The residents ranged in age from eighteen to seventy-three, with histories of multiple hospitalizations and, I think it’s fair to say, a basic difficulty in adjusting to the world. Some of us were motley, mouths drooling from excessive medication. Others had difficulty keeping quiet during the voluntary group meetings that were part of the resident and recovery enrichment program, which included horticulture, art, music, and discussions of current events. I learned rapidly that non sequiturs, psychotic rambling, and inspired verbal expositions were a madly popular form of communication around the building. 

Random, paranoid comments whipped through the air about venomous snipers on rooftops stalking the chosen or tele-pathic, or female police officers with teeth in their vaginas are waiting to castrate clients. Stolen thoughts and hurtling ESP pronouncements ricocheted around the smoking courtyard, during some meals, and during late-night television viewing. Satanic spirits and religious riffs on everything related and unrelated. It wasn’t an unusual request for one resident to ask another to please stop coveting his thoughts. 

PFTL took me in on a clammy March morning in 1997, after I’d spent years bouncing around mental health facilities throughout the country. Eventually, I was diagnosed with bipolar II disorder—commonly known as manic depression—with hypomania, an avoidant personality, and an anxiety disorder. I’d also developed a brutal obsession with self-harm over that time, repeatedly slashing myself with razors. After seven years, I began burning myself with cigars and cigarettes. Earlier in my career, I went AWOL from a Hartford mental hospital, got my head shaved, picked up several packages of straight-edged blades and began slicing.