Babbie and I sat and talked for a while and I put up her hair, but all the joy and spontaneity has gone out of life. I am beginning to drag and merely exist as she does.
The other girls on the ward talk and joke and watch TV and sneak into the bathrooms to smoke, but Babbie and I are just trying to keep ourselves together.
Everybody smokes here and the halls are filled with fumes and gray circling smoke, there isn’t even anywhere for it to go. It seems as trapped and confused as the patients.
The attendants all wear heavy clanking keys pinned to their aprons. The constant sound of them jangling together is a continual depressing reminder.
Tonight Babbie went down to the day-room to watch TV and I am jealous. Will I wind up a hard butch angry at some child who has given her affection to an old woman with a package of cigarettes to share with her?
This can’t be! It can’t be happening to me!
After school today we had group therapy in the Youth Center dayroom. It was very interesting listening to the kids. I was dying to ask how all the kids had felt when they first came here, but I didn’t dare open my mouth. Rosie was upset because she felt the kids were ignoring her and they all told her why she wasn’t easy to be with: because she tried to monopolize people and was always clinging to them and hanging onto them. At first she was angry and swore, but I think before it was over she understood herself a little better, at least she should have.
Then they discussed how others were “feeding their own problems” which was interesting. Perhaps the time I am spending here will actually make me a more capable person.
After therapy, Carter, who is the present president of the group (they vote a new one each six weeks), sat and talked with me. He told me to feel free to bring my thoughts and angers and fears out in the open to be examined. He told me that clumped inside they all seemed magnified and distorted out of true proportion. And he also said that when he first came here he had been scared so badly that for three days he literally lost his voice. He physically couldn’t talk! He was sent here basically because no one could deal with him. He had been in juvenile halls and reform schools and foster homes so many times he couldn’t count them, but the thought of being in a mental hospital really blew his mind.
He told me we could get out of Group Two once we made some progress and proved we were under control. He’d been in Group One a couple of times, but always got sent back because of his temper. He also said that in two weeks the Group One kids were going on a bus trip to a cave in the mountains and on a tour through the cave. Oh, I want to go on that trip. I’ve got to get out of here! I’ve simply got to.
Today Mom and Dad came to visit me. They still believe me and Dad has been to see Jan and feels that he will soon be able to get her at least to take back the statement that I was trying to sell her drugs.
I am so grateful for group therapy. Maybe now I’ll get something out of this place instead of being broken by it.
I had a session with Doctor Miller and I think he believes me too! He seems delighted that I want to go into social work and feels there is a great need for people who understand what’s going on out there. He suggested that I ask some of the kids here about their backgrounds which maybe would give me more insight into people but he warned me not to be shocked at some of the things I should find out. I guess he thinks there are still things in this world that might amaze me. It’s a good thing he doesn’t know all of my background, at least I think he doesn’t???
At first I felt I would be too shy to ask kids outright to tell me about themselves. But he said if I told the kids why I wanted to know he was sure they would want to help me. I’m still not sure I want to go prying into other people’s lives. I’m not at all sure I’d want to tell them about mine. I guess I would though—except maybe the very worst parts.
I watched TV for a little while tonight, but there are only six kids on this ward and thirty older ladies, and since we have to vote on which programs we can see, naturally they win. I think I’d rather read or write anyway. I’m trying to get Babbie to read and maybe she will get a book from the Youth Center library tomorrow if I push her. It certainly will help her take her mind off things, if she can concentrate. Her social worker is trying to get her into a foster home, but with her background it seems to be difficult, and apparently her parents don’t want her anymore. Isn’t that sad!
It’s been a beautiful, hot lazy day. We were lying out on the lawn when I got the courage to ask Tom ______, who is in the men’s section of my ward, why he was in.
Tom is a handsome, likeable, extremely articulate young guy. He’s fifteen and he’s the kind of person people automatically feel comfortable around. He said he came from a solid, comfortable, unbroken home and in his last year of junior high school he was voted best liked kid in his school. I guess I would be voted biggest idiot if they did that kind of thing in our school.
Anyway last spring, he and three of his buddies heard about sniffing glue and thought it sounded exciting so they bought a couple of tubes and tried it. He said they all blasted and thought it was great. I could tell from his eyes that he still thought it was great.
He said they made a lot of noise yelling and rolling around on the floor, and the kid’s dad yelled down and told them to cool it. He didn’t even suspect why they were cutting up. He just thought they were scuffling around like they always did.
A week later the same three tried his dad’s Scotch, but they didn’t like it as much and found it was harder to get than pot and pills. He said what I’d heard before, that parents never miss their diet pills, their tranquilizers, their cold remedies, their pep pills, their sleeping pills, or any of the other things that will supply kids with a “jolt” when they can’t get their hands on anything else. So he started easy, but in six months he said he needed so much money that he had to get a job. So he applied at the most logical place—a drugstore. And it took the manager a fairly long time to figure out what was happening to his pill supply. When he did, he “laid Tommy off to save his family embarrassment. Nothing was ever said and nobody but Tommy and the manager knew what was going on. However, even getting fired was okay with Tommy because by this time he was into hard drugs and really didn’t care very much what happened. A friend had introduced him to Smack and he started pushing at the Junior High to keep himself going. Then he ended up here, and in my green opinion he’s still freaked out, for even now he almost has a contact high just talking about drugs. I noticed that Julie, who was sitting fairly close to us, had almost the same reaction. It’s sort of like watching someone yawn. You’re drawn into it and you start yawning yourself. I’m so grateful I felt nothing, but I almost wish I hadn’t asked because it was really depressing to see that he and Julie can’t wait to get out of here and get back on their thing.
Oh, I hate it here! The dirty bathroom urine smells. The small barred cages where people are locked up if they get out of line. One old lady who is a firebug is in one of the cages almost all the time, and I can’t stand it. The people are the very worst of all.
Today we went swimming. On the way back on the bus I sat with Margie Ann who said she doesn’t ever want to get out. She said as soon as she gets out the kids will be right there hassling her head and trying to get her to take off again and right now she knows she couldn’t say no. Then she looked at me and said. “Why don’t we take off, just the two of us. I know where we can get a mixed bag in a minute.”