Summer 1991, Ohio

By Laura Yeager

I’ll admit it. I’ve been to the psych ward.

The scariest part about the psych ward was that the doors didn’t lock. You’re trapped in with dozens of crazies, and there’s no place to hide. At night, I found myself having trouble falling asleep because I knew my door was wide open. Anyone could have wandered in and woke me up, or worse….

I was particularly afraid of this one guy who was supposedly a drug dealer. It had been rumored that he’d made a bad deal and had been tortured for it with a hot coat hanger. He’d been tortured all right. He scared me. He liked to stare at me.

But most of the people in there was just pathetic. There was one girl who wouldn’t stop giggling. A guy who was always crying.

I can’t believe I made it out.

But what’s even more shocking is the way I got out.

My psychiatrist believed that if a woman was wearing make-up she was psychologically fit.

One day, I was minding my own business, avoiding the smokers who stood together around the picnic table. I had just had a rousing walk around the fenced-in compound, and a fellow inmate told me, “Be sure to put on your make-up. It’s the only way Dr. Sanders will let you out of here.”

“No,” I said.

“Yes. He feels that if a woman has the wherewithal to apply her make-up, she must be sane.”

“But I can think of many sane women who don’t wear make-up.” I made a mental list of these women: my economics professor from Oberlin, the woman who took my money at my favorite gas station, my next door neighbor, the librarian at the Stow Public Library….

“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “That’s his litmus test.”

Dr. Sanders seemed much crazier than I.

By the way, I didn’t like Dr. Sanders. He didn’t want to hear what happened to me in New York. I was ready to tell him in detail about how I went crazy, but he wanted to focus on the lithium and how it would help me. He was looking forward, and I wanted to look backward. But apparently, if I just wore makeup, he’d leave me alone.

I applied a fresh coat. I wanted out.

I had been admitted because New York City drove me crazy. I was vacationing in the city, when I began to think I was being followed. I thought I could read minds. I thought God was a pigeon. I thought I saw my reincarnated father in the form of a teenage boy. I thought I was a Holocaust survivor. To put it bluntly, I went crazy, and I blame it on bipolar New York. The lights, the sounds, the people, the smells. One summer in 1991, it was all too much for a girl from Ohio.

It was hard to see in the metal mirror, which was warped and scratched. No glass was allowed on the psych ward. I squinted at my face. I applied foundation, Clinique Balanced Make-up, Porcelain Beige. Blush - Max Factor with the label torn off. Some generic purple eye make-up. Lipstick, Clinique Angel Red.

My eyes couldn’t focus due to the psychotropic drugs; I’d gained 10 pounds from the confinement and the abundance of starchy, hospital food; I was wearing sweat pants, but I’d applied my make-up.

Now, please would you let me out of here?

I felt sorry for the schizophrenic woman next to me. Her hands were shaking from even stronger drugs. She wanted out so that she could take care of her two small children. We all wanted out. And I know she couldn’t see her face. She drew two clown circles in bright pink on her cheeks. They looked ridiculous. Surely one not only had to apply make-up; one had to apply it skillfully.

It showed me how little we knew about insanity.

My face looked better than hers. I was lucky. I was only bipolar.

In two days, I was out of the psych ward.

I never go anywhere without makeup.

Laura Yeager lives in Ohio and writes about bipolar illness and other things. She’s currently seeking an agent for her collection of fiction and nonfiction about bipolar illness. This story first appeared on Orato.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Thursday, May 3rd, 2007 | Email This Post

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