I’m back! Who missed me? C’mon! I know someone missed me.

I don’t feel as though I was in a “crazy house” than I was at a weekend seminar. The place wasn’t amazing, but it was nothing like the psychiatric wards you see in the media, particularly One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. There were no pajamas, no scrubs on the patients, we were mostly free range women with our own little hotel-like rooms, some had seedling gardens, some worked on art, we ate breakfast and dinner together with our psychiatrists and the nurses, we weren’t lined up for meds, there were no bars on the windows, and there were no locked doors from room to room. I’m sure the ward was locked, but I didn’t try to escape. None of the patients tried to escape. Most of the people there were there voluntarily. I was there for observations, and exercises in psycho-social situations.

The seven areas where I was observed and worked in were:
Empathy
Kindness
Respect
Tolerance
Self-control
Social-consciousness
Joy

Joy is the ultimate goal of the entire program. It means just what you think it means: Happiness based on balance of the other psycho-social situations.

Patients were expected to get dressed in normal clothes every day, engage in conversations at meal times, and interact with other patients, nurses and doctors. I had two major psychologists: Mary and Corey. Corey being an ex-highschool classmate of my father’s.

I was thoroughly evaluated, observed, and found not a threat to myself or others. Corey was more concerned about my chronic physical pain. He feels that is the reason I am depressed. Loss of quality of life would make anyone depressed. My physical pain has taken away so much in my life. I cannot do certain things anymore because I am limited by excruciating pain. My physician thinks that I am faking this pain for sympathy from him. He also thinks I want him, sexually. Of course. All women want him. That’s why they go to him, huh? To get pumped full of pills that cause organ failure and near-fatal car accidents.

I just hope these evaluations enable me to get on some form of medical insurance so I can get a new doctor.

I am happy to be home. I am happy to be with my family again. Hell, I’m even happy to be going back to work tomorrow.

Life is a wonderful thing.