Ugg Boots in the Psych Ward

A true story from my psych ward stay—featuring a royal meltdown, a Jesuit takedown, and a Match.com first date during visiting hours.

No one told me where I was going.

After my suicide attempt, I spent some time in the ICU, machines doing what my body couldn’t, nurses whispering like death might overhear them.

Then they moved me.

Somewhere for “observation.”
Somewhere “safe.”
(You know. The kind of place they send you when they’re not sure what to do with you but you’re too alive to keep taking up an ICU bed.)

It was a mental health facility in New Orleans. Not the kind with wellness programs and softly spoken therapists.

This place was for people with nowhere else to go.

Prison inmates on psych hold.
Homeless patients stuck in the system.

I didn’t know the name. Didn’t ask. Didn’t care.
The fact that I was still alive felt like a clerical error. I was pissed.

When I say this place was bleak, I don’t mean sad.
I mean institutionalized survival.
Fluorescent lights that never turned off.
Furniture bolted to the floor like they were expecting violence.
Screaming. Rocking. Silence. Repeat.

The kind of place that doesn’t expect you to leave with a treatment plan—just alive.

And then there was me.
In Ugg boots and salon highlights.
Looking like I wandered in from a mid-tier suburb with a venti latte and a therapy co-pay.

I stuck out immediately. Not because I was better, but because I was different.
And the staff treated me accordingly.

The nurses were cold. Dismissive. Sometimes flat-out rude.
I’d ask a question and get the look people give you when your smoothie order is way too complicated.
At the time, I didn’t understand it.
Later, I would.

The Queen of the Elevator

Every day around lunch, this woman who looked like she ran a Fortune 500 company and probably gave TED Talks on leadership would suddenly become someone else entirely.

The Queen.

She wasn’t just delusional. She was fully committed.
One moment, she’s asking about pudding cups. The next, she’s screaming in a full Scottish accent:

“I CAN SUCK YOUR DICK BETTER THAN THAT WENCH!!”

Direct quote. Full projection.
We were all just trying to survive the mashed potatoes, and she was in the middle of a medieval infidelity trial.

One time she went full rage-monologue in the elevator while we were all packed in like medicated clowns in a psych ward Volkswagen. She started screaming at her royal husband. About betrayal. About justice. About treason.

The nurse doing headcount didn’t even flinch.
Just held up the clipboard like, “Yep, still got 12.”

The Match.com Bachelor

The only public phone was mounted directly outside my room.
And every afternoon, this well-groomed, late-40s, suit-with-no-tie type would park himself there and call the same woman.

At first, I thought it was his wife.
Then I started hearing the questions.

“What’s your favorite movie?”
“Are you a beach person or a mountains person?”
“Do you like dogs?”

That’s when it hit me:
He was on Match.com. FROM THE MENTAL HOSPITAL.

And he was killing it.
Telling her about his favorite band (The Eagles), his favorite food (steak), his deepest passions (also steak).

By Day 4, he asked if she wanted to come visit during visiting hours.

And I swear to God, for the first time since being admitted, I did not want to leave.
I needed to see how this played out.
Did she know where he was?
Did he tell her it was a hospital?
Did she show up?

Spoiler alert: That was the day I got discharged.

Ten years later, I still think about her.
Was it love?
We’ll never know.

The Jesuit Conspiracy Theorist

Then there was the woman who sat across from me at lunch like clockwork.

No matter where I sat, she’d find me.
Tray in hand. Dead serious expression.
Like we had a standing lunch date in the seventh circle of hell.

And every day, without fail, she’d launch into her monologue:

The Jesuits are trying to destroy the human race.

Not a theory. Not a maybe.
A fact, according to her.
Backed by “classified documents” and “what the Vatican doesn’t want you to know.”

She wasn’t shouting. She was calm. Deliberate.
Like she was briefing me before a covert mission.

I’d be trying to butter a slice of beige drywall, and she’d be staring straight into my soul whispering,
“They’re embedded in government, you know. In education. In food service.”

I didn’t even ask for clarification.
I was afraid she’d name-drop someone from the kitchen staff.

She’d end every lunch with a firm nod and a quiet:
“Watch your back.”

Honestly? Iconic.

Because when you’re in a place where the therapy worksheets are printed in Comic Sans,
a little lunch-table espionage was kind of… refreshing.

The Shift

By Day 4, I couldn’t take it anymore.
I wasn’t crying or unraveling or causing a scene.
I was just… gone.
Displaced. From my world. From my people. From myself.

Everything around me felt so far from the life I knew that my brain just tapped out and said:
“Nope. Not processing this.”

So I did what any emotionally unwell but semi-creative person would do:
I dissociated into Diane Sawyer.

I told myself I wasn’t really admitted here—I was embedded.
Doing a story. Observing. Investigating the emotional climate.

It was the only way I could tolerate the place.
And honestly? It worked.

Once I took on that imaginary lens, I started really seeing the people around me.

And what I saw… changed everything.

They weren’t just sick.
They were trapped.

Not always physically—but mentally. Financially. Systemically.
Some had no homes to return to.
Some had no one checking in.
Some didn’t even know what day it was.

And I realized:
I get to leave. They don’t.

On My Way Out

The day I left, I finally asked one of the nurses why they’d been so cold to me.

She didn’t even pause.

“Because you don’t belong here,” she said.
“You have a way out. They don’t.”

And that was it.

I didn’t walk out healed.
I didn’t walk out grateful.
I walked out aware.

I had resources.
I had people.
I had the privilege of starting over.

And I took it.

And I never looked back.