There’s a Crack in Everything: Welcome to the Hotel California

CHAPTER 6

I started my psych ward journey as one of sixteen lost souls by making the choices that were still mine to make.

Even after my angel’s betrayal, I still chose to trust one person on the staff, a young woman, Linda, who would be my therapist for my interminable days on the inside.

Our first meeting was the morning after I arrived. The two of us met in one of the twenty by twenty-foot group rooms, and with just the two of us in our therapy sessions, it felt like the safest place to drop what little guard I had.

I’ve always seen therapy as MY time. I’m paying for it and to get my money out of it I have to trust that it’s a safe space. So, I treat it as something of a sacred toilet. I can vomit it all out and leave it to the therapist to clean up the mess.

I was also desperate for any human connection since being behind those locked double doors was slowly stripping me of what little humanity I had left.

I asked Linda, my therapist, if I sat on the other side of the room from her, could we please meet with our masks off?

She agreed and upon removing her mask, I collapsed in tears. Deep, deep sobbing just from seeing another person’s face. Two people willing to risk, perhaps stupidly, being vulnerable to Covid, in order to allow for the possibility of a deeper connection.