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Post by Jena on Jan 27, 2010 17:54:56 GMT -5
It's all so very lovely.
The chairs; you won't find chairs like that anywhere else. You're impressed by the plush, tasteful carpeting. The modern art makes you stop and think – don't lie. And if you do, the top-of-the-range, mahogany-framed lie detector will find you out. Even the straitjackets are as good as it gets. Never mind that you're thrashing and fumbling and screaming; that's deluxe leather that's holding you in. Feel it. That has to have been one expensive cow. And as you're hauled along down the hallway, keep feeling it. Look, the label even says it. 'High-quality.' Everything's high. The ceilings, so that when you shout you have a big space to fill – they're high. The expectations are high, too. Get better. Give the Lewcar Center a good name. Feel the leather. Appreciate it. High. And your parents, maybe they come once a week or once a month; your friends, ten one week and then five the next and then two the next. They anticipate, too. They're not sitting there for the fun of it, you know. They're trying to help you. You're trying to help you. The beds are high; maybe you like it, maybe you don't. It doesn't change it, because you can't adjust the level. That's the thing. Everything's so immaculate and brilliant and nice, but it's never your choice. The doctor doesn't offer you a lollipop. He gives you one. If you hand it back, he'll scribble down some notes and frown in that medical way that means hmmm, interesting. If you eat it, he'll nod. So you eat it – most of you do, anyway. See, you're not alone here. It just feels like it. Ward after ward of young adults. They're filling that gap. The children's clinics won't take you because you're over fifteen. The adults' ones won't because you're under twenty-one. Congratulations; there's a gap, and Lewcar's filling it. Be proud. Be a part of it. All those stories, magnificent and stone, several decades old. The place towers. It's high. Everything's high.
With all those highs, it makes sense to want to fly high, too.
Even if you're only there because a razor slipped and fell on your wrist repeatedly over the course of three years – you're there with them. The addicts, the pushers, the psychopaths. And it's a crap theory when you think about it. Take the waste of society, the dross, and cure them. How? By surrounding them with like-minded people. Yeah, that'll work. The reality is that it makes it easier to get drugs in. You know that guy who visits the blonde three rooms down? Yeah, he's not really her devoted brother. He brings her coke and she gives him handjobs. If you're shocked, it's obviously your first time in here. Connections, money and nothing left to lose. The place is a fucking pharmacy. It's not just the drugs that are sneaked in, either. Antidepressants can get pretty addictive if you take five times the recommended dose – which is, of course, the only way that they'll actually work, the skinhead in Room 7 claims. Then he swallows two more, in front of you, and offers you some. He's in a good mood, you think. Well, he's not. He'll charge you next time. It's tough stealing the things. You have to be tight with the nurses. Really tight. Money works, either. Money always works. This place is expensive, you see, and maybe your parents remind you of it when they come to see you. They're probably thinking it, or at least thinking about it more than they think about you. But maybe that's not fair. Maybe they care. No-one will believe you, though. The good people are lost in a sea of pathological liars and sociopaths. Anorexics and people with multiple personality disorders and people who are just people. It's a hard fight when everyone has a label. You can keep going, though. Keep in the fight, tiger. Every day is better than the last, and you have a bright future ahead.
You can contribute to society, you can battle whatever's keeping you down, and you can have a fulfilling life.
The leaflets say it, so it has to be true.
Broken Hearts and Hand Grenades |
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