Rustic Little Asylum

Over the Thanksgiving holiday Steve and I visited New Jersey. After our flight we had a few hours to kill and I didn't have anything planned. It wasn't enough time to go into NYC so I had to be creative! I decided to drive up to my high school and on the way is an abandoned mental hospital that I used to drive through to cut off morning traffic. As a precursor... when you are in high school and driving through the campus of an abandoned mental hospital on the way home from soccer practice when it's getting dark out and you are all alone in the car, it's terrifying. This time, it wasn't terrifying, but instead was super cool.

 I decided to do a bit of research on it, because I realized that no matter how many times I've driven through, I didn't really know anything about it. Alas, here is some awesome info on this odd NJ treasure: The official name of the hospital was the Essex County Asylum for the Insane and is apparently now closed to the public and persecutors or trespassers will be prosecuted (oops! but for all future explorers, explore my blog instead of the Asylum). At any given time in the 1940s and 50s, the Asylum would have thousands of residents (3,000 at one time), and even had its own stop on the railroad line so that the massive amount of coal and fuel needed to run the facility could be easily transported. The campus was referred to as a town within a town because they had everything they needed right there. They had a farm on the grounds where a majority of their food came from, they had a bakery, and they even had there own firehouse (which is still recognizable and awesome but I didn't get a chance to get a picture). After the introduction of new medicines and "wonder medicines" in the 1990s and 2000s the hospital enrollment quickly plummeted and it eventually shut down.

In the past decade or so, a visit to "The Asylum," "The Bin," or "The Hilltop" was considered a right of passage for some gangs and North Jersey teens. So I guess Steve and I are pretty tough and should probably form our own cool kids clique or something.

The multitude of visitors, stories of ghosts and escaped lunatics have cemented a local lore surrounding the Asylum and has solidified it as one of the most bad ass places to visit in NJ, in my opinion. The articles I read have photos of the insides of the buildings (no, I wasn't brave enough to go in) and they are still lined with decorated bulletin boards, patient charts, desks, constraining chairs, and even a piano. The insides look incredibly eery and I encourage you all to look up some photos and videos online.

It was the first time I actually stopped the car, got out, looked around, and took photos. Steve and I both thoroughly enjoyed the overgrown ivy and old, rusty equipment thrown around. Anyways, here are some photos from the day:

I'm a Social Worker

In the past two months I've met with prostitutes, transgenders, people sleeping under the bridge, people eating out of garbage cans, people with no family, people with no friends, people with no hope, severely mentally ill people, severely medically ill people, alcoholics, crack addicts, heroine addicts, people with bad luck, people who are fleeing domestic violence, people who trek all the way to come see me just for a $1.25 bus pass, people who are not ready to give up, and people who know there's more to life than what they've been living.

I am a social worker. Every day I meet with people that others have given up on. I meet with people who have sometimes given up on themselves. My job is to restore hope. My job is to help motivate them and to point them in the right direction. My job is to listen to their story when no one else will. My job is to be there for them when all they need to do is cry. My job is to spend hours on the phone making sure they can get employment, medical attention, food and housing. My job is to make sure that my 20-year-old client with a 7-month-old baby doesn't sleep on the street one more night. My job is to make sure that my crack-addicted alcoholic client doesn't sleep with one more man for a place to sleep.

But these things aren't listed in my job description. My job description is simple: Refer clients in crises to places that can assist them. But what does that entail? It's impossible to turn a blind eye to clients who come in and tell you they're living under the bridge with a 7-month-year old baby.

In social work, job descriptions don't matter because there are no words that can adequately describe what you do. You need to be well-versed in all mental illnesses so that you know how to approach people when they come into your office. You need to be able to be objective yet empathetic when someone tells you that they have lung cancer, kidney disease, liver disease and heart disease and they think every day is their last, however they don't have a bed to lay down in. You need to know how to talk to people in a way that says "I can't solve all of your problems, but I damn sure am gonna try."

You need to know how to motivate people who keep getting turned down for job after job because they made the mistake of not going to college. You need to be able to enforce that it's never too late to start your life over or make your existing life a life that you look forward to living.

You need to be able to give up your lunch or your daytime snack to someone who has a rumbling stomach throughout your whole session. You need to be able to give up your last $10 in your purse to a street musician who makes a living off of playing guitar on Bourbon Street but doesn't have the $8 to fix his guitar strings. You need to be able to change one of the worst days of someone's life into one that isn't so bad.

I'm aware that I'm a social worker. But that's not all I am. In the past two months I've taken on the role of best friend, shoulder to cry on, family, guardian angel, and glimpse of hope. I've given people the will power to become self-sufficient, to believe in themselves, and to realize that no matter what happened in the past, the future is still unwritten. Sometimes all homeless people need is a little shove, and I would like to think I've done a whole lot of pushing.