Day 42 – The Resort

At the age of 15 and after 10 years of childhood trauma, I was not doing so well.

I was withdrawn, depressed, anorexic and suicidal.

My parents kept asking saying “What is wrong with you?” I couldn’t ever explain what was really happening so I would just tell them that I wanted to go live with my older sister in another state.

The truth is that I was very sick physically and emotionally and I needed more care than any family could give me at that time.

My mother had been seeing a psychiatrist for many years. She said it would be best if we went to him.

I’ll never forget this day. Ever. It was 2:00pm and I sat down with this Doctor and he asked me what was wrong. I told him I didn’t know. I guess I really did not know.

After talking to him for the traditional 50 minutes, he called my parents in and asked me to wait outside. He told them I needed inpatient hospital care. They agreed. Im sure they were relieved to not have to deal with my issues for a while.

They called me in the office a couple of minutes later. The doctor says, “I know this nice place you can go to. It’s like a resort. You can play games and swim and meet other kids, etc. Inside I was thinking, “please just take me anywhere but home”.

The doctor said, “ok great, let me call and get you a room”.

I waited in his lobby for hours. At 7 pm my parents were finally driving me to the “resort”.

The resort turned out to be a private very small mental hospital. I guess it was considered advanced psychiatric care at that time.

It took two hours to go thru admissions and then came time to say goodbye to my parents. I don’t remember feeling sad or scared. I just thought I would finally be free.

They took me back to my room and all the other kids were just staring. I was introduced to my roommate, named Marissa. She said hi and then said this. “My boyfriend is Danny and if you talk to him I will fxxxing kill you!”

At that moment, any dream I had of freedom died. I went from an awful home environment to hell on earth.

I was there for four months. It literally was like watching a scary movie except I had the lead role.

What I had already endured was not going to be the end of the story. Going to the “resort” was not my happy ending.

As time goes by, I’ll share more about the “resort” and the things that happened there.

I’m happy to say that after 32 years of looking at that building it was finally torn down.

I pray to God that psychiatric hospitals are not like that any more. And God bless the people that have to go there for their own protection.

Until next time – I am being MJ every day.