My girlfriend, Crystal Newell, was put on restriction over a week ago. That means she can't leave the facility without an escort.
The incident which brought this about, as best i can gather, was an argument over just what she is able to do under her own authority. She decided to take a bus trip to Targets, and did so. At some point after returning she got into an argument involving her mother and her sisters over whether she should have made the trip. Staff got involved in the argument at some point. I am not sure just why it is alleged she should not have made the trip. The little i have been able to learn about it does not seem to me to be a credible complaint if one assumes Crystal has the right to go where she wants.
Once a mentally ill person is censured, it is pointless to argue. Their credibility is nil and arguing only tightens the vise. The facts of the situation are not viewed in the priorities of the mentally ill person. Crystal is young and has not learned either the danger in argument nor any good means of working around it.
Now she and i are both penalized. We cannot go out of the facility on a date. Our next one is scheduled for the sixteenth of this month to see Wagner's Tristan und Iseult at Lyric Opera.
I have asked Crystal what she intends to do to get off restriction but she doesn't seem to have any ideas and the situation doesn't seem to be evolving in her favor.
The people who have jurisdiction are her doctor, the clinical director, and the administrator. None of them is a colleague of mine so i am loath to approach them and reason.
Crystal defers to her mother's decisions. Growing out of that is not going to be without complications and if i am to be an important part of Crystal's life i must be willing to take some part in them, provided Crystal accepts me in such a role. It would appear that my place in all this at the present is on the outside standing ready to speak. Anything i say must be regulated and come from a knowledgeable position. Bad ideas will blow up immediately. My way with words is not arbitrarily potent but i am learning quite a bit from talking to Crystal. I am worried that she is not applying herself to speech, and this inhibits her rate of learning the dangers of argument for a mentally ill person. Her economy of conversation can be a great advantage, but only if she sees in it moments of opportunity for such learning.
The imperative in argument to refrain from profanity is a hard task-master. Being around people who are basically strangers here is an open invitation to use of threats and cursing. The staff doesn't know any more about handling it than the residents and Crystal's superior standing on this score is apparently not making an impression on anyone. It may be a problem of education. She only got to her sophomore year in high school. Why? She is intelligent. Her speech economy needs to learn the value of addressing a group. She is being buried in idiosyncrasy and her good looks are no defense against this.
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