"My Prison-Cure in America", Chapter 7
Adapted from Annemarie Schwarzenbach, by Cleo Varra
Content warning: Involuntary psychiatric commitment
Read previous: #6. Oh, You Should Let Me Out!
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Bellevue Hospital, New York City-- 1941
The screams in that ward haunted me, even during my unrefreshing sleep.
Waking up, and hearing just one word, I would be able to finish the sentence. I'd say it quickly out loud to myself, so that the cries from my neighboring cells would come back to me like echoes.
You would hear, “Let me out!”—sometimes ebbing from tiredness, then swelling, angry and rebellious.
Or someone else would shout, "I can't take it anymore"; "I haven't done anything"; or sometimes even, "Why are you doing this to me, Mother?"-- humbly; begging; whining: all in vain.
--And again and again, there would be the sounds of hasty feet, slamming doors, choked gurgling, and a body being dragged away.
Then it would swell again, a sea of helplessness.
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"Protesters at the 1970 American Psychiatric Association conference in San Francisco... shut down the homosexuality panel with 'screamed and shouted obscenities', accusing attendees of sadism, barbarism, and torture. [...]
A reporter from the Detroit Liberator bemoaned the protest as a 'tantrum' in which 'dialogue stopped, progress stopped'".
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Sometimes, out of breath, a person would invent a new lament: just to fight back and be allowed to burst into despair, to know that they were still alive.
So a person will whisper to you that the soup is poisoned; others will say they heard shots in the yard, overnight. Most of these stories aren't true. What is true is that all have been wronged, and all want to be heard.
All are afraid and in despair; all want to be let out, and are calling for help.
***
— The staff, hardened or jaded from sheer helplessness, barely seemed to notice anymore.—
They had no special powers, at most they frightened and turned away.
And the fact that they were not even ashamed drove me to the face of furious shame.
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