Out of the Cuckoo's Nest

Someone unknowingly said something to me today about a "Rubber Room". He had no way to know about it, and I had no idea the impact those words were going to have on me. It wasn't really his fault, he truly had no way of knowing. But, being "involuntarily committed" is bad and that's what "rubber room" now means to me.

The hows and whys I ended up there aren't especially important, except to say that I was not there due to the drug and alcohol addiction issues or withdrawal like most of my floormates. I was pretty much a zombie for my first 24 to 48 hours on the floor so I don't remember much. Mostly that I was cold. That was the first thing I remember, actually. Being so cold I was shivering, and thinking that I didn't understand why it was so cold in hell, because I knew I was dead. Obviously, I wasn't. After that is when my partner in crime showed up, and that's when I really started to remember stuff.

Learning the ropes were pretty simple. You were a sheep. They woke you up, they gave you meds, they made you eat, they made you go to stupid classes, and they gave you very little down time. We did pretty well for a bunch of zombies, because, see, I wasn't the only one.

Oh, there were REALLY funny things in there. Like the guy that hoarded EVERYTHING in his room. He would steal pencils from everything so he had like 40 of them when he was released, plus 30 packages of snack crackers, plus packets of sugar. He snagged everything. Then there was the guy that stripped naked and ran ALL over the entire floor before security could catch him. We wanted popcorn for the show. There was the guy that played solitaire all the time and accused himself of cheating (this is way to weird to make up). There was also the girl that I went all through school with that had been fighting serious demons then, and obviously things hadn't changed a whole hell of a lot in 30 years - that wasn't funny, that was sad, and extremely ironic. We had one conversation the entire time I was there, she was there before I got there and was there after I left.

They wouldn't give us dental floss. We had to go ask for it and only then, they'd give us less than a foot, because they didn't want any hangings. Excuse me?? I know dental floss is strong, but hanging by dental floss?? I had to laugh. We couldn't have mouthwash. OK, I can sort of see that, there's recovering addicts on the floor. We also couldn't have deoderant either if it had any alcohol in it ((insert mental image of someone licking deoderant)) I'm sorry, that one made me laugh too. And yes, it was like round up time at the OK Corral when it was time for meds becauase the nurse had to stand behind her little window and hand them to you with your little cup of water and then check under your tongue to make sure you took them.

We DID in fact have our own version of Nurse Rachett, she had no sense of humor and yelled at us all the time. We couldn't have shoe strings or strings in our sweatshirts. OK, OK, there's that hanging thing again, at least those made more sense than the damn dental floss. The food ALL tasted the same. And they monitored ciggarette breaks. They allowed you one ciggarette at 10, at 12:30, at 2 at 4 at 6 and at 9. The smokers would freak if they missed their smoke break.

The place was surreal. There were 2 payphones on the floor, but, you weren't really allowed to have change, so you either had to make collect calls or people had to call you, and there was no privacy. Bedtime was at 10pm period, or Nurse Rachett would be mean to you. We did arts and crafts things, I'm sorry but I found a LOT of humor there. A bunch of adults drawing or gluing or doing paper towel tye-dye. That was probably the most enjoyable part of the day though. It's where I learned to laugh again. I hadn't laughed in months, and I actually laughed in there one day.

I had to be without my partner in crime for 3 days before they allowed me to go home on Christmas eve. I lost a lot of myself before I ever went in there. I found a little of me in that place, and I've been learning me ever since. Parts are gone forever, never to return. Parts are newly discovered that I need to learn to embrace. It's only been 2 years. My partner in crime and I go out on our "anniversary" to celebrate the change in our life that happened the day we met, and the fact that we're here a year, now two years later. I love her a lot, she and I are the only ones in the whole world that understand what we went through together. Because we're the only ones that were there. There WERE funny things. Even in there.We found them. I even make jokes about it now, saying that I'm the psycho-bitch from hell and even have the papers to prove it. Most don't believe or really understand the reference and just laugh it off like any of my other comic relief lines.

It really was just a joke, Mar, there was no malice and you know that. Maybe someday words like that can fly under the radar and I won't feel like I was sucker-punched. Today just wasn't that day.