In 2020, I wrote a short book called the Woman in the Basement. I meant to microdose, but I misdosed. Laying in bed, I closed my eyes and dreamt a new dream. I would be a writer. A poet. I would tell my PMDD story to advocate for myself and others, and I would do it in style and with confidence. My job is to speak openly about my experiences in hopes of positive change. Returning to my roots five years later, I remember that I am here to be a writer. A poet.
Chapter 1
Learning to use my words
*Individual names have been changed
The charge nurse must have overheard me asking about the police report. “Forget about domestic violence because you’ve been deemed mentally ill”, she said to me from across the room. Her physical stance was strong. A short, stocky, middle-aged woman with blondish hair tied up neatly in a bun, she commanded and controlled the entire room effortlessly, and from a single vantage point. The full staff was at her ready and I was already cornered on all sides. Standing tall in my burgundy scrubs, my eyes locked into hers as I tried to process a linguistic dissection of her words. I paused. Dr. Smith didn’t teach me because. I only knew but, and, that, it, them, they, can and will.
The closest word to because that I could come up with was and. I ran her statement through my processing loop with the updated syntax: “Forget about domestic violence and you’ve been deemed mentally ill.” There were still too many errors for me to run the statement effectively. Deemed implied authority and she had none over me, at least not in the mental and psychological realms that we were dancing in. I couldn’t forget about domestic violence because I needed to report it. Reporting is why I was there.
“You changed the context of why I’m here” I shouted at her. Leaning on Toltec wisdom I had picked up from the book, The Four Agreements, I moved to the center of the room and screamed: “I am not in agreement to being here, and I am not in agreement with what you say to me!” I was sovereign. Feeling like a caged wild animal, I was in the in between. Free, but detained. Undomesticated, yet captive. Every cell inside of me was on fire; rage was boiling my body from the inside out, but I was impeccable with my word and I was doing my best. Moments later, I overheard a male voice ask the charge nurse: “Why? Did she swing on you?”. Physical violence had never been my flavor of fight. I was the verbal venom type. As the female staff surrounded me on all sides and forcibly moved me to my room, a male nurse locked eyes with me. He stayed with me, at eye level, holding my gaze, as the staff inserted the syringe into my arm.
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PROGRESS NOTE
March 10, 2025 | 21:55 | Cassandra M. Litille, RN
PRN Ativan, Haldol, Benadryl administered in right deltoid.
Veteran is now sleeping without difficulty./es/ C. Litille
REGISTERED NURSE—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
While the charge nurse and her cronies were my immediate threat, they were not accountable for me being there. The 48-hr hold was ordered from the urgent care providers earlier in the day, and I had been transferred to the in-patient psych unit by a nurse’s aide and two police officers. An on-call psychologist in the urgent care had told me straight up: “You’re a processor and a completer, I can tell. Be careful because other people will try to give you their shit.” Her words of wisdom played out in my mind as I thought about what may have happened to the social worker who asked me: “Oh, so you were attacked?” She was fidgety. Anxious. I told her no in a confused manner and asked if she could help me file a police report. “I can file a report with the state” she said to me. Dr. Smith taught me can. Catching the discrepancy, I responded with “Will you file a report with the state?”. She doubled down. “I can file a report with the state.”
Previously connecting with the nurse in the room, she was sharing a bit of her personal experience with domestic violence. She was a reporter. Holding my stream of consciousness as if she had processed her own experiences, she was able to delineate between my consciousness and her own. The vibe shifted palpably as the social worker walked in. A tall and slender woman with bright baby blue eyes, she presented as unengaged and disconnected, both from me, and from herself. As she started speaking I was drawn to her facial expressions and said pointedly: “Your face doesn’t match your words.” Unsure of what I was observing, and why I said that to her, my words flowed smoothly and uninhibited as if they were released from somewhere deeper.
Exhausted and overwhelmed, my mask was slipping and it felt nice to be direct. “I think there’s something else going on with you”, she said to me as she turned to the nurse for approval. When the nurse looked down at the ground, I realized the trouble I was in.
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PROGRESS NOTE
March 10, 2025 | 09:27 | Tory C. Davids, LCSW
LCSW diagnosed Mania, based on the lack of sleep, racing thoughts, labile emotions, and high degree of agitation. Veteran would be served to have an assessment for Bi-Polar Disorder Type One. Veteran has a history of cannabis use.
/es/ T. Davids
SOCIAL WORKER—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Her facial expressions were telling. The left corner of her mouth raised as she spoke words of fake compassion and her head turn to the nurse demonstrated deflection of accountability. The scene played out in slow motion as I caught every frame and began to hyper-process the environment to assess my personal safety. I was in a vulnerable state. I hadn’t slept or eaten in over 24 hours, and I was dealing with a runaway emotional processor. Already in a hyper-syntactical flow internally, it wasn’t difficult to direct the process externally. Practicing with my own words for years, I was grateful for finding Dr. Smith to help me fine tune the syntax.
Internally, the work was working. Increasing mindfulness and running monologue through the filter of would I say this to my best friend? was helping me to reframe the thoughts I had of myself. My relationship to the external, however, was a bit less polished. Effective boundary setting and interpersonal communication skills had been a challenge for me for many years, but that day, I felt as if I was finally speaking the words that matched my face.
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“We are all magicians running around doing black magic, casting spells on one another.”
The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz
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By the time I was handed off to the charge nurse and her staff, my state had escalated dramatically and the hyper-vigilance was showing no signs of slowing down. Starving and exhausted, somehow, my mind was still rapidly firing. Feeling the energy pulse through my body, the survival chemicals I was manufacturing put adderall to shame. Psychologically splitting the staff was my goal. Hyper attuned to body language, I assessed each staff member’s reaction independently as I asked them for legal justification of why I was there. Hyper-aware of the interactions between staff members, I scanned and mapped the power dynamic for vulnerabilities while proactively identifying threats and allies.
Dr. Smith had been a steadfast ally. With back to back appointments, he wasn’t able to get to the urgent care before the emergency staff had authorized the 48-hr hold. By the time he was able to see me, I was already in the psych unit tapdancing with psychosis. With tattoo lined forearms, long hair, and a chest-length braided beard, he sat with me and asked directly: “Did anything physical happen?” Knowing the backstory of my extra toxic relationship, I felt comfortable responding: “No. Not yet. His behavior changed and I think he’s going to try to kill me.” Utilizing compassionate inquiry until I physically felt the pressure release from my skull, his magick was highly effective. In those moments sitting in the room with him, I slowly felt safety return to my body. His face matched his words. He was a wordsmith.
Waking up the next morning with clarity, I realized I had started menstruating. Sitting in my scrubs at the edge of the bed, I felt the blood trickling from my body as I asked the nurse’s aide for a pad. She responded: “I was wondering if that had something to do with it.” No shit I thought to myself, PMDD is all over my chart. I thought of Christina Rudd. Armed with a fresh consciousness and out of survival, I made an agreement to hold myself to account. Dr. Smith was the only provider who knew about my activism work. The others had made an agreement with me to fuck around and find out.
Moonlight Sonata style, I pressed the play button in my mind’s eye and began processing the experience where I left off. Recalling every detail, I went back to the charge nurse’s words the day prior. Where she told me to forget, I was remembering and reawakening. Initiation. In therapy, Dr. Smith hadn’t covered conjunctions like because, so, therefore, and hence yet. Leaning on spelling to help me bridge, I dissected her words deeper:
“Forget about domestic violence | Be → Cause | you’ve been deemed mentally ill.”
She was trying to speak to cause and effect but I rejected both fragments. There was no cause and therefore no effect. Her magick was sloppy. I’d already been diagnosed with Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD) for 7 years; telling me I’d been deemed mentally ill was a meme.
Playing the chicken and egg game was an interesting thought experiment. Did the abuse occur Be→Cause I was mentally ill? Was I mentally ill Be→Cause of abuse? Annoyed and visibly frustrated by my persistent and assertive requests for information, perhaps what she meant to say was: “No one here cares about abuse Be→Cause you’ve been deemed mentally ill.”
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INBOX
07/07/25
From:@
To: tina@ @, @, @
Subject: Proposal
Great addition, Tina. I think we should add Veterans Affairs as well.
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She was right. Somewhere on the spectrum between dissociating from my veteran status, and feeling silly that I made it through the proposal and missed that part, I responded: “Excellent addition. I am interested in learning more about policy and advocacy in the VA Healthcare System.” I thought of the Congresswoman. I wondered about her stance on psychedelics and mental health. She was fast. She was also a republican. Growing up as a teen in the 90s, my mother’s words rang out in my mind: “We don’t have enough money to be republicans”.
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INBOX
07/02/25
From: @
Subject: Department of Veterans Affairs
Dear Christina,
Thank you for contacting my office about your case.
I have received your authorization for privacy release and I will be glad to assist you in every way I can. I have contacted the appropriate officials to express my interest on your behalf, and I will be in touch with you as soon as I receive a response.
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Still struggling with intrusive thoughts months after the experience, the Director’s call was right on time. “Hey, Christina, my name is Dr. Mattack and I’m the Director of Mental Health Services for VA Northern. Is now a good time to talk?”. “Sure”, I responded. “I’m calling because I just received a message from one of our Congressional partners in regard to your in-patient stay.” He spoke intentionally. Feeling comfortable enough to answer his questions, I shared my key points while he listened intently and validated the experience. He immediately offered “I think there was a better way for the staff to manage the situation.” Him and I were on the same page. Grateful for his professionalism, I became increasingly confused by the abuse from the other VA staff members. Being treated with dignity and respect by the Director after the fact was a bit triggering.
Realizing that my allies included Dr. Smith, Dr. Mattack, and the male nurse, also had me feeling some type of way. Why are the men helping me while the women treat me poorly? Disrupting the overly simplistic categorization and rebalancing the internal narrative, I thought about the nurse from urgent care and the Congresswoman. The Director had called me within days of me contacting the Congresswoman’s office, and the urgent care nurse treated me with dignity and compassion. Empathetic to the unbalanced power dynamic she worked in, I wondered if she knew how grateful I was for her healing work.
Accepting the charge nurse’s initiation, I made an agreement with myself to always remember. She taught me where my boundaries lie. Leaning on Toltec wisdom, at the end of it all, I take nothing personal and refocus on my own dream.
“The syntactical nature of reality, the real secret of magic, is that the world is made of words. And if you know the words that the world is made of, you can make of it whatever you wish.”
― Terence McKenna