The first time I was 1013'd - I was madder than hell. Now 1013 is when you're committed to a mental facility because you're judged to be a danger to yourself or others. Some years back, all of these emerging memories got the best of me and I became suicidal. Fortunately for me, I decided to call a friend and say goodbye.
I didn't say I was going to walk out into traffic or slit my wrists or even blow my brains out. I just told my friend - FB- who lives in New York- goodbye. I wasn't crying. Just wanted to say goodbye. Hell, for all he knew I could have been planning a cross country road trip.. But noooo - you would have thought I owed him money.
When I didn't answer his subsequent phone calls, he placed a call to the New York City police, who called the police -in state of Georgia -in the town that I live in- and all hell broke loose. At that time, I remember asking God to give me a sign that what I was about to do was okay with him. I also wanted his guarantee that I would not spend an eternity roasting in hell. Now God has a sense of humor. It is my belief that while he doesn't always come when you call him - he is always on time. That's the Baptist in me.
I heard sirens....a lot of sirens. For a minute I thought it was either the heavenly host or a terrorist attack. The sirens got closer and closer, until they sounded like they were in the room with me.
God was answering big time. A knock came- so loud - at my door, that it scared the piss out of me. Really. I wet the bed.
Talk about a slow news day. Lord can you give me the Fantasy 5 numbers? Cause you gave me a sign big time. I mean really big time.
When I got to door, it was like they were giving out government cheese or these days - bailouts. There were firemen and EMTs, the police department, the sheriff's department, my neighbors - hell- I even think my bill collectors were there. I was speechless. But when everything got sorted out - they hauled me to the emergency room where they 1013'd me and sent my monkey ass to a mental facility.
Yes, I was mad ...as hell. I was a U.S citizen. I hadn't committed a crime against anyone. Okay, well I wanted to commit a crime against myself. But was that against the law? Yeah... it is, and you get 72 hours to think about it. I stayed two weeks .......Thank You God. You were right on time. Thank FB too.
You meet a lot of interesting people when you're in a mental hospital. There was the lady that thought she could cast out demons and we were all possessed, so she was on a mission to cleanse our souls. There was the girl who believed she was the actress -Halle Berry and we were all extras in a movie she was shooting. There were people who had lost their jobs, lost the spouses, lost their savings and investments or who had just lost their way. There were the old and the young. There were no dividing lines of race or sex. Mental illness is the great leveler. When you were not in therapy or groups - you would see just how fucked up life could be.
There was the husband who told his wife to take an overdose of pills to save their marriage. She didn't know he would use it as leverage to take her kids.
This waste of flesh brought their children for a visit and served her with divorce papers. I had to pray over that one. Cause I would have put my foot so far up his ass he would have been tying his tongue and polishing his head. There was also black humor. There was the woman, who told us about her father- a primitive baptist backwoods preacher, who had shown her children porn - to acquaint them with sex . She put a water moccasin in his bed. According to her the snake bit him. I never asked her where the snake bit him. I'd like to think the snake bit him on his wrinkled old thing. Serve his ass right. I remember the girl who put Nair in her ex-boyfriends shampoo....he loved his hair....he'd given her herpes. I told them of the time I found out I had been betrayed by the man I loved and how I had driven his beloved car off a boat dock into the flooded Ocmulgee River.
That car didn't surface until the spring. It still had my keys in the ignition.
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