Chapter Two

Although my neighbors helped stop the flood, the poop went under the planks of the floor, soaked into the walls, and ruined several pieces of furniture. Our home was a health hazard and not livable.

The property management lady said they’d pay for the new floor, but got pissed when the plumbers said they had to tear the whole place up to disinfect and air out everything. She didn’t want to pay for that. The plumbers said she had no choice. I’m glad they did, because I would have strangled her. I should have strangled her. The plumber wanted to strangle her.

This leads me back to the Flood of 08. Almost to the day, one year earlier, we had a flood. That flood came from a different place in the outside plumbing and the water that came out of our toilet was clear and unused. It ruined the carpet and the walls. I’m glad about the carpet because we replaced it with the wood floors. We got to enjoy those for an entire year before the cascade of caca took it away. Anyway, Jonas and I had to leave our place and live on his Mom’s couch for awhile. Then we moved in while it was being rebuilt. We had no flooring and all of our furniture was squeezed into our tiny kitchen. I went a little crazy then. I didn’t have insurance, so I didn’t have the luxury of shipping off to a hospital where at least the floors were dry. I had to go crazy and still keep my head. Try that one.

When our home flooded this last time, we had to leave. For the first two weeks, we stayed in a couple of decent motels. We lived off our credit cards and used up all of our savings. There wasn’t a lot, so the money went quickly down the drain. Oh wait, we didn’t have a drain. Then we stayed with his Mom. Sorry, first we stayed with his Mom and then we went to the hotels. My memory of that time isn’t great. I’ll explain why in a bit.

About going crazy…

It happens slowly. I was already quite manic and probably even a little psychotic before the flood; thus the uncontrolled screaming. I wasn’t sleeping, and that’s pretty dangerous for a girl with Bipolar Disorder. I didn’t believe in sleep medication. I still don’t. I stay on it now for Jonas because he’s worth it. Anyway, the months leading up to the creek of crack crud were not good. I was up and down without a lot of time between. I was exhausted, strung out and talking to myself a lot. If I had money, I would have been doing some serious retail therapy. Instead, I was seeing a real therapist. A good one.

The problem with therapy is this: I feel like I need to be upbeat and entertaining or I’m just being a downer. So I disguised myself in happy and went to therapy each week. I liked to make the therapist laugh. I laughed in return. I was very unhappy. When the curse of the crap was put on me, I went to my therapy appointment as usual. I walked in, smiled at everyone in the office, told my therapist I was doing great and then broke down.

I don’t remember very much after that. It was her responsibility to assess me and her assessment was accurate. I was psychotic and needed help. I can remember little flashes, like pieces of a dream that can’t be caught after waking from a dream. The harder I try to remember, the more elusive the memory is. But I remember being loaded onto the ambulance. I was laughing. I tried to make the ambulance guys laugh. I didn’t want to be a downer, so I tried to entertain.

I was taken to a regular hospital emergency room. I remember wondering why. Did they think there was something physically wrong with me? Nobody knew what to do with me, so they left me there in a bed next to someone who sounded like death was in the next breath. I got crazier. Jonas showed up, but I think it was hours later. Same bed. I can’t remember if the person next to me still breathed. I heard moans and the sounds of excruciating vomit. Good times.

My next memory is of me being loaded into a different ambulance. Jonas was there and I felt that I needed to be entertaining. So I laughed and made a comparison to Britney Spears. I asked him to be the paparazzi and take my picture as the doors closed.

Next, I was in a hallway. It was windowless and dismal in every way. There were patients shuffling around and talking to invisible friends or enemies. I wasn’t laughing any more. I was crying. I was left on the gurney until someone had the time to check me in. I’d been to the hospital before, but this wasn’t the wing I was used to. These weren’t the same sort of people I remember during my previous incarceration. These people were crazy! I cried some more.

Eventually, a guy about half my age took my bag and shook everything out. He went through my personal things looking for paraphernalia. Nothing was valuable to him. I tried to tell him I wasn’t a druggie. He ignored me. I didn’t exist any more. I was the same color as the hallway and melted into the walls like a water stain. The other patients terrified me. They yelled out greetings like “Do you have any money?” “What are you looking at?” “Why is there a yellow flamingo in my bearded clam?” Okay, I made the last one up, but believe me, they were crazy. I was not, of course. I was a much better and loftier crazy than they were. I wanted out. I begged the guy going through my meager belongings. “Please let me go. I’m all better now. I want to go home. I really want to go home. This isn’t where I belong. I’m not crazy!” I guess to him it was the equivalent of a prisoner telling the guards that he’s innocent. The more I cried and yelled, the more convincing I was…that I was crazy.

I was eventually given a bed in a far corner of a dark room. There were two other girls in the room. It was night, so they were feigning sleep. One girl was crying. The other one was in and out of bed, huffing, stomping out of the room and back in to climb back in bed. This happened the whole night. I sat on the edge of my bed with my back to them and wept. Why was this happening to me? What have I done wrong? As if God hasn’t heard this before.

I didn’t sleep that night. I would have taken another flood of shit over that miserable night. My doctor wasn’t going to be there until the next afternoon, so I was stuck with no medicine to help me sleep.

By the next afternoon, I was completely out of touch with reality. I paced the floors at top speed. I begged the nurses and monitors for anything: sympathy, food, release, my doctor. They ignored me and I kept pacing. I am sure I paced more than a mile up and down that skinny corridor. When my doctor showed up I didn’t recognize him. Everyone was a monster. If he was my friend he would have rescued me sooner. Therefore, he was a monster and to be feared. I backed away when he approached. I cowered in my chair while he talked to me. I couldn’t hear him any more. I was alone in the pit of hell. And it was flooded with shit.