Halloween

It wasn't until I was on my late afternoon walk that I remembered it was Halloween. The usually quiet streets of suburbia was crawling with Trick-or-Treaters dressed as witches and ghouls, some wearing the traditional 'Scream' mask and one seemingly out of place Australian yobbo.
Seeing them carrying their plastic Jack-o-lantern pails full of their winnings reminded me of how my brother and I spent Halloween when we were young. We were the only children in our street so in the early years we took our neighbours by surprise. Not having chocolate or lollies in their pantries, they instead gave us gold coins to spent on ourselves at the corner store.
Most years that followed however, they planned our Halloween ritual into their grocery shop. The 90 year old lady across the street once told my mother to be sure we kids stopped by her house so she could give us each a block of chocolate she had waiting by the door.
We were never without a costume either. One year my brother wanted to go as a ghost, and the only sheet we could find not made into a bed was brown. Mum wouldn't let us cut eye holes in it so we stuck some on with sticky tape and I had to lead M by the arm as he couldn't see where he was going. When our cattle dog wanted to come along, I renamed him 'Sirius Black' from Harry Potter in an attempt to win him some candy.
So this evening as I was arriving home from my walk, I found a gaggle of dressed up children in my street. Knowing that my roommate The Bear had bought mini chocolate bars in case, I invited them up the path to our house. They chorused 'Trick-or-Treat' as we came though the gate and the door was opened by a glowing smile and a bowl full of chocolate. LV, the cat, attempted a prison break before I caught him and added another element of excitement to the four kids standing on my door mat. At that moment I realised the picture I had laughed at this morning was in fact, a reality:

Facebook Fortune

Today I got a fortune cookie in the form of a friend's Facebook uoload:

Girl, Interrupted

Whilst 'holidaying' at Hotel Northside, my room mates and I created a lot of mayhem. We broke into the dining room most Friday nights to steal chocolate ice cream; we unknowingly withheld particular medications we were opposed to; we ganged up on other patients and hid their prized objects just for kicks and kept a score of how many times others had cried in group therapy sessions, as if our scores of zero had somehow made us more sane than the rest.
I forged friendships with these girls that will last for life. When we see each other nowadays we reflect on our time spent on the inside with humour and laughter. Hearing fragments of our tales, an outsider once commented that it was very much like the movie Girl, Interrupted. I tried to make sense of this and assumed that the adventures we shared equated with the characters in the film drugging their nurse to break out of the ward to play ten pin bowling, and trading medications with each other depending on what each girl felt she required.
Overall, my time at Northside was not a positive experience. I can see how it may appear so to others, as I have done my best to paint a picture of contentment and only share the good stuff; mainly because it makes others feel less awkward to talk about psychiatry with a normal spin, but also because it is denying myself the fact to indulge in the myriad of bad memories that I have.
I have realised that this is my defence mechanism. By creating this picture of light heartedness and laughter I am hopeful that I may be able to lose the pain I still carry from within those walls, and replace it with a deviation from the truth to last me for years to come. I'm willing to give it a go.