Have You Ever Had A Broken Heart?

I Used To Lie Between Cool, Clean Sheets At Night After I'd Had A Bath, After I Had Washed My Hair And Scrubbed My Knuckles And Finger-nails And Teeth. Then I Could Lie Quite Still In The Dark With My Face To The Window With The Trees In It, And Talk To God.

That Satisfied Me Until I Began To Figure That If God Loved All His Children Equally, Why Did He Bother About My Red Hat And Let Other People Lose Their Fathers And Mothers For Always?

Have You Ever Had A Broken Heart?

Never Console Yourself Into Believing That The Terror Has Passed, For It Looms As Large And Evil Today As It Did In The Despicable Era Of Bedlam. But I Must Relate The Horrors As I Recall Them, In The Hope That Some Force For Mankind Might Be Moved To Relieve Forever The Unfortunate Creatures Who Are Still Imprisoned In The Back Wards Of Decaying Institutions.

For Eight Years I Was An Inmate In A State Asylum For The Insane. During Those Years I Passed Through Such Unbearable Terror That I Deteriorated Into A Wild, Frightened Creature Intent Only On Survival. And I Survived. I Was Raped By Orderlies, Gnawed On By Rats And Poisoned By Tainted Food. I Was Chained In Padded Cells, Strapped Into Strait-jackets And Half-drowned In Ice Baths. And I Survived. The Asylum Itself Was A Steel Trap, And I Was Not Released From Its Jaws Alive And Victorious. I Crawled Out Mutilated, Whimpering And Terribly Alone. But I Did Survive.