Documenting my journey through the mental health system

My house is really coming together. The restored hardwood looks amazing. It even smells good. He still has to add transitions – built in wood “lips” at the transitions from the hall to the bathroom and the hall to the kitchen. Then I’ll be adding the trim – that I already have because I bought it with the laminate. My coworker is going to install my new ceiling fan light fixture – a Tiffany. Then my room is done.

Next up is restoring my bathroom floor and its grout. Then later this month I get my new window built and new back door. After that I’m going to hire those wood guys again to restore my living room hardwood. It’s beautiful but neglected.

Yesterday I borrowed a trailer and loaded up most of my carport junk. My mother got huffy at one point as my brother and I cleared everything out – old paint cans, impressive stacks of cardboard, old tiles, just general garbage. I attempted to toss an old table piece – doesn’t even have legs. And she freaked out because she’s a hoarder. “Fine, just throw all my shit away!” And walked off. “You said it yourself – it ain’t my shit!” I shot back. The table, as it happens, is not even hers. It’s mine, and I threw it away. Why do hoarders insist on saving garbage? I could see and understand if items in question were of value, of use, but garbage?

I met my brother’s PO after all that. They call themselves CCOs – community corrections officers – and dress up in little cop clown outfits. Bullet proof vests, guns and tasers and handcuffs and everything else a cop gun belt has on it. Then jeans and sneakers. They genuinely looked ridiculous. It’s clearly an intimidation tactic.

George’s “CCO” is comically young. Maybe 25, and that’s being generous. He’s extremely straight and narrow, and dammit, everyone else has to be like him too. A good boy. My brother spent last weekend in jail for something from three months ago, and for the entirety of his probation, has been fully convinced his CCO wants him to fail. So George insisted I meet him, since I was wearing my DEMPS jacket and looked pretty badass. We had to wait almost two hours for a 1pm appoint and at 3pm the boy in the clown suit came out and said didn’t you get my text? It had been sent an hour and 15 minutes after his appointment time. To cancel.

So that’s a little taste of what these people go through, and this is mental health court. I don’t think his CCO is a good fit for mental health court. He is too young and sees things too rigidly. He is also blatantly disrespectful of time.

But these people don’t have jobs. Department of Corrections is their job. George got a night job at a gas station because there’s no time for him to work in the day. He spends every day in IOP like I did, and IOP for substance abuse. He’s enrolled in mental health care, something increasingly difficult to access, and he actually wants to keep seeing his counselor when he’s done with probation because he knows if he loses her, the chances of getting back in are quite low without starting all over – eval, etc. What his CCO doesn’t seem to see is George doesn’t have his old social life of junkies. That was years ago. George works, and lives on his own. He has a really supportive, mostly sober family. His CCO is used to people who come from very broken families, jobless, cracked out, indigent, and many of them incapable of working even if they didn’t have DOC obligations every fucking day. It’s just poor people on parade through the American for-profit penal system. And to be clear, it is a for-profit penal system. There is no justice system.

So George is busy. I remember when I balanced IOP with work, and I wasn’t court ordered this last time, like the time before. I give him rides a lot because the bus takes so long. He walks a lot. After he’s off at 8am, he goes straight to IOP just as I was doing. After a few hours of that he has to call a number to find out if he’s drug tested that day. Usually he is. Then he either has to see is CCO (at least once a week) or he can finally go home. He gets a few hours of sleep, then has to get up around three hours before work so he can make it by the bus on time. And we can only thank a god we don’t believe in that he has a great boss – he didn’t lose his job over the weekend in jail and in fact they have accommodated his need for Wednesday and Thursday off. Wednesday he has court, and it is often “continued.” The next time he’s due in court is May 21 and I have to remember that because I have to get him there!

I am not completely convinced his CCO wants him to fail. George made some dumb mistakes of his own free will, and has a hard time being honest. He only has three more months of this probation. He hates raw dogging reality sober besides his meds but he doesn’t see how good that is for him right now. And I worry when he’s released from this tight leash, will he completely fall off the wagon? Will he become a belligerent drunk again? Will he go crazy with RCs off the internet and get fucked up and go into a house that is not mine while thinking it is and assault someone? Because that’s how he got into this mess – those research chemicals. He went into someone’s house thinking it was mine, begged the owners there to tell him where his mom was, they hit him in the head, and he went to jail. Here we are nearly two years later, and he still can’t shut up about the research chemicals he wants to “study.” He even acquired a DMT pen off the internet. And the courts still see him as an addict.

I don’t know. It’s not my battle, I can only help where I can. And hope he’ll learn something. He does want to continue therapy which is a good thing. Not enough men seek therapy when they really should.