At the psychiatric hospital- Part I

I can still see the room. Small, cold and with nothing more than a hospital bed in it. Twice-my-size guards, and nurses starting to surround me and telling me to take my clothes off. Men just staring like they were expecting something. It was either I took my clothes off or they did it for me. I would sit on the bed shocked and a second later feel them tear my clothes off while I resisted. Then they'd give me a hospital gown and each staff tightly held one of my arm or legs as they spread them out onto the four corners of the bed. I couldn't feel the blood in my hands anymore because they had cuffed my wrists so tightly. I couldn’t breathe.

I yelled. I told them they were hurting me. I told them to stop but they ignored me. They covered my body with bed sheets like they cover a dead body in a body bag only they left my nose and eyes uncovered. They medicated me and left me there for what felt like an agonizing moment. I started to scream as loud as I could. I cried, but no one came.

I must have fallen asleep after a while because I do remember waking up and still being in restraints. When I woke up there was a nurses aid sitting outside the room and so I asked her to come. I wanted her to untie me. But she told me I'd have to stay the way I was. Or rather, I had to "behave" first but even then, it was always "one more hour". Some time went by until the night-shift nurses' aid showed up and then after that the day-one. Finally by morning, after more than 8 hours of being restrained I was released. I could barely move. My entire body was shaking and all I wanted to do was die.

The first time I was restrained was because I had cut myself. But after that, no matter what I did, it was regarded as deserving of being restrained for. Talking "too" loud, being a little "agitated", disagreeing with the staff. And if it wasn't me supposedly doing something, it was some nurse provoking me into acting out so I could get restrained. Perhaps they were short staffed on those days and assumed I'd be a burden.

I was being confined to my room, on most days, for entire days, with someone who watched my every move like I was somekind of monster. I was being isolated, confined to my room and restrained while everyone else got to hang around the ward and watch TV or play games.

I started to feel like I was going insane beyond repair. I threw my bed upside down and refrained myself from eating. I attempted choking myself with my bed sheets. And of course that gave way to some more restraining.

These vivid mental images about being restrained creep up on me to this day, mostly at night, when I'm trying to fall asleep. They make my heart beat a thousand times faster and my mind feel like it's going to explode.