- …feeling numb may be better than getting angry with a spath…looking as boring as you can, uninterested…whatever, but you know he is enjoying intimidating you. Maybe you are in shock and it’s not safe to connect with the anger?? I think the anger surfaces when safe to do so….when I was up against the P trying to get my money back…I was wobbling with fear, felt very weak…heart beating very fast and it was almost a panic…fear was overwhelming, anger no where to be seen, but as a survival response, I listened, I heard my body tell me this man was as dangerous as they come and thats why I was shaking, so I ran for the hills, let him away with destroying me.Simple. Do you want your life? or do you want revenge?
What makes me particularly sick is these creeps ‘get off’ on seeing our reactions, feeding off our fear, feeling our energy if we are anywhere near them…it simply turns them on. That is why my ex N knocked on my window…to frighten me and hopefully see me in my fright, hear me tell him to get lost, hear my voice wobble maybe even say something smartass like “what part of no contact do you not understand” he would love that….so IGNORING him was the perfect response. He fumbled around wondering what to do (looked pathetic) and went off…great.
He came back and the second time he knocked slower (freaky) and had his face up to the glass…yes I was freaked but I didn’t move…he walked around, sat on the railings a bit and then scuttled off..
he didn’t see ME SEEING him, I felt powerful because I was hidden and he did not know what was going to happen next….I had a few options, I chose to stare back at him silently through the nets (he hadn’t the nerve to peer through long enough to hit eye contact…but I think he would have got a fright to suddenly see my face…ha ha if he only knew how angry I was..he would have ran screaming…keep em in suspense, turn being a victim on it’s head with NO CONTACT…because if you do not react…you are the one in control, nice feeling….if he is on my property I’m the one stalking him even if I am on my own…
one step- yes you are right I should have logged in the information with the police, and I have the texts all saved with dates etc. why did I not do it? because to be honest I thought it would escalate and it died off…I’m sure it was because I repeatedly rejected him, ignored him…gave him NOTHING..he got bored and “appears” to have moved off….one flicker of anything else and I will go straight to police. He didnt SEE how scared I was…when they cannot see anything they have nothing to go on so it seems to be effective. Stay hidden, no contact…nothing.
Even if he caught me outside or on the street, I would not even interact with him I would use my feet to quickly dissappear and then tell the police.
I feel confident he will never catch me, I live in a very highly populated street, with friends and a landlord who is ex cop and a good friend of mine..I’m not in some remote place…thank God because I’d be terrified…I would turn into a military soldier in camoflage trousers hiding in bushes with weapons and exit plans!!! and another thing, it’s kind of exciting! a kind of post traumatic stress lifestyle with fashion to go with it…
bulletproof, some anger over here would be good, the zombie thing is getting old. He’s just coming back to see if I am the same sap I was before (I’m not). His agenda? Sex. Not happening. Should be pretty easy for me to look bored! I’m bored out of my mind. But I don’t want him to know anything about me, I want him to think I’m living the high life!!! Last time he asked me if I had found a job yet and I said “No, of course there is no rush for me to get a job.” LOL! He can lie, well… so can I !!!