Word: wente
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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After half an hour guys started coming back on the ward again, and then disappeared into their rooms. I was still alone. So after a while I went into the room that Mrs. Snowden said was mine. It was just like the other nine tiny singles of our ward: bed, chair, dresser, mirror...
...going loud and strong. It always went loud and strong. Television is an immensely important fact for mental hospitals. It provides an automatic something-to-do. If I'm just wandering around the ward or coming back from supper or from the bathroom, I'll have to pass the TV and since it provides constant change and because it's something that is acceptable to sit in front of while doing nothing it is tremendously attractive. You can almost fool yourself into thinking that you're watching TV. But really watching implies participation which means activity. And activity, as opposed...
AFTER LUNCH I went outside. With the use of tranquilizers many wards have been unlocked and the patients are free to leave during the day. Hardly any do. I walked over the grounds and brooded over my patienthood. Already the enormous dull routine of back ward life was getting to me. Already I was beginning to feel dead. And lonely, terribly lonely...
After a time I couldn't take the huge empty loncliness of the hospital grounds so I went back into O-Building and stood in the corner of the canteen. To the left was the stairway up to O-2 and next to it was the entrance to O-1, a women's ward. Two women patients with gray hair ran the canteen. There was always a buzz of activity around the counter where coffee and cigarettes and doughnuts and candy were sold. It wasn't especially living activity, but it was activity just the same. Patients from other wards...
...wanted very much for one of these volunteers to talk to me but they wouldn't; they all went straight for the one patient they knew, the one they felt comfortable with. I hated these volunteers...