Good Lord

The day started out normal. Anxiety in the morning, gross breakfast, rock climbing expedition that I went to but did not participate in (somehow I managed to come to Florida without a single pair of pants?). In art therapy I started learning how to paint with oils. There was a very good group about independence. I got some exercise playing badminton, which I am not horrible at. I found out that a relatively sane-seeming woman believes she has been abducted by aliens on several occasions. I listened to my favorite schizophrenic ("The main conspiracy of Barney is whether he is a purple dinosaur or a blue dinosaur." Also, when I asked him what was shakin', he said "Quaker Oats" without further explanation) And the psychiatrist agreed to let me start administering my own medication, which is an absolute triumph.
However, all throughout the day, tension was building. A third person had been brought into the constant fighting between the original two. When I say fighting, I mean all out SCREAMING the most horrible things imaginable to each other. So, now three people are involved and things are quickly escalating. The staff has been trying to keep it under control by trying to keep them all separated, but that's pretty hard when they all live in the same building. There was screaming right after breakfast, and again at lunch. But when I went back to my house to get a book is when the shit REALLY hit the fan. I can't decide if I'm glad I wasn't there or bummed that I missed the action. I'm pretty cloudy on the details, but two of the three were at it again, and then one of them, a pretty low-functioning asperger's case, threw a metal chair (a heavy one, not a folding chair). My therapist was in between them, trying to keep them apart, and she was the one who ended up getting hit with the thing. She already has a bruise. So, after a huge amount of panicked staff meetings and scurrying around, the police were called. When they came, the asperger's guy was pounding on the other guy's door, screaming "I'm going to kill you, faggot!" (ugh, I don't even like writing that word, let alone hearing it). I don't know how many people they arrested, but certainly one. It's such a shitty thing to happen, but I'm glad that, hopefully, all this will end now. It got to the point where pretty much everyone in the program was feeling both emotionally and physically threatened. I would have to take a pill after each fight, they got that scary. So, hopefully this is the last chapter of all THAT.
Then, just as soon as the cops left, another patient got such a severe pain in his side that he walked to the nurses station bent over in half, literally BAWLING with pain. This is not a wimpy guy, he was a skater, and now he has MS, so he knows shit about pain. He just hobbled over a screamed for an ambulance to be called, then he collapsed. It was totally bonkers.
So, yeah, the natives were restless today. I'm just glad I didn't get very involved with all this shit and was able to get what I needed to do done. I do, however, have a gossiping problem, and I feel bad for trying to weasel information out of patients and staff. I have to keep an eye on that problem and learn to not talk about people who are not in the room.
Be so glad to be where to are, dear readers.

Not the worst day ever

I have managed to develop a couple of unlikely crushes on some patients here. I'd heard that this would happen. I hear it's even worse in rehab. These are people who aren't particularly good looking, not people I would hang out with in real life (shirts emblazoned with brand names, not band names; hair neatly maintained). And, obviously THEY LIVE IN A FUCKING MENTAL INSTITUTION! Plus, I'm in love with someone else.
So, yes, basically the most guaranteed-to-be-fruitless crushes that ever existed. But, whatever. It passes the time. Are we even allowed to make out with each other here? I dare not ask.
My main excursions today were to Target and that horrid dirt mall. But I'm kind of getting to like some people, so, if those I do not like so much could be avoided, it was actually kind of... fun? Of course not nearly as much fun as I am capable of having (oh, to get stoned in the Sacramento summer and go to the river!) but fun of at least some degree. I guess if I am able to have some pleasant moments here, it might actually get me OUT of here earlier! It's progress, right? Right.
One of the patients put together a very comprehensive guided meditation that was pretty cool. It involved scents, colors, and jewelry totems. I wasn't able to meditate, not on any level, but I could tell that in a different state of mind it would have been very great. We got to keep our little totems, too. Mine is a tear-drop shaped piece of polished green glass, with a loop to be hung on a necklace. It was chosen for me, but seems to fit rather nicely.
Later in the day I actually wrote some poetry, an activity that I haven't involved myself in for YEARS. I still seem to have the same go-to imagery, though. Bones, arteries, and the filling of spaces seem to be present in quite a few of my different poems. I have no idea why.

Today we went ice-skating, which totally blows because I do NOT do skating of any kind. I fall down and break bones! Plus it was just cold and crowded and everywhere we go they buy everyone soda but I have given up soda. This entire place is basically run on soda. There is always soda drama going on. People who want to go out and buy soda, people complaining when they get cut-off from soda, people yelling that their soda has been stolen, people making soda deals, like trading three cigarettes for a soda or whatever. The words "Mountain Dew" and "Diet Coke" are just hanging in the air constantly. I think quitting soda was a really good move. Not that I drank it that much before, mostly just at restaurants. But still, if I hadn't made that decision, I might very well have gotten caught up in the great Florida soda battle.
I went to the library, which was both amazing and sucky. Amazing because it is an amazing library, with a whole room of dvds, a whole room of music, and of course a bajillion books, and even a used book store on the top level! It was very incredible. Sucky, because I am not allowed to have a library card without a Florida ID! And I aint gonna get no Florida ID! But someone else from the program was nice enough to check some books out for me so now I am FINALLY reading "Chronic City" by Jonathan Lethem and I have "Let's Spend The Night Together" by Pamela De Barres, sixties super groupie, on the back burner.
Some folks have been assholes (NO ONE can get over my desire for people to stop insulting gays, women, and people of different ethnicities! They think I'm crazy!) and some folks are nice. I would not be friends with any of them on "the outside". But, here is one thing I'll give the place: in real life, I am not considered an especially mature or responsible person, nor much of a beauty. Here I am a total god in both arenas.
Finally, in weight loss news, they had to weigh me for my chart or some shit, and I have lost 7 pounds since I got here. 7 pounds in a little over a week and a half! Rad. Only 92 to go.

My Favorite Schizophrenic

Today, my favorite schizophrenic played a bunch of random notes on the piano. He then claimed it was "Moonlight Sonata" and was astonished when I didn't believe him. Then he took a cellphone and rapidly punched numbers into it for a full minute while holding it up to the piano. Then he handed it back and said he had used the cellphone to prove that it was indeed "Moonlight Sonata". Then he played Wagner, which was also random notes, but much louder.
At lunch, he put his chicken breast into a bowl and ate it with a spoon.

Yesterday Was The Worst.

Yesterday was horrible. I ate a little bit too much, first of all. They had these little fucking mini pizzas at lunch, and I told myself I could eat one because it had tomato sauce and I don't usually eat tomato sauce and I need to get comfortable eating more foods; but I was, obviously, kidding myself. And I didn't eat that little at dinner and all they had for breakfast was sweetened cereal or these frightening little sausage patties that you're supposed to put in the toaster (aaahh!) so I had a small amount of Lucky Charms which is basically just milky sugar. And working out is good, and I did it yesterday, but that still only burns like 100 calories. Gaaah SORRY I keep talking about this! I feel like a bad feminist and a generally dull human being.
WE went to the bookstore, and this completely awful skinny little white dude who think he's a gangsta totally got up in my shit. First I asked him to please stop using a fake, lispy gay voice, because I find that shit offensive. OK guys, apparently I was WRONG to ask him that because HE HAS GAY FRIENDS! Duh, he can't be discriminatory! Infact, according to his survey of his GIGANTIC NETWORK OF GAY FRIENDS, gay people don't even MIND when you make fun of them! They LIKE it! So, jeez, I have made a terrible mistake spending over half my life advocating for gay rights, because it ISN'T ACTUALLY A PROBLEM!
Then, when I explained that I would not be going to the airsoft range because I do not like guns, he freaked on me again. Because guns are the greatest invention ever! And talking about guns all the time definitely doesn't make you sound like a Columbine nerd, it makes you sound like a super tough RAPPER! And also you guys, for real? Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Flawless logic and also totally a new phrase that I have never heard before.
ANYWAY, at the bookstore, I tried to buy the new Jonathan Lethem, which recently came out in paperback, but my card got declined, even when I tried combining my card AND the six dollars that I found on the street. It was all for naught, I am mega broke. Why don't they take us to the library instead of the stupid bookstore?
Then later I had a family session with my therapist and my parents on speaker phone and that was totally disastrous . I am so angry and alone here that it is very difficult for me to talk to the people I love most, namely my parents and Jon, without feeling like I need to unload on the. So, basically, they don't want to talk to me. Which of course just makes me more angry and alone. Plus everyone is pissed at me for thinking too much about the future. I don't see why it matters what is motivating me if I'm still doing all the work. I'm in a horrible, terrifying situation, so how am I supposed to not think about when I can leave? They say that I just need to make it into a good situation, but I don't know what else I can do. I'm doing the best I can, and I feel like no one wants to believe me. So I yelled at my parents and cried a lot, which is bad because I don't want to give anyone reason to keep me here any longer than three months. By the way, my therapist? On the computer the whole time. No eye contact. I guess she has to, like, chart everything I say or something, but it still makes any kind of communication extremely trying.
So, lots of crying. Bad day. Super shitty day.

Thanksgiving

Be thankful that your Thanksgiving does not involve a schizophrenic guido calling the cops because he thinks someone stole his cologne.
Yes, this was a sad Thanksgiving. For some reason I guess it's traditional to here to have the big meal at lunch instead of dinner? That is so lame. I didn't get to see my friends, I didn't get to see my family, this is all massive bullshit. I guess I am thankful that those people at least EXIST, but I'm feeling so alone it's like they barely do. Plus my parents, like I previously mentioned, are being entirely unhelpful and refuse to listen to anything I have to say. If I'm being negative, they are angry that I'm being ungrateful. If I'm being positive, they are angry that I am having unrealistic goals, or even just assume I am lying. So, yeah, no help at all. SO the whole Thanksgiving thing gets even more complicated in my head because it's like, yes, I want to see my family and I miss them, but on the other hand my family are being dicks and they left me here in this god-forsaken place on a fucking family holiday.
I know this isn't behavior becoming of a thankful woman but, yeah, I am pissed.
Oh, and what ultra-challenging therapeutic services did we have today? Nothing. Eating and going to the movies. We saw "Tangled". It was cute. Oh, and also it totally saved my life and cured my brain? Wait, no. No, it was pretty much a cute, pretty movie with the voice of Mandy Moore in it.

Holy Crap This Is Boring

I don't even want to talk about this crappy place today.
Every day I wake up with horrible anxiety. Today is no exception. I'm trying to calm myself by going out into the backyard and sitting on the swing. Speaking of the backyard, I had this whole post planned where I went out there and took pictures of all the plants and flowers, then had you guys figure out what they were for me. But guess what? I forgot the cable that connects my camera to my computer. Whyyyyy is everything so shiiiiiity?
Today I improved my bowling score. I think I almost doubled it. Guess what? Still a really bad score.
We went to the mall. I didn't have any money, plus it was a really disgusting mall. So I just trailed a staff member and watched her buy some skanky shoes. Wow, I sure am getting a lot out of this. They reallllly are challenging me. Bowling and a fucking trip to the mall. This is fucking ridiculous. Get me home, now.