How in my original documentation I could have possibly left out my hellish experiences at one of the worst psychiatric institutions, and at the depths of my illness only goes to show that repression even works on me. It was right during the time that I was living at home and working at the Jay Nolan Center, that I was first hospitalized at Olive View. I remember coming on to the ward angry but in a drug induced stupor. I was angry because even though I told the people, psychiatrist etc. in admitting, that I was intensely allergic to Haldol, and I needed the anti-side effect medication with any of that class of medications, they had deemed it necessary to see my reaction for themselves. Anyways, I was entirely doped up, yet I still believe I must have been acting out, disrobing etc. Soon, I remember a tall 30ish Afro-American attendant named Jim leading me into a small room. He said, “I got what you need, baby. Is this what you want ..” He took out his penis and entered me. I knew that my mouth was dry, and I was being raped, but somehow I felt responsible for having this occur to me.

Here I was, basically a victim of sexual molestation, being raped in a psychiatric institution whose staff had handed me a pamphlet saying, “You are in a safe place.” The irony almost makes me laugh. I was hospitalized four or five times in succession all at Olive View, I had told my sister what had happened, but nothing was being done about this criminal. Each time I was hospitalized he preyed upon me in my most medicated phase, and was extra nice during the rest of my stay. The last time I was hospitalized there, I kept saying he raped me. The staff thought I meant right then, and of course treated me like I was crazy. I claimed rape on him each chance I got. I called the cops, but the staff circled around him and protected him. I suppose I did seem crazy, since they started watching his whereabouts and mine of course, now he knew I wasn’t going to lay back and take it playing victim, he probably found another who would. This worried me then and it worries me still. They finally transferred me out of that hospital, I hope as the result of an internal investigation, yet I am not sure. The psychologist on the other ward, I remember one session with him, he said “You imagined your father molesting you, and you imagined this attendant raping you, am I right?” I walked out before I would have attacked him and ended up restrained. In this one case, it may have been worth the belts.

I want to make one thing clear, I have said I kept my memories, I do. I know when I am sedated, I know what is hallucination and what is reality. I was raped in reality. The system allowed it and the system made me sicker. My anger now is not necessarily at the individual perpetrators, yes I have anger for them, but it is focused now on the system that locks up the victims, and doesn’t protect them. This is why I do the work that I do today. This is the small garden of my world I hope to make better. This is why I write my story, not because I want to but I feel I have to.

As life is an ongoing process, this story is a work in progress, as well. I have now graduated and am raising my two sons fairly single-handedly. There have been a few forays into the realms of altered reality for me in the last years and one experience is resurfacing into my consciousness. It was about four years ago when I suffered a radical and quick shift into mania that occurred in about four hours. I didn’t catch it quickly enough to properly medicate and manage it. It was as if one moment I was fine and then wham out of nowhere I am in an altered mood, mind state. I recall it feeling quite a bit like the one time I dropped acid, In its forceful out of control characteristics. I went down to the harbor and was walking along the beach. I felt as if I was being directed to do something by One or something. I threw a cup of lemonade at a limousine full of high-school age girls whom I thought were laughing at me. A cop talked to me and warned me that if I caused any more trouble. I would be arrested. Later I was screaming protest of the homelessness in S.B. in front of the Naval building at the Harbor and I was arrested. I had taken someone’s portfolio, it was in an open car I was booked on felony theft and jailed. I remember here is where my sanity completely left. There was a fire drill or something and we were let out of the cell and I wandered away somehow into the back of the jail. When they caught me they put me in iso. I had three days of non-stop hallucinations. I remember a Dr. Marder kept trying to get me to take medication and I refused saying I am in jail, not a hospital. I remember then thinking delusionary thoughts of all sorts. That I was on a space craft, that I was traveling backwards and forwards through fiction and history, I had intense fear cycles and horrors then punctuated by delusions of great beauty and serenity. Like being on a ship in the middle of a hurricane in the eye of the storm with my back against the mast. It was a continuum of the absolute worst thoughts, feelings, moods, fears, nightmares, remorse and evil with the total reverse intermittently. Beauty, peace, serenity, glary forgiveness, joy. As always there is that part of me that is the observer, the memory-keeper and actual recorder. I say this because although I am aware that I was pretty far out in the outer limits of this dimension, I still recall some occurrences that I believe were not my imagination. I believe that the jail med unit used some kind of mind control experimentation on me. Giving voice to some of my fears, and delusions. I recall being moved into maybe five different cells, each one with different colored walls. One was green and I’d swear they the staff were speaking to me over a speaker telling me things. One room had white walls with red designs painted on it. At the end of the three days I distinctly remember three cops coming in and saying, “Since she likes spreading her legs, we’ll just give her a pussy shot,“ and that is what they did. I then gained consciousness on the PHF. I had infected my bottom lip by biting it, I had a wound where I was given the injection way up on my thigh. THIS was by far the most horrendous experience of my life so far. The belief that there may be video tapes of my behavior in the jail and the possible uses of these tapes is an absolutely humiliating and frightening thought. And there is probably not a damn thing I can do about it. The only peace of mind I can get in this is that there is another eye in the sky, God’s, and He has seen my whole life, all the tortuous things that have happened to me by this world and mankind, and he is the only judge whose verdict matters.

There has been another episode more recently, about six months ago when I went to visit my mother. It was Thanksgiving and a lot of feelings got stirred up. Feelings that I now believe that I had repressed. The memories were never repressed but the thoughts and feelings were. They came flooding back and caused me to split into pieces of myself, at different ages. All of the me’s were telling me their thoughts and feelings. There was also a higher self that tried to direct the orchestra and for a while succeeded. Then because I had not taken enough of the anti-psychotic medication, I finally lost control and basically ran away from my Mother’s home into the night and the nightmares of my past. I ended up first at the worst place possible, Olive View Medical, the site of several institutional rapes by staff. Fortunately, because of Managed Care perhaps, they transferred me to Santa Barbara, my home town. I was safe, protected and well cared for there at the PHF as always. I stabilized and even requested they didn’t discharge me before I was ready to go.

My sons are growing into beautiful young men, they go to school now and I have recently begun to work part-time in the capacity of client advocate. We are forming a program from the bottom up ourselves, a group of consumer/clients. I live in daily acceptance now of my mental condition, my limitations as well as my gifts. I look at my life and all that has happened to me as an amazing journey with many lessons along the way. I choose to learn from even the bad stuff whatever I CAN. I choose not to wallow in self-pity or victimization or powerlessness. I don’t wish my condition away any more, I try and learn all I can about all the methods of treatment, traditional Western medical model and alternative therapies and practices as well. I believe in wholistic psychiatry and that includes CHI, meditation, relaxation, nutritional awareness, aroma therapy, herbs, teas and mineral balances, exercize, the whole program. I don’t practice this yet at 100 percent, but I try to add as many good things to my life as possible and to eliminate as many bad stressors as I possibly can.