Four Winds

When I was in tenth grade I had a really great time at a party that ended with my ex boyfriend and my mom dropping me off at a mental hospital. Do you feel that breeze? It’s me waving a red flag.

The day started like most other days, I went to school and left during second period to drive around and smoke weed. I guess I would say the main difference between all of the days leading up to this one and this particular day was that on this day, my friend stole a bottle of Xanax from the mom and pop pharmacy she worked at. I had never taken Xanax before and a better opportunity couldn’t have presented itself. I had just broken up with my first boyfriend and could use a little change of pace. “They’re footballs, not bars, so take two.” I had no idea what this meant at the time, but I took one little blue football in the car and one little blue football later on at Austin’s house party.

The week before I checked in at Four Winds I broke up with my high school boyfriend, Rodrigo. I can’t remember any of the details of the break up but what it meant was that I had to move out of his house. Rodrigo and his family were illegal immigrants from Brazil and also some of the kindest people I have ever met. They could see how toxic my living situation at home with my mother was and they let me live with them. Rod’s mom even dropped me off at school in the mornings so I could go to homeroom and then leave to smoke weed, that’s what a kind lady she was. So when Rod and I broke up I packed up my drug store make up and Air Jordan collection and moved back into my mom’s one bedroom apartment on the other side of town.

The first time I moved into my mom’s apartment was the springtime of my freshman year of high school. My mom had been back in my life since she sent me $100 for my 13th birthday and I was told that since I spent the money I had to write her a thank you letter. Soon after that she started coming around on weekends. When my friend John got killed on the tracks of my hometown’s subway stop I had a mental break and my mom suggested moving in with her. It seemed perfect. She was living in a one bedroom Section 8 apartment, but we’d gotten approved for a two bedroom and would be moving any day now! I moved in. We never moved. The apartment stayed half packed with boxes. My mom got pregnant and had a baby. I slept on a couch. My mom continued doing drugs, sleeping all day, and being wildly emotionally abusive to me, so I found a boyfriend to fill my void. Then I moved in with him. Now I was back. I hadn’t spent a night in this apartment for the better part of a year and it was really bumming me out. That’s why taking a bunch of free Xanax and going to a party seemed like a pretty great idea.

Austin lived down the block from our high school. He came from an abusive family as well and, like me, operated with little to no adult supervision during his formative years. So he had a lot of parties. He also drove a very cool wood paneled station wagon that I think about often. But I am digressing. Austin was known for throwing bangers and my mom hated him for that. I’m actually not quite sure how she knew anything about the comings and goings of my high school friends, but I suspect it’s linked to the fact that when I lived with her she would give me an Ambien and then keep me awake to ask me questions. It worked kind of like a truth serum. It happened a couple of times and always ended in me revealing stuff I would never have told her in the first place, then crying, then vomiting, then finally going to sleep and wondering if it was all a dream. It wasn’t. This was pretty low on the spectrum of abusive things my bi-polar drug addict mother has done to me.

I think I had spent one night at my mom’s place before the night of Austin’s party. Not only had I not spent a night there for a year before that, I also never checked in with my mom and she only called me when she needed something — usually money. So me staying out all night was pretty fucking normal. That’s also the main thing I remember from Austin’s party- staying out all night. I drank a 40 of bud light, smoked a blunt in the kitchen, and passed out on Austin’s couch almost immediately after I took that second Xanax. I woke up at 7am with dicks sharpied all over my face, checked my Nextel i730 (18 missed calls), and got the fuck out of there. I called my mom back once I hit the McDonalds on North Ave and threw some water on my face. She immediately started SCREAMING at me. I was pretty shocked considering that she had pretty much never given a fuck about me for my entire life. She was almost incomprehensible but I figured out that she knew I was at Austin’s house but didn’t know his last name or where he lived and that she’d called the cops to look for me. The fucking cops. I hung up on her but she kept calling back, asking where I was so the cops could come pick me up and take me home. This was pretty dramatic and I was kind of stuck between a rock and hard place so I chilled at the McDonalds until the cops came to scoop me. What a weird situation, looking back on it. Like why did the cops pick me up from McDonalds and bring me home? I remember the cop being pretty chill. He had a bit of a “kids will be kids” vibe. I appreciated that.

When I walked into my mom’s apartment there was an empty suitcase laying open on the living room (my bedroom) floor. My mom was completely calm as she explained that my behavior was unacceptable and I’d be going to Four Winds, an adolescent inpatient treatment center. I laughed in her face.

A thing to know about Rodrigo is that he was super into illegal street racing. He drove a Dodge Shadow that he painted with primer only so it was matte gray. It had red after market front seats and the whole floor of the car was just the metal frame, all of the carpet torn out. There were also no back seats so I sat on top of my suitcase the whole way to Four Winds. I’m not sure why my mother decided to ask Rodrigo to drive us to the 40 minutes from New Rochelle to Katonah, she had her own car. Maybe she was high. I had a weird, unsettling feeling that I still can’t describe all these years later. It was part embarrassment that my newly ex boyfriend had been called upon to drive us there, part anger at my mother, part hopefulness that a change would come from this and part hopelessness knowing that my mother would never change. As soon as we got to Four Winds I was heavily medicated against my will.

“We provide the highest quality, specialized inpatient and outpatient mental health treatment for a full range of psychiatric and substance abuse disorders for children, adolescents and adults. We provide treatment that is patient-centered and conducted in a caring, compassionate and safe environment that recognizes the dignity and strengths of each individual.”

What Four Winds actually provided were a ton of pills. I was given a very strong anti psychotic and a number of other pills. When I started having side effects like dry mouth, I was given pills for that too. Just a lot of pills. Eventually I got good at tonguing them and trading them to people who actually wanted or needed them. I was put on a ton of pills because I took a pill at a party and stayed out all night. The irony is not lost on me.

Four Winds was actually kind of tight, in the beginning at least. I think the staff mostly knew that I didn’t belong there, so I was afforded a few luxuries. My roommate, Ellen, was a wealthy Connecticut girl who was addicted to meth. Private rooms were reserved for girls with eating disorders, which I would acquire in time, don’t worry. Girls were in one wing, boys in the other. The common spaces were the kitchen and tv room, and of course all of the group therapy sessions and twelve step meetings. Each person’s treatment was a little different. Ellen and I had the most low key treatment plans because we both probably should have been in rehab and not a mental hospital. We had to go to two AA meetings a week and group therapy every other day. Other patients worked closely with social workers and had a much more regimented schedule. Ellen’s boyfriend would sneak on campus and they would make out in our bathroom. It was cute. I had a crush on a hesher from Schenectady, NY with schizoaffective disorder. We exchanged phone numbers but never called each other. If I remembered his name right now I wouldn’t even bother to look him up.

My days were mostly spent reading books and talking shit in the gazebo. I was allowed to make one phone call on Saturdays that could last ten minutes and I would push it every time. I would call a friend who would three-way call another friend and get the scoop on what was going on, tell them I missed them, that I was doing okay. Once a week we were allowed visitation. My mom made a big show of arriving with a ton of groceries that she’d conned a friend of hers into buying and driving up there for me. Her friend was creepy and bought me a bottle of grain alcohol in 9th grade then tried to make out with me. In college I got him to buy me an expensive camera. I never made out with him. I told him it was “awkward”. Anyway, they’d drive up and my mother would pretend to be mother of year. None of the other kids would have as many groceries as me. This was taken as a sign by patients and staff alike that I had a good mother who really cared for me. I gave away most of my food to the other patients in an effort to make them believe that this was an empty gesture from an abusive mother. I don’t think they cared, they just wanted to eat gushers.

My therapist at Four Winds was the only person who believed that my mom was toxic. She didn’t do anything about it. Every time my mother would make an attempt at being an actual mother there would always be at least one adult who would sniff her out. Like the time she put me on probation by filing a PINS petition against me for my truancy- Person In Need of Supervision. Uh, yeah, I did need supervision… from a parent. My probation officer, Mark Friedberg and his new wife tried to adopt me but nothing came of it. That’s another story for another day, though, I suppose.

At Four Winds nobody under the age of 18 was allowed to smoke, but the patients in the adjacent house were adults and would smoke in the garden every day. I was so jealous of them. We all were. Honestly, I don’t remember being as addicted to nicotine as much as I was just bored. During one of my mom’s over the top grocery deliveries she snuck me in a pack of Newports. Being the angel that I am I passed them out amongst the girls with instructions to place a rolled up towel in the crack of their bathroom door, run the shower on hot and smoke out the window. I thought I was a pro. Two hours after my mother dropped the cigarettes off I was caught. A staff member who is now in jail for sexual misconduct with a patient dug the half empty pack of Newports out of my hamper. I had to stay an extra week as punishment. Ellen got to go home. The 65 pound girl with the eating disorder even got to go home. I took over her private room for my last week and spent a lot of time watching the Britney Spears reality show Britney and Kevin: Chaotic on UPN.

When I finally got out of Four Winds I threw away all of the prescriptions they sent me home with and went back to living my life with absolutely no supervision. That night my friends threw me a welcome back party and I did MDMA because I was worried I’d be drug tested and heard that MDMA would be out of system in 3 days. I’m not even sure if that’s true or not. I had some fun though. Four Winds was kinda like a fucked up camp, a nice little reset. I lived with my mother for another year until tensions boiled over when she left the house for White Castle one night and arrived home the next morning with 6 parking tickets high as a kite. I asked what the deal was and she punched me in the face. I called Rodrigo and he picked me up in his primered Dodge Shadow and I spent a few years wandering until I carved out my own little slice of life in Brooklyn where most of my meals were the free pizza you got with a drink at The Charleston and I worked at Island Def Jam and started doing things that abused children do like fuck my mentor’s boyfriend because she said it was ok and become very embroiled with a boy from Staten Island who now makes wooden dolls.