Dear Diary.
It's been too long since I've seen the bright light of day. I've been stuck in the place for weeks on end. My only companion is you, my dear old diary. This is nothing like I expected; it's worse, so much worse.
My mother told me that they want to help me here, that they care about me. Well they can shove their so called caring up their arses. I know they don't care, I know that they shove those little pills down my throat so they don't have to keep an eye on me all day.
Everyday it's the same thing, a young nurse's aide comes in to see if I'm still alive at 6:00. Then the aide walks me to the mess hall for my breakfast, already made and cut up for me. I'm never trusted with knives anymore, not since I hid it under my clothes and took it into my room and tried to kill myself.
Next is medication time. All the patients get their anti-depressants. Most welcome the haze that those little pills bring. I don't.
After medication time it's time to spent the large portion of the daylight hours in the day room with all the other inmates of this place. We all hate it here; we don't understand why they want us trapped here, why they won't let us die?
We don't talk, we don't move, we don't do anything.
No-one has even tried to become friends with anyone else; we don't know how long they'll be around for so we don't bother.
The loud speaker attached to the ceiling announces that its therapy time for me. I hate therapy time. It's the same shit, just a different day. Nurse Simmons starts by bringing up my scars. The everlasting reminder of my failure, my failure to get through killing myself smoothly. She knows how I feel about them, but she just keeps talking about them. It's like talking about them can erase them. I've tried scrubbing them off, but everything I try doesn't work.
We talk for an hour. By 'we' I mean Nurse Simmons, she spends the time talking and I completely ignore her every question and comment. There is absolutely no point in these therapy sessions, but she believes that it's helping me. I don't want to lead her on this fairy tale but I really hate bringing up my own opinions. She shoots them down as soon as I speak. She'll tell me that my dark thoughts are not in my head by force, but by choice. If I choose to think these macabre things I'm an idiot. Every day I spend my time wishing for either death or happy thoughts to take my pain away.
Finally it's time for the next person to have their 'therapeutic' session. They should just let us be, we don't want to be here, we don't want this constant reminder that we are, in fact, different because of who we actually are.
I've tried talking about why I'm like this to Nurse Simmons, but she keeps telling me things I really don't need to hear. The things she tells me just feed the fire inside my mind. 'She never loved you' is one of those sentences that I remember from one of my very first sessions with the Nurse. Her words burnt deep into my brain, so far down that even a Lobotomy wouldn't be able to get rid of those taunting words.
Until it's time for lunch all I do is sit. Sit and think, but my thoughts are very restricted. I put up a mental wall between what I can think about, and what I both cannot and refuse to think about.
After a while, the wall I put in place falls and I remember back to why I am chronically depressed and in this institution. As soon as I start thinking about her I know I won't stop until I'm in my dorm.
I really did love her. Abby and I were to marry, we were such a cute couple, we never intentionally hurt each other. If we fought, we'd be mad for a little while and then one of us will go and apologise profusely. I've always had depression; it's just never been this bad. Abby knew that so maybe being let down a little easier should have crossed her mind.
I asked Abby to marry me, she said yes.
A week later I get a call from this guy, Brad, he tells me to stop pestering his girlfriend, that his girlfriend never loved me. That his girlfriend was Abby, my Abby, my fiancé. Abby had only agreed to marry me because she wanted a back-up plan if her relationship with Brad didn't turn out that way she wanted.
I questioned her about it, about if it was true or not, if she wasn't faithful. Her reply was a slap to the face and her screaming at me about how I didn't trust her, how I was following her everywhere. I tried to get her to talk or at least listen to me, I tried to tell her that Brad called me, that I had no idea what was going on. She didn't believe me, she just stormed off.
That night I got another call from Brad. In this phone call he told me to go hang myself, that no-one would give two shits about me killing myself. So I did what he said. I tried to kill myself. Now I'm here in this asylum wishing for death.
That was in 1990. I don't know what year it is now. Time has no real hold on me anymore.
Eventually after what seems like days, it's time for dinner and to go to our dorms and wait for the aides to bring our night medication. I don't take that little pill, that pill that forces me into sleep, I spit it out when the aide leaves, I'd much rather stay awake. It's only 9:00.
I'm not getting sleep anytime soon.
Billy.