I wish I would’ve had my laptop when I was at the funny farm, as it is not all was lost to the vagueness of mental instability. About a week into my stay one of the resident’s, D_____, sister agreed to bring in five composition books (those with the scrambled black and white pattern on the cover), so I was able to write an entry for nearly every day after that until I finally gave up in March.

D_____ is a good ol’ boy from north central Texas who is proud to say both he and his daughter received their Bachelor’s degrees from the University of North Texas. His only problem was episodes of major depression if he went off his medication, which is why he was in Terrell State Hospital. The other interesting thing about him was his interaction with the resident flamer. D_____ claimed to have friends who were gay, but he was totally intolerant of K_____ who, unfortunately, didn’t know when to turn it off.

One day, in fact the day before D_____ was to leave, we were standing in line to go to lunch when K_____ got it into his head to touch D_____ on his head, neck, and butt. Of course D_____ wasn’t going to have any touching of any kind, but despite repeated requests to stop, K_____ continued until D_____ blew up and grabbed ahold of K_____. It was a wonder D_____ didn’t hit K_____. He said he wanted to, but with only a day to go, he didn’t want to risk being taken down and put in one of the calming rooms (No, the walls weren’t rubber. I checked.) Two psych aides pulled K_____ away and he began his expected claim of total innocence, which only got him threatened with an injection to calm him down.

The procedure for giving a patient an injection seemed to require bull-dogging the victim to the floor followed by a number of psych aides holding him down while turning him over so the nurse could inject the medicine in the hip. Usually, all the patients were sent to their rooms before the injection was given. I guess they didn’t want to upset us. Heck, seeing some psycho go off the deep end was upsetting enough. Luckily, injections were a rare occurrence on our ward.

The ward was co-ed with one wing for women and the other for men and a common dayroom. The one rule strictly enforced was no touching, but for some reason I was seen as having a good shoulder for crying on. I was yelled at a number of times, but still they came to me to have their cries. One girl was starving herself and she cried a lot because she couldn’t figure out what was wrong. After a week, she was gone, possibly to the clinic to have a tube inserted in her nose.

The good thing about being sent to the fruit orchard is there are so many stories, if you pay attention, that is. Once I started my journal, practically nothing went by unnoticed.