Kat, you just reminded me of this:

I was once a member of Toastmasters International where I hoped to improve not only my public speaking abilities, but also to get a handle on my stage fright. A young woman gave a performance there I will never forget.

She walked to the front of the room. Carefully measuring, she stepped off an invisible rectangle: four-and-a-half strides one way, a left turn, then six strides, then another set equal to the first side, then six more strides. "This was my world for two and a half years." She paused. Then she went on to show the location of the window through which she could barely make out the distorted colored images of the cars in the parking lot through the odd glass of the window (which she likened to that which is found in some bathroom windows and shower stalls except that her window had wire mesh within it). She then spoke of the door. Locked, of course. Always locked. And then there was the 8" by 10" window in the door through which, if she pressed her face to the glass, she could see what she guessed was about a seven foot long stretch of blank wall. The room was furnished with a bed and a toilet.

She spoke of the medications, the humiliating baths, the shock treatments. "They always referred to it as 'electrotherapy'. But let me tell you that 'shock treatment' seems to me to be a little better at describing it." She told of the horrible cloud in her mind and her feeling of weakness after the shock treatments.

She she was fairly certain that the shock treatments were responsible for her becoming "sane" again. She hated them so very much that one day she had a conversation with herself during which, she decided that she had better do something or else this life would be the only life she would have for the rest of her days. Eight months later, she was discharged.

It was such an extremely intimate description of a horrible part of this woman's life that I am sure I was not the only one the room who was totally stunned by the time she had finished. I felt this way even though I used to work in a mental hospital.

I think what affected us the most was the realization that this could have just as easily been a reality for any one of us.