The Memory of Trees

Yesterday, I got back from spending a whole week in Cebu for our Psychiatric Nursing Rotation. I just can't begin to describe my experience in the Psychiatric Ward. The institution we where assigned to was at Metro Psych Facility: Roads and Bridges to Recovery. Full of angst, I didn't expect my experience there to be as enriching as I initially thought it would be. For starters, I never expected the patients there to be close to normal as possible. My thinking was that they would be like the patients portrayed in movies and tv. Now I realize how wrong those films are and I believe that they don't do those people justice. They portray them as scary and out of control and even evil when in fact, they're not. Yes, they are mentally ill. They keep on pacing back and forth, talking to themselves and stare blankly at something for extensive periods of time but in their moments of lucidity, they do talk like mentally sound people and interact quite well for people of their condition. I never expected that. There was a whole lot of things that I didn't know and I am fortunate that I experienced all those things while I was there for a week. No matter how draining it was, that was still one of the most inforgettable experiences in my life.