Trans Conversion Therapy

Could You Survive Being Punished In A Mental Institution?

Guilty until proven guilty

Do you think you know better? Have you got a perfectly rational explanation? Is that really going to save you?

In a sane world, it always would. But I didn’t grow up in a sane world.

I know better than anyone

When I was really young, I learned I’m the broken one.

When I told the truth, my parents used pain to clarify my understanding.

When I gave them what they wanted, they sent me to an institution.

When I gave those doctors what they wanted, they kept me there.

When I didn’t give them what they wanted…

You should have known better

Anyone at the institution accepted punishment when it was given and how it was given.

You didn’t talk back. You didn’t try to explain yourself. You definitely didn’t claim you hadn’t done anything.

I didn’t do anything

You would be punished worse if you said you didn’t do anything, if you tried to reason with them at all.

An inmate took their punishment. Cruelty, it turned out, was part of the point. Pain would purify us of our illness, or at least teach us that the pain of punishment would always be worse than if we’d just obeyed.

If you had a problem with it, you brought it up in your next therapy appointment, where the therapist would explain why your behavior was pathological, why the right and smart thing if you ever wanted to get out of here was to shut up and do what they said.

Two ways to be punished, one way to be condemned

I’ll tell you two ways we were punished in the institution.

Then I’ll tell you a third time when the staff went too far.

I guess anyone could endure and survive and maybe even thrive despite the first two ways we were punished. It’s the third one that could kill you.

The first way we were punished

We were all in our rooms, waiting for dinner or an invitation to anything besides waiting.

A staff member named Darryl called everyone to come to the recreation room.

The ward was a single hallway of rooms. On one end, the nurses station and the double doors that led to freedom and the other wards. On the other end, the rec room.

On the way to the rec room, I saw an empty snack bag in the hallway. We all saw it. But none of us had a moment to stop and pick it up. Darryl told us to come to the rec room now.

Darryl was the size of a truck and just as aggressive. If a patient got violent, the shuddering floor let them know Darryl was coming to take them down.

When he said to come, we listened.

When we arrived in the room, he told us we were all being sent to our rooms for being irresponsible little shits. Not a single one of us stopped to pick up that piece of trash. Didn’t we know better?

Eventually, we would learn the real lesson.

Last week, someone had stopped for the trash. He’d punished them for messing with someone else’s business. Picking up the trash kept the right person from taking responsibility.

Cruelty was what they taught. Every decision was a chance for pain to teach us something new.

They couldn’t have known the real lesson we’d discover underneath.

The second way we were punished

We were in the cafeteria.

Shaggy’s real name wasn’t Shaggy, but he looked like Shaggy. I looked more like Scrappy than Mr. Doo.

Shaggy struggled with anger and drugs, but he was otherwise nice. Or at least that’s what they told him to say about himself.

When a new guy named Josh came to the hall, Shaggy told him about me. “She’s like, perfect. She never gets in trouble. Not even a Park!”

A Park was easy. More embarrassing than humiliating. You were given a time out with your nose against the wall until the staff member told you it was okay to move again.

You might stay there a minute or an hour. However long it took you to convince the staff member you were back under control.

Everyone in the cafeteria that day was a little unruly. Boisterous, as kids tend to be. We were a large group of boys (and at least one trans girl) between 13–18 years old. What did they expect? Even perfectly normal, perfectly healthy kids live inside an embodied minefield.

Today, we had a good reason for joy.

Today, I was finally going home

I sat at the side and watched the kids play and tried to appreciate this would be the last time. It hurts to let go of anything. There’s grief even when it’s time to let it go.

In the middle of lunch, Darryl came on shift.

Everyone was too loud. We had to be controlled.

Then again, even if we’d been silent, too quiet was just as much a crime.

I swallowed and looked at the clock. He smiled and looked at me.

“You too,” he said. “Time for your first Park.”

The third way we got punished

Unlike me, it wasn’t the first time Patrick got in trouble. I wish he’d told me it would be his last.

He came into the institution with fire in his eyes. More than once, he used it to protect me from his friends.

But that fire had gotten him here and was going to keep him here. He’d tried to escape with a small group of other boys.

Our families and our doctors tortured us into submission just for doing what they wanted.

Now that Patrick had done more than rebel?

Now that he’d tried to break the chain?

The punishment would fit the crime.