A few years ago I discovered a way to go crazy. I don’t mean that I found a way to get really excited, I mean that I found a way to meditate on a version of reality I preferred and make it stick for a while. Whatever I made up become the truth and it was good.
Creating your own version of the universe is amazingly comforting. It’s a huge relief to “discover” that everything is as you imagine it to be.
I’m not ready to tell about the universe I created, but I can tell you about the end of the last one.
This last universe ended in April, 2008, after I was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
I sent a nice email to the Vice President of the United States’ office telling him where I was.
I called the Secret Service telling them my full name, my place and date of birth, and that I had sent my address to the VP.
The next night, some cops came to my motel room door. They spoke with me for 20 minutes or so and then asked me to come visit with a doctor (it wasn’t really a choice I could opt out of, but they were nice about it).
When they walked me out of the room, I saw no fewer than six police cars in addition to the one which drove me to the hospital.
I asked who had called the cops and they said they don’t know where these sorts of orders come from.
This was my seventh trip to the hospital in the previous four years. This was the first time they let me sit in the car while someone else went in and completed the paperwork. I thought it was a very nice gesture, because it’s pretty uncomfortable sitting in that little chair in the intake room.
When I got into the admitting area of the hospital, the nurse and techs behind the desk had my website up on their screens. They had printed it out and it was 17 pages long.
I told them that I completed the site in three hours, but it was more like three days. It was full of really cool little poems and little passages to get people to think about things.
One of them went something like this:
I regret to inform you that the sun has just exploded.
In a few minutes, you will experience a blinding light.
40 minutes later the Earth will be destroyed.
Take time now to tell her you love her.
I like that one.
Anyway, after about six days in the hospital I decided I wanted to go update my blog, so I planned my escape.
That afternoon we were invited to go outside to a little secure courtyard.
The gate to the courtyard leads out of a covered patio.
The courtyard is surrounded by high fences on two sides with the other two sides being the hospital building.
The tech left the gate from the patio open. The gate was a wood gate like for a privacy fence with slats that would normally be on the inside of the patio.
I climbed up the gate and onto the roof.
As I ran across the roof, I heard the tech yelling my name.
Then I saw some other techs who were arriving for the afternoon shift yelling from the front parking lot, “Joseph! Joseph! No!!”
I jumped off the two story roof. The ground had been soaked from some flooding one night before I arrived (I felt somewhat responsible for the flooding and sometime in the future I might tell that story). So, when I hit the ground, my feet made indentions about six inches deep. No pain!
I ran diagonally across the grounds and into a neighborhood behind the hospital.
I was wearing green scrubs and socks. No shoes.
I walked around the neighborhood.
One time I saw a police car and hid behind a tree.
I kept walking around then asked a lady if I could borrow her phone. I used it to call a friend, who didn’t come to pick me up. (He later said he wasn’t going to come pick up a fugative from mental justice and I don’t blame him.)
I talked to another lady about buying her house. It was for sale, of course. I took a brochure with me.
Eventually, a guy came out and asked if I needed some help.
I told a lie. I said my girlfriend and I worked in a doctors office just down the way and while driving home after a shift we got into a fight and she kicked me out of her car. I forgot to put my shoes back on.
He gave me a ride 10 miles or so out to the cemetery (I thought) my family owned in Broken Arrow.
It turns out they had sold it and didn’t bother telling me.
My grandmother rarely told me anything. I used to work there and still somehow the times and dates of events like Christmas celebrations were never disclosed to me. She always said, “I thought you knew.” Just her style. I don’t take it personally.
Anyway, I let myself in through the back door and went upstairs to the office, not knowing my family didn’t own the place.
I went up to someone I had never met, wearing scrubs and no shoes, introduced myself, and asked if she would log me into the computer so I could use the Internet.
She did it.
I updated my MySpace blog with a little story staying that I had escaped from the mental institution and was at large.
Then I called the Secret Service. It was a weekend, so the local office was closed and I was referred by an automated attendant to try the regional field office in Dallas.
So, I called the Secret Service in Dallas and spoke to the agent on duty. He listed to me for a moment and then suggested that perhaps my problems do not rise to the standard required to expend taxpayer dollars.
That snapped me out of that little trip.
Sorry Secret Service!!! Sorry taxpayers!!!
So then I called my aunt’s cellphone and left as voicemail saying that I had escaped.
In a few moments, I heard my name over the paging system.
“Joe Winett, dial 101. Joe Winett, 101.”
I dialed 101 to find my aunt on there. She said she and grandma were downstairs at a funeral and that I should come down to one of the family service rooms.
The family service rooms are little comfortable rooms where families who have just lost someone can plan the funeral.
So, I went down and into a room. My aunt and grandma made small talk with me for a little while. Grandma told me they had sold the cemetery. “I thought you knew.”
When the conversation was over, they led the way out of the room.
Hiding against the wall in the hallway were four Broken Arrow cops.
They put the cuffs on me right there.
This irritated me. I was angry that my family called the cops on me. (I don’t blame them now, but I was angry then.)
So, I decided to embarrass them and I wailed all sorts of crazy statements on my way out.
I yelled, “Nooooo!!!” a lot.
I did this on purpose and it was meant to harm.
This is one of the things in my life of which I am most ashamed. For right or wrong, that family has tried to maintain a certain image of stability and public service and community involvement and stability and stability…. and all their friends were there for that funeral and I verbally spewed craziness all over everyone.
I have forgiven myself (I’m good at that, it’s a gift), but I have yet to make amends to the family.
To this day, two of my aunts who are on Facebook will not respond to my friend requests. I have several cousins who also will not.
It’s sad, but it’s my doing.
On with the story!!
The cops turned out to be Broken Arrow’s mental health cops. Fine people.
They drove me back to the hospital.
The hospital let me back into the ward, but revoked my priviledges to go outside.
When I spoke to the doctor the next day and told him what happened, he was reluctant to believe me. The written report on the incident said that I had gotten up on the roof, jumped down, and was captured. The techs on duty documented that I was gone for less than five minutes.
In reality, I was gone for more than three hours.
The doctor asked me to have my aunt call to verify my story. She did.
I must say that when I called my aunt she was VERY nice to me. I really appreciate that she didn’t take that time to call me a little shit for how I behaved upon my capture.
In two more days I had a meeting with my treatment team — the doctor, a nurse, and a discharge specialist.
They did a little evaluation of me and decided that I was okay to leave.
The doctor gave me a little piece of advice:
There are second chances. Sometimes there are third chances. But, there are no fifth and sixth chances.
That was my last visit to the hospital, forever.
I’m done playing god in my own realities.
So, I’m here to alter yours. 🙂
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