Non-Fiction / Memoir
Date Published: April 2, 2018
Publisher: Chatnoir Press
Lena Hubin is a straight-A college senior when she lands in a psych ward. After her release, psychotherapy, illicit drugs, and sex distract her from her chronic anxiety--but none yields lasting relief. Despite teaching abroad, marrying, earning a masters and adopting two children, she remains haunted by anxiety. In her fifties, Lena returns with her family to the U.S., anticipating peace of mind. But when her son struggles with alcoholism, she feels her sanity swirling down the drain like the liquor she would dump--if she could find it. In a quest to help him, the author starts a journey that will change her life for good.
Excerpt
The Loony Bin
“…I
saw the words just crawl up off the page like they were alive!”
I
sat in Dr. Rubin’s small office on the fourth floor of Luther Hospital,
reliving for him the incident in my apartment two nights earlier, when I hadn’t
been able to wrestle meaning from a sociology text paragraph. The little black
words had rebelled, marching into the air like a trail of ants. I shuddered. “I’ve
just started the school year, and I think I’m going insane!”
“What
else happened?” the doctor asked.
“What
do you mean, ‘what else’? Isn’t that enough? I saw the words parade off
the page in front of me. I’m seeing things. There’s something wrong with
my mind!”
This
hospital psychiatrist was my last hope. Back in school, I’d begun sinking like
a leaky rowboat. No one could bale me out of my sudden madness: not my old
boyfriend Andy; not John, the campus minister with UCM; not Dr. White, the
college shrink. I’d panicked.
But
Dr. Rubin wasn’t helping. He sat like a bent scarecrow, studying the papers
scattered over his desk. “Your admittance info mentions another incident.” His
small eyes squinted at me through wire-rimmed glasses.
“Well,
if it’s there, why do I have to tell it again? I’ve already explained all this
to two people here.”
“I’d
like you to describe it for me personally, if you don’t mind.” The doc opened a
desk drawer and took out a pipe.
His
equanimity set me on edge. “Please, can’t you just read it in the report?”
His
bony old hand shook as he struck a match and lit the pipe. “Tell me what else happened, Eileen.” He leaned back with a
lop-sided smile and puffed. “Take your time.”
“Too much time’s already been taken! You must have
the results of all those tests I took. What else do you need?” I’d waded
through the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, the Thematic
Apperception Test, some muddy Rorschachs where I saw Jesus throwing stones.
Shouldn’t this top-of-the-line shrink know what to do with me by now? I was
frantic.
But
I was trapped, nowhere to turn. As smoke from his pipe swirled, I droned out
the rest: “Yesterday at the end of conducting
lab, Dr. Byrne put on a record of this Mozart music and made us stand and
direct it. The jumpy beat scared me. I wanted to cover my ears and run away.” My
voice quavered. “And the others were taking it so damn seriously,
everybody holding up the stupid little sticks in their hands like puppets, and
I felt so out of it, I could hardly hold the stick up. It scared
me.”
“And then?” The doddering doctor’s head leaned back, his
lips pursed around the pipe stem.
“Dr Byrne came up behind me and took hold of my elbow and
said, ‘It’s simple 4/4 time,’ like I was some idiot, and he started pushing my
arm back and forth….” Anxiety rose in my
stomach. “Him touching my arm like that, it made me feel nauseous, like
I was gonna pass out. I sat back and hung my head down so I wouldn’t faint.”
More
puffs on the pipe. “And you didn’t faint.”
“No…, the bell rang, and I went out to the hallway and found
Andy—that’s my old boyfriend. He felt my forehead and said, ‘You’re prob’ly
coming down with something.’ Then he just picked up his French horn and went
into his practice room.”
“But you continued to feel anxious.” His eyes followed the
smoke drifting upward. I was sick of his pipe, of the smell. I was also dying
for a cigarette, but having been told smoking was only allowed in the day room,
I’d left my pack in my room.
“I couldn’t stand it any more. I knew something was
wrong. I rushed over to see John, that’s the UCM minister, and told him what
was happening to my mind. And about Roger, this strange guy I spent the summer
with—then he asked me if Roger could’ve slipped me a drug, but I know he
didn’t; we just drank beer. Then John got me an appointment with Dr. White,
this campus shrink, and—”
“I know Dr. White. He’s a good psychologist.” Puff, puff on
the pipe.
“Well, he didn’t help me. He just gave me tissues and told
me to cry it out.”
“So you were frustrated.”
“And then he said maybe I was overtired. He told me to go
home and sleep as long as I could, and I slept sixteen hours straight—but it
didn’t help. Nothing helps!”
“But you went back to Dr. White….” Dr. Rubin peered at a
paper in front of him, his pipe poised in a quaking hand.
“Yeah, yesterday afternoon. There was nothing else to do! He
said if I felt that bad, I could come here. So I went home and packed my
suitcase and took a taxi, and here I am.” I drew in a sharp breath. “I committed
myself!” I sagged into the back of my chair.
“And here you are.” His voice was dead-calm. “How do you
feel right now?”
“I’m just sick of all this. I want it to go away!”
I wrestled back tears.
“What are you
sick of, exactly? What do you want to go away?” He still sucked at the
pipe.
I
sat up straight and leveled it at him: “All
those other people out there, normal people, I feel like they’re in a
different world, and I’m set apart—I can’t connect. It’s like I’m trapped in
some kind of bubble, looking at everything from the inside out, stuck in here
like one of those paperweight bugs in acrylic. Nothing outside makes sense!” I
leaned back, and my voice pitch rose with a finale: “I had a 3.94 grade point
last semester, for Godsake, and now I can’t even read! I can’t play piano. I
can’t do anything! I’m just floating inside this damned, eerie bubble
and I can’t get out!”
Tears
stung my eyes. I began to sniffle; then I was gasping out faltering breaths. I
let my head fall into my arms on Dr. Rubin’s
desk and dissolved into racking sobs.
When
I felt the doctor’s light touch on the back of my
shoulder, I stopped crying. “You will get through this, Eileen. It will take
some time and effort, but we’ll help you, and you’ll get well.”
I
could have been a little kid with her parent telling her the monsters weren’t
real. The doctor’s pipe bowl rapped against the glass ashtray. I opened my
bleary eyes to see him shaking where he stood, bent like a question mark,
beside his desk. He smiled gently at me and beckoned with his pipe stem toward
the open door.
*****
Dr.
Rubin lied. I’d been in the fourth-floor loony bin
for over a week and was not getting better. In fact, I felt worse: anxious,
bored, and useless, incapable of any normal thought or action. My mother came
to visit. “We’re worried. We don’t really understand why you’re here.” I didn’t
either; I couldn’t explain. I didn’t want to talk to her. Her teachers’ insurance
was footing the bill, but I just wanted her to go away.
“Do you ever think of killing yourself?” Dr. Goldberg asked
one day. He was the psychologist of my “team,” the team of him and Dr. Rubin.
“Why should I? I’m dead already.”
“You are clinically depressed,” he said. “Your test results
are clear. And these are not unusual feelings for depression. Try to be
patient. With some weeks of therapy and medication you’ll feel much better.”
“Some weeks! I can’t stand this for weeks.
Send me to Mendota if you want. I might as well sit there in the state asylum
in a rocking chair for the rest of my life.”
Dr.
Goldberg jotted something on his clipboard. Then he smiled at me. “Let’s meet again in a couple of days, shall we? It must be
almost time for dinner.”
*****
Days
on the fourth floor comprised a tedious litany. At 7 a.m. a breakfast cart
rattled in, jarring me awake. I pulled myself up in bed and downed the orange
juice, sloppy oatmeal, and limp toast. I pulled on clothes and sidled into the
dayroom for a smoke, avoiding the eyes of a couple of loonies in there already
playing cards. I trudged down the hall to a padded bench by the wall in a
cavernous waiting area with a nurses’
station as the hub. I sat there fidgeting, hoping for a shrink to summon me for
a session; meetings with the docs were haphazard, as far as I could tell. When
I finally did get called I felt as if I’d won the lottery. I popped off the
bench, salivating for the boredom displacement that was in store, an hour of
attention focused on the hapless blob that was me.
Mostly
I sat idle, staring at the dull green walls, at patients and nurses and doctors
and orderlies who drifted through and chatted with folks for a spell and then
moved on.
Back
in my room at noon for lunch, alone by my request, I’d maw down whatever amorphous vegetables, starch, meat,
and pudding or jello they served up, then dread the arrival of the prim,
gray-haired lady at the door with her perky voice: “Coming to OT today?” Under
doctors’ orders to take part in Occupational Therapy, I’d drag myself off my
bed and trail her to a room with other patients at a long table, where I strung
hundreds of beads, length after length, into necklaces no one would ever wear.
Group
therapy met after OT, but I begged off. “I
don’t want to talk with other crazy people,” I told Dr. Goldberg. “What’s the
point? The problem’s in my head.” He didn’t make me go. Except to smoke,
I avoided the dayroom, too, where the TV blared soap operas and people sat
around playing gin rummy. Instead, I lay on my bed and stared at nothing for as
long as I could stand it. Then I returned to the nurses’ station, and like a
dog anticipating its master’s return, awaited a doctor’s call which rarely
came.
In
my room again at 5:00, I ate the entire crappy supper; feeding my face was
something to do. Then I shuffled back to the waiting room.
The
tedium-drenched days were as leaden as the skies outside my window, which
threatened to drop their heavy load of winter any day. But after supper, as
dusk fell into darkness, I perked up. In this best part of my day, I could
revel in the anticipation of escape into hours of sweet, dead unconsciousness: sleep, my bosom
buddy, the only prolonged relief from the anxious, aching dullness of my waking
days.
One
afternoon the orderlies herded squirmy patients across a road to a gaping
public gymnasium, where they lined us up in teams on the slick wood floor. I
stood where they planted me. A large rubber ball was suddenly in motion, people
racing around me in pursuit. An orderly had barked out an explanation of the
game—but I couldn’t concentrate enough to get
it, and this filled me with terror. I kicked at the ball when it came near me—but
I just wanted to vanish. A blur of patients scuffled past and shoved at me;
sides changed up and an orderly snapped, “Eileen! Other side!” I winced,
loped past where he was pointing, slunk down by a wall, and sat there in a
shriveled heap until the game was over and I could shamble back to safety in
the psych ward.
The
next day when the nurse came in with my meds in the little white paper cup, I
whined, “The afternoons are killing me. I just
lie around waiting for dinner. It’s pointless. Can’t you give me something
after lunch to let me sleep?”
Besides
the Thorazine and whatever other pills they dished out to me three times a day,
Dr. Rubin prescribed an afternoon sleeping pill. I sank into blissful
nothingness, dead again, for a few more hours each day.
About the Author
Lena Hubin has been writing since she was a young kid growing up on a small Wisconsin dairy farm. She has had essays and articles published in ISS Newslinks, The International Educator, Midwest Living, and The Sun. For four years she wrote quarterly book reviews for In Recovery Magazine. She has a masters degree in Creative Writing from California State University, Fresno. Lena writes, plays piano, teaches, and works for social justice in Prescott, Arizona, where she lives with her husband, dog, and cat.
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