Free Voluntary Madness: My Year Lost and Found in the Loony Bin by Norah Vincent Page B

believed she didn’t belong here because she had too much class.
    She didn’t mean to insult anyone. She was a nice girl. But underneath, she thought she was better than the rest of us, and her bearing betrayed her. Or, I should say, them, not us, because she had sought me out as a refuge. She appeared in the doorway of my room and said, “Can I talk to you for a second?” She had quickly concluded not only that I wasn’t loopy beyond recall, but that I was another college-educated, middle-class person whom she thought was on her level. And that was the vaguely prissy vibe she gave off. Of course, I’m sure I gave off more than a whiff of that myself. I know I had done so under the jaundiced watch of Baldy my first time around the maypole.
    You can’t hide what you are, or what you think you are, and crazy people don’t have a filter, so despite the fact that you’re standing there semi-petrified, with your hands in your sweatshirt pocket, the sweatshirt that, to add insult to injury, has the name of your college emblazoned on it in purple, you’ll come across as the snooty brat that you are, and are secretly proud of being, and the likes of Deborah will sense that a mile away and a mile deep, and will say outright the things that normal people are just thinking. Let me break that long, white cultivated neck for you, princess, and then we’ll see whether you don’t feel that you belong here in the pig pile with us grunts, after all.
    So Casey showed up in my doorway, having ferreted out a fellow princess, and asked if we could talk. I invited her in, against the rules. I invited her in, as I had done with no one else, because I was secretly, snobbishly as sure of her as she was of me. I knew she was safe, and unlikely to spit up, or freak out, or ask me for more than I was willing to give. And we conversed without fear, with the comfy cordon sanitaire of our shared superiority drawn perfectly around us, while Ellen in her chair and Sweet Girl in her shroud talked and burped to themselves on either side of us, lost in their own shifting worlds.
    Casey told me how she’d gotten there, and asked me how the hell to get out.
    “Here’s the thing,” I said. “You gotta stay calm or you’ll only make it worse. Be polite. Be cooperative. Palm your medication. Keep to yourself. And call legal services. Call your parents, and tell them to call your therapist and put the fear of God into her. Whatever you do, don’t lose your temper and don’t be disrespectful. You’re dealing with egos here, and you don’t want your doctor knowing you think she’s a quack or she’ll pull the power trip on you and draw out this whole horror show a lot longer. Believe me, I know what you’re going through. I’ve been there.”
    Ellen, as if on cue, and for contrast, stood up on the other side of the room. She was having a bit of trouble. The devil in her stomach was on the rise. She was standing in front of her chair and stroking her throat, saying:
    “I need to vomit, but it won’t come up.”
    “Should I get the nurse?” I asked.
    Ellen nodded.
    One of them was passing in the hall, so I called to her. “Listen, Ellen is having trouble, can you help?”
    She poked her head in.
    “I need to vomit,” Ellen said again.
    “Okay,” said the nurse. “So go into the bathroom.”
    “It won’t come up,” said Ellen.
    The nurse looked at her quizzically, said something unmemorable and noncommittal, something like, “Just give it a minute,” and then walked away.
    Ellen stood in the doorway helplessly, still stroking her throat, looking down the hall after the nurse. After a moment, she walked into the bathroom and closed the door.
    Casey and I turned back to our conversation.
    “God. This place,” she said.
    “So what do you do for a living?” I said.
    She was a grade school teacher in the city in her second year at a tough school. Lots of behavioral problems. Lots of parental neglect. The usual.
    “Well, there’s