Update from DelAlmo Stay

Well I it has been a while since I checked myself into Del Almo Mental Health Facility. Let me say it was one of the worst $10,000 I have spent in the last three years. Well, I really didn't pay them because as soon as I got out I put a stop payment on my check and have been fighting with their accounting department every since.

So, let me share my adventure at the mental institution. I flew down to Los Angeles from Salt Lake City onFriday May 2, 2008 and arrived in the late in the afternoon. The admission process took a couple of hours filling out paperwork, and receiving packets of materials about the hospital policies, the treatment program and having them inspect my personal belongings for contraband. The list of forbidden items was long. No razor, no hairbrush, no personal toiletries, nothing with strings like shoe laces, no cell phone, nothing that could be used to harm me or anyone else. It really brought reality home when they cut the strings off my sleeping shorts. I had brought my laptop, cell phone, wallet, checkbook, and some extra cash, which had to be inventoried and locked away. I know I was there on a voluntary basis, but it brought back memories of being locked up in Juvenile Detention when I was caught burglarizing Bradshaw Auto Parts the summer after I graduated from High School. It was very fortunate that I was only seventeen and ended up in Juvenile Court, unlike the kid I dragged along with me who had just turned eighteen and was thrown in a real jail.

Well, I finally got checked in and was taken to the Trauma Ward around seven o'clock. The cafeteria had already served dinner, so good thing I was not hungry. I was told during my intake interview that I would be staying on a different ward because I the Trauma Ward was only for the female patients. Bedtime was at nine o'clock, so I would be hanging out for a while.

The staff was a typical nursing staff, some very friendly and compassionate and some with that Nurse Cratchet demeanor more suited for a prison guard than a Trauma Unit. I had quickly learned when googling for mental health facilities that treated issues surrounding sexual abuse that sexual abuse, physical abuse and the like was grouped under Trauma. A good tidbit of information that could have saved me a few hours on the internet. Trauma, the end result of any traumatic event really, and I was to learn just how diverse these events could be when I met the other patients. When I arrived in the unit, several of the girls (really women, but I feel more comfortable relating to kids so I will stick with girls, no offense intended) were just finishing up on some pizza they had ordered. I soon learned that the food in the cafeteria was not even up to coffee shop standards. I was a nervous wreck but soon fell into one of my your child alters when the girls started making a fuss about me getting something to eat and clearing me a place to sit down with them and insisting I share their pizza.

Growing up, really most of my alters are still just little kids, in Salt Lake City in the 1960's and 70's I our family was one of two in the neighborhood that was not Latter Day Saint (mormon). I would not say it was the same as growing up as a racial minority, but in ways it was similar. Most kids were not allowed to play or socialize with us, even to the point of not being allowed to walk on the side walk in front of our house. To make it even worse, we were CATHOLIC, which was in LDS dogma the church of Satan. Now not every family was as 'temple worthy' as the next, and it is hard to keep kids from playing with other kids so I was able to have some interaction with kids sometimes. The fact was most of the kids who lived in my zone (within the cul de sac and 2-3 houses on each side) were girls, so my playmates from the age of 2-7 were 99% girls. I was sorta the token Ken to all their Barbies, literally, as I played with the Ken dolls as they played with their Barbies. It was also common to play house, which , surprise surprise I was the Husband. It was all mostly innocent, with only a few jealous fits when it was time to share the Husband. As we all became closer to seven, the girls parents were getting uncomfortable with this heathen boy playing dolls and house with their daughters. As I recall, some of the girls did start to want to kiss (pecks) and hold hands, which for me was odd, but really not sexual.

The sexual part had started when I was around four years old. There was one boy a year older than me who lived in the cul de sac, and would come and ask me to help him in the garage when i was playing with the girls. He was the older brother of one of the girls my age and their family was the most 'temple worthy' of the bunch, so they commanded a level of respect among the other mormon kids. Well, I didn't have any other contact with boys outside my household, I was eager to join him. Bart was a real character. He was infamous for riding around on his bike screaching like a police siren. He had them all down, the Sheriff, the Fire Engine, the Ambulance, Adam 12, Emergency, Dragnet, loud and obnoxious. I remember my parents and siblings making derogatory comments whenever he started making his racket. Well, Bart wanted to be a doctor when he grew up and would ask me to help him practice by being his patient. He would have a place set up where he would have me lay down and he would start giving me an exam, removing my shirt, feeling my heart, then he would undo my belt and unbutton my pants to feel my stomach, working his way down to my tallywacker. It was not odd to have someone undress me and touch me all over because my brother had started to do that to me around the same time and the next door neighbor had been asking me to pull on his tallywacker as well. The neighbor had a much larger tallywacker with hair all over it and a big sack under it with what felt like marbles. He would always lay out behind his garage without his clothes on and when i would look over our fence he would wave me to come over and then ask me to rub lotion on him. I was not aware of the reason, but he would ask me to keep doing it until lotion would squirt out the end of his tallywacker. At first he would give me a candybar or popsicle or money to get me one from the ice cream truck. Soon I was playing this way with four or five kids from the neighborhood plus the nextdoor neighbor and my older brother. Always alone and always told to not tell anyone. I had finally found out how to make friends with the boys, not all the boys, and none of the seven kids that were my age.