Banner photo: My painting "Confused Confusion," and if you look close, you can see my compartments.

I was put away for a long time, much more than a ninety-hour lockup. I was not sure exactly how long it was, but I got to meet people, some were like me with sudden onset depression, and others had long term mental illnesses. One thing is certain. We all needed to be there at that moment in our lives. I don't remember their names, they're just vague images floating in my brain that sometime surface to remind me, but most of it was forgotten. In this part I will touch on those recollections. The first thing they did was strip me to do a cavity search; you know the fun stuff, and then they dressed me in the tightest, thinnest, clothing where nothing was left to the imagination. The reasoning behind the search was that the patient was unable to hide anything that they could use as a weapon on themselves or others, or it was a way to avoid saggy pant syndrome caused by the no belt rule, or whatever, I'd never been locked away before, and I was locked away as far as they could throw me, and be dug up later if need be. Life was not in my hands anymore. I adapt well when protected, but this was way different from home, school, or college, and this was a mental ward, or if you want, call it a loony bin. That hospital doesn't exist anymore, torn down and eliminated from the face of the earth; so sorry you can't go ghost-hunting there. This will be new territory for those of you who read me, or are just curious. It is often said about poets and artists that we walk a fine line between sanity and insanity, and that sometimes is true. However, all people walk the line, and just one event will push a person over the cliff into the dark place of our mind. Then it's a matter of clawing and tearing fingernails off to get back on that narrow rim called sanity.

They dropped me off in a common area, and if you've watched enough 'America movies,' you know the scene, but with slight dissimilarities. The players who made up the group set the scene, and that was no different in this case. The women wore tight fitting clothes as well, and you can see every crevice in their form, but you get used to it. Mostly, you play cards and talk. One older woman watched us, and as soon as someone puts out a cigarette she grabs the butt and eats it, like a lizard eating a bug. I asked about her behavior with the group, and they just shrugged and said they didn't know. In the morning hours, the doctor was in, and he just stared deeply into my eyes, and just enough that it made you feel uncomfortable, and it was as though he was peering into my soul. I don't know what that style of psychiatry is, but that is all he ever did while I was at the hospital; just stare and prescribe medication. If someone who is reading this and knows what that style of psychiatry is, please inform me in the comments.

One of the mind numbing medications he prescribes was Thorazine. Thorazine and I don't work well together, but the doctors didn't know that. One outing we went bowling, and with better outfits for the public. I approached the ball return machine to get my bowling ball. I picked it up, and that was the last I remember. The next thing I was aware of was that I was on the floor in the area for the team of bowlers next to us, and I was staring straight up. Nurses are all around working on me. I was staring at the ceiling and out of my periphery I see nurses working frantically. I cannot move my eyes or react. One shined a light directly into my eyes.

She says, "His eyes are fixed and dilated." I wondered if this was what it's like to die. I'd been robbed of that feeling in my car wreck, as my brain removed the memory.

Another says, "I have no pulse." I don't remember chest compressions. I heard another say, come on buddy. Stay with us. Slowly I was back; perhaps I was down for five minutes? Who knows? The team next to us were all nurses bowling. I was saved yet another time, when I got back. One of the doctors said, "You've had an allergic reaction to Thorazine." I asked him to take me off of it. He replied, "We can't. If you think that was a bad reaction, taking you off Thorazine cold turkey is worse," so they wean me off of it, slowly, and it is listed as one of my allergies.

This group didn't change much as people were not released, and no new faces filled up the common area. I sleep in a ward on a tall bed. I didn't want to fall out in my sleep, so I raised the side rails to prevent that. The patient who was in the nearest bed, said. "Raising that rail's not going to protect you, if I decide to kill you." I assured him it was so I can't fall out, and I wondered, "Why would he want to kill me." I slept uneasily. He later told me he was there because he thought he was Jesus. Come to think of it, he did look like the image we're given of Jesus. He had long dark hair and his eyes were wild looking.

Beth came to visit me, or so I thought. They took me downstairs to a waiting area and her mother came. It was the month of April and they wanted my signature on the tax returns. I signed the paperwork and they returned me back upstairs to serve the remainder of my time. It's not jail time, but here you can end up in a life sentence, so you best get your act together. It will be a while before mental health was talked about openly in the USA, and the rights of mental sufferers are addressed in congress. Eventually, I was sent home, and I returned to my upstairs apartment, perhaps in late May.

On June 10th of 1987, I was upstairs in my apartment one evening at 6:49 pm, when I experienced an earthquake. It's not in Missouri, but in Illinois, where it was 5.2 or so on the Richter scale. I was upstairs, so the shaking was magnified. The building rolled like I was on top of a wave, and it lasted way too long for comfort. I ran out of the building, up the street where Walt was working, and said to him, "You feel that! It's an earthquake." He didn't feel it, but many did, and it gave me a date in my memory to fix the time. I'd been in the mental hospital from a time frame of February to late May, a total of three months, and I still had no steady income, I returned to live with my parents in Huntsville, but I was a mess, emotionally, it was though I'd been castrated, all my self-confidence was gone, and I still had to go every week to see my "staring" psychiatrist six some miles north of my home. I was put on Amitriptyline to stabilize my moods, and I did nothing other than paint, or carve chairs. I read an article about former President Jimmy Carter making ladder-back chairs and carving the wood with an old draw knife. Dad had one of those knives in the garage, and I took on a new hobby; it was needed to relax my mind. So I made a couple of ladder-back chairs. We had several shaker chairs in the shed, so I dug one out to use as a model. I'd been caning chairs since I was a youth, so I would add a new art to my resume.

Ladder-back I made in 1987 while recovering. The wood I used was hackberry kin to the Elm tree.

If I am Dead?

©2013, Olan L. Smith

Gazing up I wonder if this is my conclusion?

Nurses surround shouting, "Come on breathe, damn it!"

In life you conjecture but fail to picture fully death

Yet, when it comes it is pleasant and peaceful, a yielding.

"Do you have a pulse?" "No," is the answer given.

"BP?" "Zero," is her reply. If I am dead why do I

Still see and hear? "His eyes are fixed and dilated."

Still they feverishly work to revive

Me, a man quickly slipping through their fingers...

Reflection: So, this is what feels like to expire; I wonder what comes

Once they pronounce my death.

My pupils widen.

Photo: Me using a drawknife sometime after returning to Mom and Dad's, and judging for the yellow leaves on the silver maple tree this is late October to mid-November 1987.

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