I don’t think I’d ever eaten so much in my life.

We had breakfast, then snacks, then a lunch, then more snacks, then dinner, then snacks.

Was I in some experimental facility that pumps humans full of food and leaves them bored out of their minds on purpose? Was this the ultimate Westernized meditation practice?

I made a friend at the facility, let’s call her *Mindy (not her real name but you wouldn’t have a way of knowing that regardless). She was in her mid-late thirties, had dry humor and dark hair. She saw me on the first day and immediately came over and asked me, “so what brought you here.” From then on we clicked and made jokes about anything we could.

We all come in and ask each other “what’s wrong with you” in monotonous and exhausted voices, and somehow it helps being so frank with strangers.

*Mindy and I spent a lot of time together. Another friend *Kevin would come into our main room from the Acute side of the facility. Acutes were people either with severe psychiatric conditions or who were a danger to themselves. They were monitored much closer than my unit, the Mood disorder unit (#mood). *Kevin often came into the room and would say hello to everyone. He wasn’t older than 22 from my guess and he was there at least one month since my first day. The staff was very friendly with him and he often sat with *Mindy and I, I’m thinking because it was easier for him to digest our deadpan humor.

I never did figure out what brought *Kevin there, but *Mindy and I took breaks from his “intellectual” ramblings to walk laps up and down the main Mood hallway and discuss life before ending up indoors for a week.

Somehow making friends and being surrounded by other seemingly normal people in an environment like the Pavilion makes you painfully aware of yourself. Patients in a behavioral health facility are at their most bare qualities. The ones who sat and didn’t join in often seemed to be the same people walking into our friends groups who think they are allowed toxic behavior. You had your tech’s pets (the suck-ups), the I-Gotta-Get-Outta-Here’s, the court ordered lot, and the “fuck-its” which is where I seemed to fall. “Fuck it, we’re here so let’s just try to make it out a little better than before, but not before making fun of some of this shit we have to do.”

It took about a full night’s rest before I made friends with most people in the activity room and began talking through their traumas with them. This was most likely my version of “intellectual rambling” but I began to feel like I had a purpose. Dr. Jess is always “in” it seems and it’s a toxic behavior of my own I’m still working through. All in all, the facility was a costly, but beneficial help to me at a time when I really needed to be “away”.