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.

A Bug in my Dinner.

Tonight over dinner V. made a shock reference to my holiday at Hotel Northside.
"At least when you went funny last year you did something about it."
I couldn't bring myself to tell her I had no choice. That as I stared down the barrel of the gun depression was holding to my head, it was not me who intercepted the blow, but the law; and in this there was not so much as a smirk, let alone anything funny about it.
She then adopted a technique that my mother tries on me; in telling me what she wants to hear in the hopes that my subconscious will replace my previous views with the one that she is presenting.
"Your life is going well at the moment."
It was a statement, and not a question; making it harder and more dramatic to correct her.
Instead of answering, I finished my drink.