Suzanne Belcourt's Marshmallow Girl
February 20th, 2006

The Second Coming ... I Mean Column

I started to develop schizophrenia at the age of twenty-five. I had my first nervous breakdown in December, and was admitted into the mental institution on the exact date of January 1st, 1993. But don’t hold me to that—my mind goes a little blank when it comes to periods of time. (And no, I didn’t have electric shock therapy, in case you were curious.) I do, however, know it was January 1st of some year. I don’t think I made any New Year’s resolutions that year, except that the idea of being Jesus Christ reborn sounded good to me once I was admitted. (I think the nurse who admitted me didn’t see it that way though. My impression, of course, was that she’d heard that one before. The only thing I can’t remember is if she rolled her eyes at the idea or not.)

I was promptly sent to the new patients wing—I was saying some things that made the nurses and other patients realize that this was the place for me. Looking back, I must admit it was a very dark time and it was the right place for me. I think what makes it so dark is that I remember exactly what I said, what I was thinking, what was racing through my head and how I was feeling (which was scared). I didn’t know what was happening to me, what happened to me. My mind decided to go its separate way from the rest of me, and away from my heart. But being Jesus at the time, I had nothing but love for the other patients and while in this admitting wing, I started reading passages from the Bible to another patient who decided to become my instant friend. (When you’re Jesus, no doubt you make friends fast.) When one of the nurses told us that he couldn’t visit inside my room and left, I started cleaning out the ashtrays for the other patients in the smoking room. (If I can’t be Jesus, according to the nurse who kicked out one of my devoted followers, I might as well work on becoming the next Mother Teresa.) A couple of years later—when I still couldn’t get this Jesus complex out of my head—I was speaking with one of my Elders while smoking my cigarette, and he told me frankly that I was NOT the next Jesus. “Look,” he said, “do you think Jesus would smoke?”

So I was in the mental hospital. My roommate had flowers sent to her in a glass vase. The nurse promptly changed the glass one into a plastic one. I asked her why that was necessary and she said that my roommate had tried to commit suicide—this is why my roommate (white bandages covering her wrists) was here—and the nurse didn’t want her to break the glass and try again. I too had thought of committing suicide at one point during my first nervous breakdown. I didn’t know why I was feeling so anxious and my mind was racing with thoughts that I couldn’t put away. So I thought as I was taking a walk next to a lake one day that it would be easier to just jump in and let myself drown than to try and deal with my mind spinning out of control. (Although the lake did look a little too dirty for anyone to be in there. I can assure my parents and family today, however, that I would never do anything stupid like jump off the second floor of the Eiffel Tower. No, I would rather drink my worries away.)

I decided that I wouldn’t take any medication while in the hospital, so the nurses couldn’t help me in any way and decided to transfer me into a wing in another building. This wing was full of all sorts of characters: there was the guy who thought he was a doctor and would steal smocks and wear them with white gloves and ask the other patients if he could do tests on them; there was the older lady who thought she was the landlord of the floor and although she only demanded respect, she should have demanded monthly rent—no one believed her though; there was the man who stated, by law, that he was not required to be in there as he never hurt anyone or himself, and so every week at the nurses “station” he demanded that he be let free (eventually he won). This is where a doctor saw me and couldn’t figure out what I was suffering from, but convinced me to take some medication anyway. Looking back I should have asked her what it was for.

This was a lock-down-wing, which meant that every week or two, if we were behaving our best, we could go to a different level. Each level had its perks. The highest level meant you could walk outside, but you had to have a heavy-set orderly take you. I am guessing here, though, because after taking my medication for God-knows-what-for, I really can’t remember what each level meant. I do, however, remember that heavy-set orderlies who walked around on our floor were the norm. And there was more than a couple of occasions when the alarm would ring out and orderlies rushed and tackled patients down to the floor before sticking a needle of something into them and locking them in their rooms, whereupon the orderlies would take turns sitting outside the rooms until the crises would pass. There was one time I witnessed such an incident, yet this time it was with a huge woman who was supposed to be tackled down. Being out of it and having a huge body has its advantages and she shook the two orderlies off of her like flies until about five others had to come. They were finally able to tackle her to the ground after about five minutes of wrestling. Needless to say, I didn’t feel safe. And I really wondered where the logic was that said I needed to be on this floor; all I did wrong was have a mental illness and refuse to take some medication. The doctor who saw me on a regular basis agreed, and thus I was transferred yet again, to another building, another wing of the hospital.

As soon as I stepped into this new wing, in this new building, I felt relaxed (as relaxed as someone who is taking medication for a nervous breakdown could be). The walls were set wide apart from each other and painted a light pink and thus the hallways were wide—you could instantly breathe. There were no orderlies in sight and all of the patients seemed as calm as the nurses were. And everyone was friendly. The nurses said “hello” and welcomed me and told me if I needed to talk to anyone that they would be around. One of the nurses showed me where my room was, where the shower room was, and where the kitchen was—we were even told to help ourselves to tea and toast if we got hungry in the middle of the night. The nurse then showed me where the smoking room was, which was also where one of the TV sets was located (the other was in the kitchen). Then we were off to where the nurse’s station was and the room where we get our medication when we needed it (some patients would take medication morning, afternoon, and evening—which is what I had to do in the beginning on the road to recovery).

(Then the nurse told me that I should be settled here first before I was to go to any classes. Classes! The classes turned out to be lessons in learning about our illnesses—I didn’t know what mine was yet—and how to socialize again, things of this nature. This wing still had the different levels to aspire to, but it didn’t take me long to get to the highest level, which meant that I could go out freely with no one to supervise me. I would eventually walk to and from my dad’s house—a twenty-minute walk—without anyone worrying about me. But this all took time. Approximately two months before I felt secure enough in my person to visit my dad and then walk back to the hospital to sleep. And I made a lot of friends. Everyone, although having problems just like me, was nice. And we all took the classes, and like high school every now and then we would skip them and go across the street to buy a Second Cup coffee at the mall.

It was in this wing that I learned I could collect disability. All I needed was to fill out the forms and have a social worker come and visit me at my dad’s house to see me in person and see if I could handle working. I did take acting classes in my first high school, so I figured I could just act like I was ill enough and they would happily give me some money each month. But looking back, I clearly didn’t have to act; I was ill.

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