When a Transpersonal Crisis Becomes a Spiritual Emergence
Finding My Way Through and Out of the Cuckoo’s Nest, Part 1
When I was four, I was shut in the living room clothes closet until I could learn to tie my shoes.1
One too many times, I’d come inside to ask my mother for help tying my shoelaces. She was tending my baby sister, and she’d had enough of my requests, so she banished me to the closet until I learned to tie them myself.
A wild part of me went away in that closet where the heavy coats made it too dark to see anything. Alone in the dark, my heart hurt and I could barely breathe when I thought I heard her say on the other side of the door, “Go away, go away, just go away.” Since then, my greatest known fear was to be locked up against my will again. And here I am, 43 years later, finally telling this story.
The middle strap presses my chest into my heart.
I press the buzzer until the night nurse disconnects it. Each time I ask her to loosen the three horizontal leather strap buckles one notch, so I can turn on my side. I can’t fall asleep on my back.
Each time, the RN refuses:
“Sorry, we can’t do that.”
Then she reminds me of when I threatened to leave and their concern I might get away.
I buzz three more times before they turn it off.
I need to go to the bathroom and I am confined to a hospital bed by a leather straight jacket with three large belt like buckles.
Barely able to breathe, I begin to feel the effects of whatever pills they gave me.
When I realize my buzzer won’t work and they’re not coming into my room again until morning, I relax my breath, slow it down so I won’t panic each time I feel how tight these straps are, the top one pins my arms to my sides.
That’s when I hear the woman on the other side of the wall. She simpers, a subdued squeal. The sound sears into me, piercing a deep fear inside me. Sadness stabs my heart. Each time she exhales, a squeaking noise erupts like a stifled scream deep down in her throat. Listening to her whimpers, I sense she cannot stop, helpless to whatever might be happening on the other side of the wall between our heads.. She’s crying for help too and no one helps her just like me.
Matching my breath with hers, I intend to let her know she’s not alone, that someone hears her. I attempt to make the same sound she’s making.
When she doesn’t quiet down, I try to soothe her with my soft voice:
“It’s okay, you’ll be alright.”
A couple of times I imagine hearing her hesitate, halting for a moment her incessant suffering.
Wiser Crone perspective: My dear overwhelmed self, I commend you for your empathy and evolving compassion that expanded to care for another, your nextdoor soul sister.
I try holding my bowel movement throughout the night. When I can’t hold it any longer, the warmth of my excrement oozes a coating along the back of my body. Mortified yet relieved, I somehow fell asleep to the staccato of stifled screams between our shared wall, next door.
My eyes squint from the brightness through the Venetian blinds. The nurse walks in commenting on the stench coming from my bed.
“I told you I had to go to the bathroom,” I say, and feel my face flush.
“Do you promise not to leave?” the day nurse asks before she unbuckles the leather constraints.
I nod. Is she kidding? These heavy metal buckles suffocated any remaining resistance to being here. The influence of the strong medication clouded my willful nature to a docile demeanor. Trapped in a controlled unnatural environment, I comply with everything she tells me, determined not to spend another night strapped in bed.
Then the nurse asks me to give her my glasses. Protesting that my lenses are plastic, she informs me late last evening the woman next door slit her wrists with a broken lens of her glasses therefore no one can have them.
“Did she die?”
“No, she’s in intensive care.”
I feel relieved she’s still alive, and won’t keep me awake again tonight.
Allowed to take a supervised shower then breakfast arrives. I carefully eat what is fresh and feels good for my body and leave the rest. The nurse tells me I am free to walk down the hall and help myself to more juice or snacks in the mini frig and that the day room is available to read or watch television.
Bizarre beliefs cross my mind about the water not being safe to drink, that it is poisoned so I ask for cranberry juice instead of the tap water. The TV, phone and radio all feel off limits to me for fear of further invasive or violating acts toward me; a sinking trepidation pervades my body about being controlled or observed by people I cannot trust to have my best interest in mind.
No call or visit from Mother that first day of my involuntary confinement. It figures that if she couldn’t tell me to my face I had to stay here, she’d take her time to let me get used to being here. After splashing water on my face several times in my private bathroom, look in the mirror and see my bloodshot eyes underlined by dark rings.
I think of Murphy, my teaching friend and her boyfriend Todd. We met weekly in their living room passing a two-foot glass bong in a circle and spoke of Gurdjieff’s philosophy as well as Ouspensky lectures on the Fourth Way of consciousness, man’s intrinsic relationship to nature.
In a heightened state of sensitivity, I imagine I can hear Murphy, my friend and her lover Todd’s voices talking about me, planning a way to come here and help me get out. My body confirms an inner certainty. I can hear them talking and they are picking up my etheric signals of distress.
Yesterday, I attempted to talk with the psychiatrist on the psych floor of St. Joseph’s Main Hospital along the Missouri River. Dr. Bob’s 6’2” frame, covered by his white medical coat and his eyes protected by dark thick glasses make him look kind of geeky. He rigidly communicated absolutely nothing to me as if his body language has been stifled by too many years of repressing his natural way of being to survive his work.
All he could ask me yesterday, after returning from a brain scan, in response to my questions about Mother:
“Do you know what day it is?”
Of course I did.
“Do you know what time it is?”
I had some idea.
What do these questions have to do with my questions he never acknowledged?
I asked him about the Three Faces of Eve, if he’d read the book or seen the movie. Somehow I intuited a cryptic key to how I ended up here might be in Eve’s story. Joan Crawford played a woman with several personas.
I became agitated and annoyed when he asked me the same orientation questions a few more times.
“Why should I stay here if you refuse to speak to me like an intelligent person?”
Silence, so I stomped barefoot to my hospital room and slipped on my white leather sandals and sternly stated to the day nurse:
“Unless you talk to me like a person and tell me where my Mother went, I am out of here.”
When I mentioned hearing my friends’ voices earlier that morning, two orderlies and two nurses appeared at my door with a straight jacket.
A day or two after the strait jacket, I head to the day room to check out the mini fridge, feeling somewhat empowered by the freedom to help myself to juice or a snack.
Several other women walk into the day room with me. They all make a beeline to the TV surrounded by ten other women. I can’t see what they’re watching.
I eat my snack by the coffee table with magazines. A National Geographic stands out to me. The title, Oldest Trees in the World drew me. Mesmerized by each photo of the wind-worn bark of the bristlecone pine, I marvel to myself how tenacious these trees are to survive such a harsh environment.
Wiser Crone perspective on what the trees symbolized for you: a resilience in your ability to have grown from your childhood challenges. And, how the recent traumas triggered your will to live and face the truth of your pain. Your courage and strength to reclaim your sovereignty, autonomy at a soul level revealed to you step by step.
The medical establishment with its focus and emphasis to oppress any perceived deviant or misunderstood behaviors with confinement, force and medication, is not able to address nor assist people in a spiritual crisis or emergency. Under supportive circumstances, you would have been encouraged to speak of the abilities coming to light, your clairaudience, empathy, compassion and sensitivity. And, to open up to becoming a counselor and healer after leaving teaching this year.
Looking up, I realize today was the wedding day of Princess Diana and Prince Charles. There’s a transfixed look on many of the women’s faces as if they are watching the most magical moment in their lives. Drawn more to their collective ambiance of elation than to the screen, I sit near them as each step of the regal ceremony plays out. I can see their supposed smiles, the symmetry between the faces of the Prince and the Princess mirror each other. In every other image, I witness many turned down mouths on a day designated to celebrate their conjugal communion.
The global illusion of a royal wedding as an image to keep people imprisoned in a reality that isn’t real. A betrayal of being bethrothed when the prince was involved with another woman and other questionable activities.
Just as I’m settling in to be transported to the UK and the beauty of Princess Diana, an orderly comes in to tell me I have a phone call. It was Granny B, my father’s mother, my only grandmother. The minute I hear her voice, I do not want to talk to her and hang up the phone. Not only did I not want to speak with her now, there was no way I want her visiting me here in the hospital. I didn’t know why particularly, just a visceral conviction I do not need her here.
Your refusal to see Granny B is woven with unfinished business of how she clung to you physically and psychically as well as not honoring your boundaries. I understand why you felt the necessity of setting a boundary at the hospital concerning who you want to be there or not.
You may not recall, your Granny had an emotional breakdown when Uncle Kenny died suddenly at sea while flying over Viet Nam. She couldn’t cope with her grief and the loss of her youngest son. Granny loved you even, if her love felt toxic and overwhelming to you.
It’s wise you didn’t see your grandmother at the this time. You needed time to find your way out of the hospital without her psychic hooks that she unconsciously used to have a bond of affection with you. Remember, she did her best to help you when you were a little girl. She was the one that made a shoe box lid into a lacing box for you to practice tying your shoes before kindergarten began. This was her way to show you she loved you.
The first time I meet the woman next door — who had nearly succeeded in taking her life — is when she brushes past me when I walk into the art room. When I sit down, before me on the table is an elaborate copper-hammered bald eagle with a wide wing span. The wings sculpted in precise detail magnetize my fingers to outline its perfection
“Wow!” I comment to the staff person. “Who did this?”
“The woman who just left,” he responds.
I reflect upon this amazing sculpture again after hearing she created it.
After the royal wedding concludes, Dr. Bob posts on the bulletin board an invitation to attend the morning group in the day room. I enter the room to the sound of chairs scooting across carpet and linoleum. It is a loose arrangement and I’m tempted to re-organize the chairs. I refrain by carefully placing my chair two chairs away from the doctor and almost directly across from the woman I had heard that first night next door. We haven’t formally met, nor do I know her name.
The psychiatrist mutters a few inaudible words then the woman opposite me throws her slipper shoe. It hits the doctor mid-chest. He quietly uncrosses his legs, brushes off his tie and white coat and stands saying, “If no one has anything to say, you can go to your next activity.”
Most women shuffle out immediately. I linger to see if he’ll address the woman who threw the shoe. That’s when I find out she’s been in here at least 5 times as well as suffered several electroshock treatments for her depression which she refuses to continue.
Mom finally visits me the next day. I’m resting on my bed when she walks in. She smiles and says hello. I nod and don’t say much. She asks why I didn’t want Granny coming to see me, hinting that Gran had a mental breakdown after Uncle Kenny died and I shrug my shoulders.
“Well, I’ll let you rest,” she replies to my shrug and leaves.
I don’t feel ready to face all the questions about my behavior that compelled Mother to drive all the way to Omaha to pick me up and admit me to this hospital psych floor.
As my Crone Self, I wish Mother and I could have had a way for me to convey how this seeming mental breakdown was actually a breakthrough and awakening for me to become more fully my authentic multi-dimensional self.
Your Crone Wisdom really shines the light in this piece in such a beautiful way. Thank you Grace for this brave and powerful share. 💜
Your voice and the truth in your heart rings from depths uncharted in this piece Grace. Thank you for sharing your story and bringing light to these long submerged memories…the silt floats away to show a riverbed of glorious powerful stones.