At age 22, I was a junior at Barnard College in New York City, experiencing anxiety, panic attacks, and facial pain from TMJ (tempero-mandibular joint). Little did I know at the time that I had post-traumatic stress (PTS) from an infant surgery for pyloric stenosis, a stomach blockage, at 26 days old. Naively, after the spring semester, I hospitalized myself because I felt suicidal. Wrong.
The place was merely a holding tank until one was transferred to a longer-term facility. Even when my parents told the staff about my history with the early surgery, no notice was taken. My records mentioned hormone imbalance as cause of depression. One of the social workers told me that I just needed a husband. Compared to patients “poking pencils into their eyes,” I shouldn’t be admitted, the intake worker inferred. Hmmmm…..so much for 1974.
In fact, the hospitalization in the psych ward re-traumatized me. The place was about punishment and fear. There were some well-meaning and friendly volunteers and social workers, but the nurses and the psychiatrist just didn’t have a clue. Their methods were all about changing people’s behavior and I knew, even in that depressed condition, that my problems went deep. In fact, I thought I could mine what was troubling me there with the help of trained professionals. Wrong.
I’ve written many times about the psych ward but often, the pieces comes out cliche. How to really capture the experience? I brought yet one more attempt to my poetry group. Again, no soap. Ditch the draft was the advice. But one poet gave me an invaluable suggestion, one that I’ve given my writing students from time to time. Write about the experience with the left hand. Here are my two drafts:
Pennsylvania Hospital 1974
In the psyche ward
we wallowed, we swallowed
a soup of fear
breakfast, lunch, dinner.
Stress hormones raced
as we watched Cynthia
lying on a gurney drooling
just back from electro shock—
the place we’d go
if we were bad.
Cortisol raced
as we passed the isolation
room and heard the banging,
looked into the tiny square
window and saw Matt
bound by a restraint jacket
hitting his head against the wall.
Terror topped out
as we passed “Mushroom Man,”
George, brain blown out by drugs.
He rocked and rocked and rocked,
sitting alone daily in the day room
in his white paper gown.
I came to the psyche ward naively
to be healed, to sit quietly
and let the demons make their way
out my throat. To drink an elixir of
self-understanding.
But the sizzling in the pan,
the high heat, the lid too tight,
sent me to the streets again,
looking for a place where
I could say I am. Where
hope was offered, trust,
and repair on the menu.
Psych Ward
Pennsylvania Hospital, 1974
Tiles of waxy shine
we sit in hallways
floating
meds drip from lips
inert medicine ball on porch
caged, suspended over
crowded tenements
flocks of pigeons coo, burble
lumps of men paper-shoed
knives of sarcasm
wastings of words
we watch a movie
about Alaska, Kona
of the Wild, a wolf
free while we
chained to ideas about
ourselves, light cigarettes
watch our thighs jiggle
as night turns day
and day burns night
the windows barred
so the dead stay alive.
Guess which one is written with my left. When we write with the non-dominant hand, we access material that is stored in the part of the brain that is often referred to as “right.” It’s the emotional, visual, sensual memory; the body or somatic memory; the smells, touch, tastes, sounds and sights. The “left” brain is the logical, analytical, chronological, narrative-focused part. Can you see the difference? One is more distant.
Try it. Write about something with your dominant hand that you’ve been wanting to understand more deeply and then, try with the other hand. Read them (a challenge, for the non-dominant handwriting will be chicken-scratchy). Left-hand writing gives a fresh, more immediate perspective. Left-hand writing may give you the answers you are looking for.
What you write here (both left and right handedly) is so sadly and truly an image of psychiatric “care” not so long ago. How sad that the psych ward was all you could find when you needed help, help that was really not yet on the horizon in the 1970s.
I also love your showing us the contrast between your writing these poems with your left and right brain. I must give this a try also, even though poetry is not among my obvious skills!
Just write as if writing paragraphs. Poetry is often simply imaginative prose with the small state of being verbs (am, was, become, feel, etc) and the articles, such as “a,” “an,” and “the” deleted and then line breaks made (cutting the long sentences into shorter phrases). I’d love to know what you discover if you try left-hand writing. Don’t even worry about making a poem. Just see what content comes up. Regarding the psych ward, I wonder if hospitalization for mental health issues is much different today. I think the craze with behaviorism is thankfully over. I don’t know what has replaced it. It seems that drugs have taken on an even bigger role. I wonder how much help is given to people regarding self-understanding and the resolution of trauma.