Bipolar Disorder Through My Eyes

They eventually took me to Bellevue Hospital Prison Ward 19 West in Manhattan, where I stayed for about a week, until an officer came to my room and said, “Get your stuff together. They’re sending you to Rikers.” This was scary. Rikers has been described as the worst and most notorious jail complex in the United States. I had heard the stories and knew I was in for some serious trouble.

I knew I would have to fight while there, and my biggest fear other than that was that I would have to become an animal to survive and that I would lose my humanity. I am at heart a gentle and kind person, but I knew I would have to shut that part of me down to make it out in one piece.

When they first put me in there, I had to go through a processing phase that took about four days. I was put inside a small cage with about ten other inmates, and we had to sit mostly on a cement floor. There was only one open steel toilet for all of us. A couple of guys were smoking something, and I asked for a hit. I don’t know what it was, but it made me tired.

A man standing next to me had a grand mal seizure and started shaking violently. As he fell to the floor, another inmate grabbed his hand and pulled the rings off his fingers. The man having the seizure smashed his head on the steel toilet, cracking it open. There was blood everywhere, and I thought he was dead. Eventually they put him on a gurney and took him away. That was my welcome to Rikers Island.

The next day we were put into a larger room that held about a hundred inmates all lying on a cement floor with no blankets or pillows. Some people used newspaper or pieces of cardboard for their heads. They fed us three really bad meals a day, and there were only two toilets for a hundred men and no privacy. I was there for three more days and then they brought us through an X-ray machine to check for weapons and made us strip and spread our butt cheeks to see if we had drugs or weapons in there.

Eventually I was taken to a dorm with about forty other inmates. I tried to keep to myself and deal with the new situation. One night they woke me at about 3:30 a.m. and told me I was going to see the judge. They took me to the area where the buses leave for Staten Island and the other boroughs to go to court. I saw a lot of fights between gang members. The corrections officers called it fight club.