The first time I saw them was between Amsterdam and the Walgreens pharmacy along Martin Luther and the other time on 125th by WINGSTOP. They look so out of place and I’m curious but don’t want to get into it. Scientologists? Catholics? They’ll come right up next to you and try to talk even if you don’t make eye contact and have headphones in.
I was put in the mental hospital for 24 days. I won’t go into how awful it was, so I’ll just say it left me with two things: PTSD and back pain. All I had for a bed was a block of heavy thick plastic around the size of a twin bed. They gave us an inch high (no exaggeration) piece of foam to set on the plastic block as the “mattress”. After the second week I started to have pain in my back whenever I stood for too long. It got really bad. They had phones you can use once a day for 30 minutes, but you had to stand because the cord didn’t reach down far enough so you could sit on the floor so after two weeks I could only talk to my friend or parent for a few minutes before it got too painful to stand. When I finally got on the right meds and left the hospital, the pain never went away. Even when sitting it was bad, like I would just start crying. I randomly went to get a massage and it completely stopped the sitting pain, but standing for maybe over 10 minutes bring out that dull ache in my back muscles making it almost impossible to stand. It’s been almost 3 years since that hospitalization and I still have the pain. I try not to think about it because I get into a “why me” mindset and that’s just not productive.