A warning before beginning: this factual post is going to document some heavy, largely tragic topics – suicide attempts, frank anatomical descriptions, psych-ward life and pitch-black morbid humor – you know, laugh-riot feel-good stuff like that. If you're prone to being triggered by reading about such things, proceed with caution – or don't read at all.
Also, there are going to be lots of parenthetical asides in this post, but rather than use parentheses...
I then dragged my tired ass to the bus stop, eventually making my way to the woods. Halfway to the endpoint, I was definitely feeling the prior two years of sedentary agoraphobia. I found the path, walked a ways down the manicured walkway, and with the above Campbell quote foremost in my mind, I stepped off the path.
I made my way uphill, crouching under branches, slipping past thorned vines, stepping over crumbling, fallen tree branches, finally to discover a clearing just my size. I dropped my pack and sat dOW FUCK!!! – the ground was littered with fallen holly leaves whose thorns had lost none of their sting. Luckily, I'd packed a change of clothes, and used these to pad the bed of soft nails.
I got sort of comfortable, and took one last look around at the forest.
And then I went for it.
I downed forty 50 mg Benadryl gelcaps to tranquilize myself, and waited maybe thirty minutes for the pills to take effect. Once I felt drowsy, I put my helmet on, and as distant thunder got closer, I closed the bag off. I managed about half a minute before jerking the bag away. In the distance, I heard fire trucks race toward my location. I tried again. Thirty seconds and I chickened out again. I sat up.
And saw him.
There was a man down the hill, staring at me. I tried squinting my eyes – was he real? I stared at him for a while, and then chanced a wave at him. He just stood there, silent. I moved my gaze to the left, and saw a greenhouse I hadn't noticed before. It was obviously a greenhouse used for the manufacture of marijuana, and that guy down the hill –where was he now?– was a cartel enforcer eying me as a DEA agent. It was evident that this was no longer a secure location to die unnoticed. I had to get away from here. It wasn't safe. I had to move now.
Twenty minutes later, I stood up. More silent observers had appeared on the hill. I put my backpack on and promptly fell forward. My legs were rubber. I made my slow way down the midday hill, doing more rolling and tumbling than anything else. Halfway down, some campers asked if I was okay. I said “no,” and they fell silent. I fell to my knees and–
I stood up, and turned back towards the black cop. He'd gone out of sight, but there was a second cruiser now, and a young white cop was huddled behind the open passenger door, his gun aimed right at me.
Now, it's probably important to mention that during all this time, I'm having absolutely no emotional reaction whatsoever, except for a very mild concern. So when the gun-wielding cop demanded that I drop my weapon, I just shrugged, my hands wide open and empty, thinking,dude, I got nothin'. He said, "Okay... if that's the way you wanna play it." He holstered his gun, turned around, grabbed the handle of a push mower, and started mowing the grass.
And I thought to myself: hey, wait a minute...perhaps I'm hallucinating wildly.
After a fruitless search for both water fountain and backpack, I spent the night sitting, motionless, near the edge of the embankment aside the road. It rained a lot.
Around midnight, I noticed that there was a cave on the other side of the road. There was a guy in a white hoodie, and throughout the night, he paced back and forth in front of the cave. Every so often, a guy would walk out of the cave, smoking a cigarette. Sometimes he was accompanied by a couple of buddies. Gosh, thought I, that cave can only be a secret meth lab. Look – there are guys at the top of the trees with sniper rifles. Huh.
One of the times it rained, I raised my head upwards, parched, trying (and generally failing) to gulp down some of the falling rain. In a spot where the tree cover fell away, I saw a guy directly above me, suspended in the branches. He was obviously a scout, keeping an eye on me. Lots of cars passed by. They took many photographs of me. I was going to be a laughed at by strangers on Facebook. Huh.
I managed to use my hands to monkey-bar my way close enough to a tree branch which nearly reached the road. I looked across the road. That guy in the hoodie? Nothing but a concrete mile-marker. The meth-lab cave? Nothing there – just woodlands, dropping down towards Sweeten Creek Road.
Fucking hallucinations. Can't trust 'em.
Anyway, when cars approached my location, I'd shake the branch wildly, shouting for help. As I waited, I tried to get the attention of what was either a kitten or a small fox (or much more likely just a hallucination), but it stayed where it was. Eventually, a van stopped, and a woman approached. I looked down at her, and saw my legs. After several hours of tramping through thorn vines and holly bushes, I had Frankenstein legs – slashed and scraped, but mercifully washed clean of blood by the rain. I also somehow had switched my shoes onto the wrong feet, but I didn't find this out until later at the hospital.
Despite the vision of horror that I must have presented, this angel of mercy didn't run screaming to her wheels. She waited as I told her that I got lost in the woods at night and couldn't walk, and would she please call 911 and get the EMTs out there? She made the call, bless her anonymous heart, and when she hung up, I told her that she could leave me – I mean, come on, a woman in the woods with an obviously unhinged drifter with Frankenstein legs? How many horror stories can you imagine?
But she stayed with me until the ambulance came, and even gave me some desperately-needed water. It was stale, but I was beyond caring. Soon the ambulance arrived, and the EMTs helped me down the embankment and into the ambulance. We were on our way.
Really. Come on.
So, yeah, I took my lumps and laughed along with 'em. What else could I do? We arrived at the ER, where I was moved from the stretcher to a bed. A nurse took down my general backstory and symptoms. She asked me what my intentions were when I went into the woods – and remember, I'd heard the fire trucks and saw the fleet of ambulances, and the tail end of the Benadryl was still working on me, so I figured that she'd already read the eyewitness reports of me and my space helmet. The jig was up. Might as well take my whoopin'. "Yeah," I say, "I tried to kill myself."Aw, shucks. Ain't I a goober?
Day slowly faded into early evening, and I met my first sitter, named Petra. Sitters, for those of you who have never been under suicide watch, are nurses whose job it is to keep you in their sights throughout their twelve-hour (!) shifts. They just make sure you don't succeed in your efforts. Just the very kinds of people that Ayn Rand tried to warn us about, really. Tsk, tsk.
Petra and I didn't talk much, and I soon fell asleep.
I met the psychiatrist Dr. Foucault for the first time. He looks like a significantly handsomer version of a popular horror novelist. I gave him the rundown – I'm generally a happy, joyful guy, but I'm beyond tired of the life I'm living and oh-dear-what-am-I-to-do? He told me they could get me into New Bedlam, a crisis care facility that he believed may be able to give me some glimmer of hope. They'd hold me for no longer than 72 hours (hah!), and, hey – if I committed myself and then decided that it wasn't for me, why, I could just sign myself out, and POW – I'm back on the streets!
I reviewed my options, figured that I had literally nothing to lose, and signed up for New Bedlam.
In the afternoon, I met a physical therapist, and got a walker of my very own. It took three days of practice before I was able to move more than two feet without aid.
May 24
May 25
Not for the first time, I wished that I could kick my brain in the nuts. Get a good, running start, you know?
Dinner was served at 5pm. I waited with the rest of the patients in the hall outside the dining hall while the meal wagon was wheeled into the room. As we waited, I noticed that I'd assumed what I imagine to be a convict posture: back against the wall, eyes down and unfocused, alert for any overtly threatening approaches within my two-foot personal space. It seemed I metabolized those Andrew Vachss novels more deeply than I ever imagined. Before I could stop myself, my eyes started looking for the Prof. And, hey – there was, in fact, a black dude in the crowd, talking crazy shit! Ah, but he wasn't talking in rhyme, and I got a tighter hold of my imagination.
I met my psychiatrist Dr. Guildenstern for the first time. When she introduced herself, I was behaving pretty much the same way I'd been doing ever since settling into Sacred Heart: open, outgoing and funny. It wasn't an act. Even when I was approaching the mountain, I was feeling a genuine, goofy joy at life.
But Dr. Guildenstern seemed blind to this. I gave her the same song-and-dance I gave to Dr. Foucault – happy guy but I can't seem to move forward and I'm tired of staying in one place. But Guildenstern wasn't having it: I was obviously a sad-sack depressive sumbitch. I was never able to disabuse her of that conviction. Within five minutes of meeting her, I despaired of ever changing her diagnosis about me. It was as though she had a checklist of symptoms on her clipboard, checking off the applicable ones and ignoring the symptoms that I actually had.
I'd given her a list I'd written containing all the things that had been beating me down for years, and she seemed to have not even read it. Near the end of our interview, I asked her if we could talk about my list, and she waved it in her hand, saying, “but we already have discussed these symptoms.”
Half the shit on that list didn't even get mentioned. And that was the good stuff – the down-deep important, gotta-get-this-checked-the-fuck-out shit. The shit that didn't appear on her useless damn checklist.
So I gave up. I came to the realization that no amount of conscientious discussion would get me the help I needed. And the kicker? At the end of her ten-minute monologue – because that was what it was – she triumphantly declared that I was a textbook case of clinical depression: just look how sad I was right then. There was no point in setting her straight. I just fell silent and waited for her to leave. Shit. I thought I stopped doing that silent-treatment business years ago.
Later on, I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. She was probably hella overworked, and maybe she was just trying to give me as much comfort and succor as possible with the time she had to offer me. Yeah. Bet that's it. Poor gal. I'll be gentle with this one. Least I can do.
I dimmly noticed a patient named Katya. She didn't say much.
Later, it was art therapy with Jodie. She also led the therapy group that discussed CBT, which at a glance appeared to be NLP with the serial numbers filed off. Jodie's a cool person. She's also one of the best-dressed women of the floor – perfectly feminine without looking like she tries too hard. I suspect that this is harder than it looks, but what do I know about fashion?
June 1
Oh. Okay.
I looked into her eyes, and there was just no indication of... anything, really. Assuming that she was running on some kind of cognitive autopilot, I slowly turned my eyes back to the paper. But there she stood, unmoving, still staring at me. I made another gentle attempt. “How are you feeling?” Not the cleverest of questions on a crisis ward, but I wasn't being given much to work with here. Five seconds, then, “how am I feeling?” Five seconds, then, “bad.”
Fortunately, breakfast appeared, and I took the out.
Guildenstern made a mid-morning appearance. They were going to see how I did on meds. Maybe ECT later. Okay. So... how about those problems of mine that haven't really been addressed yet? Well, they weren't really on the checklist of textbook symptoms of clinically-defined chronic depression, and she felt that her – I mean, our – wisest course of action was to focus on that checklist. Oh. You mean those symptoms that I don't actually have? Well... whatever you say, doc. I hope you have a nice day. You know. Trying to make her job a little easier.
I still don't feel like she's really hearing me.
As I pushed away from the counter, another nurse piped up. “No. Howard Jones. Things Can Only Get Better.” She had the lyrics up on her phone and everything.
Satisfaction. That pure hit of satisfaction that you get when a nagging question is answered with finality. Yummy. I almost asked her to pull it up on YouTube so I could hear it, but I'd already disrupted their workday with a five-minute triviality. I thanked them all, and strolled away, a half-forgotten song in my heart.
A new patient appeared on the floor. A blonde girl named Andrea. I almost say hello, but decide that I'm probably not the most reassuring ambassador of peace that the ward could offer her.
In the art therapy session, I decide to color. I don't want to create, I don't wanna think. Just color. No complexity. I choose a flower-mandala kind of thing, and start scribbling. It doesn't take long to realize that, with all the tiny graphic elements in the thing, it's going to require exactly the kind of complexity that I'd wanted to avoid.
Typical.
After breakfast, I walked over to the picture window at the far side of the hall. Most of the view was of rooftops and HVAC equipment, but a dense treeline lay beyond. We weren't allowed outside, and none of the windows opened up to allow a breeze through, so that stroke of treeline was almost like freedom. Katya soon joined me. We spoke of the weather, and I lamented that we couldn't feel the rain, We began talking of distant rains, and as she recalled warm summer storms, her hands began tracing memories of trickling raindrops cascading down her body, and as I watched her fingers splash down her belly, I felt a startling sense of human recognition – yes, yes, I know that feeling, I've felt it, we've both felt it, the distances between us, between our lives and experiences, made irrelevant with the memories of rain on skin.
Nothing more was said. Nothing more needed saying.
So later (yes, I know: abrupt tonal shift, but fuck it, I'm in a crisis ward, half the patients are there for suicide attempts, the other half are there because of catastrophic alcohol or drug hijinx, and some people there are just plain fucked in the head (just wait till I get to Pryor), so you'll forgive me if this chronicle whiplashes around human experience like a fuckin' pachinko ball), yeah, so later, there I am, chillin' in my room, reading a spy thriller, door wide open, when a nurse walked by. She saw my Frankensteen legs, revealed by my cutoffs, and with concern in her voice, she asked how I came to this low state.
And I START TALKING.
Soon I noticed that my water jug needs a refill. So we go to the day room, where the ice machine is. I got my refill. AND I KEPT TALKING.
And eventually we were kicked out of the day room, so we walked back to my room, and I'M STILL TALKING.
Finally, she begged off. It had been 45 minutes since I opened the floodgates, and you know, she's got an actual job to do and all. So, yeah, I did that whole oh, damn, sorry I kept you thing, and I released her from the chain of my words. Her name's Cassie.
Late afternoon arrived. Another nurse stopped by, ostensibly to check my heart, but she'd heard me in Group earlier, talking about how hard it is for me to go out, wrestling with agoraphobia the whole way, and do things, social things, things with people. Her purpose in visiting me was to encourage me to just pick one thing out of the Mountain Xpress or something, and do it. Once a week.
As we talked, she revealed that she had the same problem of just putting herself out there. And as the talk drew to a close, she made a vow to herself that she'd do that one-thing-once-a-week thing, and as she spoke those words, I could see a light come on in her eyes, and she began to stand up taller with the conviction of her intent. We said our goodbyes and she walked back to her job.
Too late, I realized what I should have said to her:
Listen. You're kind, and you're attractive. Take heart: whatever flaws you think you have, those two qualities will outshine them all.
But of course, by then she was gone. I never saw her again. I hope she makes her move.
The day shift was coming to an end. Cassie came back by with a new night nurse. She playfully introduced the night nurse to me. “This is Matthew. He has stories. So if you ever wanna hear one...” And I started in on this stupid routine, where it's, “oh, I get it, you don't really care about meee, you just wanted a way to avoid work, yeah, okay.” And she replied, “Matthew!” in a jokingly-scandalized tone of voice, but I imagined that I heard a note of genuine hurt underneath. She said her goodbyes and walked out, and I began to mull over my apparent insult.
See, I used to do that shit all the time. HAHA look at me being such a hiLARious asshole! Ain't I a stinker?! Hey, gimme some chocolate. I thought I'd successfully eliminated that part of my personality... but, nope. No avoiding it. There it was. Alive, and kicking the people who'd shown me kindness.
I tossed and turned on my bed for a minute, bitterly cursing myself, and then I stood up. I had to make it right. I walked out into the hall, searching for Cassie. When I found her, I made an apology that mercifully didn't devolve into tear-stained grovelling. I don't know. Maybe it should have.
Cassie, bless her heart, accepted my apology with grace.
I slept peacefully that night.
I mean, DEAD FUCKING PERFECTLY.
It's like the universe was saying to me, oh, so you like that It's Always Sunny episode, huh? “Space Helmet” on a plastic bag and all? Cool. Well, check this out, homes.
Sad to say, nothing funny happened in the session. I never mentioned a Frog Kid. And I certainly never asked if she was any relation. But still.
It. was. a. mind. fuck.
Anyway... moving right along... Later in the day, Tammy asked me to lead a group session sometime. Apparently, I'd caused quite a stir with The Right People. I considered the offer, and said, “sure, why not?” I immediately came up with this bit where, on the day of my Ascension Into The Big Chair, I'd immediately declare everyone in the room cured, of every malady, forever! And I'd turn to Tammy and demand to be put on salary, to which she'd of course jokingly refuse, at which point I'd turn back to the patients, and I'd revoke their cures. Everybody laughs.
After lunch, my social worker gave me a much-needed change of clothes. I got three shirts, one of which was a bright red polo shirt (not my style) and one shirt had a decal of a Proud American Eagle (which, I mean... dude, NO). I was walking back to my room with the shirts, trying to figure out how to get rid of the homely ones, when I bumped into Pryor coming from the opposite direction. Pryor was the crazy old black guy I'd seen around the ward. He noticed the red polo shirt and asked if he could have it. HOTCHA! Solution found! Yeah, sure, Pryor, take it! But as I was handing him the polo shirt, he noticed the American eagle shirt.
Pryor lost his shit.
I would come to discover that Pryor had, among other qualities, a kind of lunatic patriotism. And the American eagle with the flames at its back pressed that button hard. He immediately began begging me for the shirt – I mean, desperately begging for a shirt that I couldn't get rid of fast enough. My eyes met his, and I had a realization: man, this guy's very much like a child. He's lost in his own head. I kinda know what that's like. At this moment, nothing would make this man happier than to own a shirt with an eagle on the front.
So I decided to give him the shirt. And just out of a feeling of... I dunno, basic human decency, I decide to sweeten it for him. I go, “well, I don't know...” I look down at the shirt as though it means a great deal to me, and look back up at him and say, “look, I really like this shirt... but I tell you what. I'll let you have it. Just take good care out it.”
And it was exactly like watching a kid at Christmastime getting something infinitely cooler than anything they'd dared to ask for. He was overcome with joy. “Thank you, friend! Thank you!” And he hugged me, forgetting for a moment about all the paranoid terrors that ruled his world.
Human contact, man. All it cost me was a stupid-ass shirt.
And yet, it's still a psych ward.
I found my way back to the picture window, taking in the sun. Katya soon joined me. I made some tentative conversational approaches, but she wasn't saying much. She then looked at me, and said, “I'm going”
Shit.
I then watched as she made a what might have been a minute-long retreat from my grasp. Once she was able to turn and walk away, she got gone, taking fearful glances behind her to where I stood.
I think I scared Katya very badly with that grab.
And yet, it's still a psych ward.
Around 9pm, I was in the day room. I had just decided to go to sleep, when I noticed Pryor having a conversation – more of a monologue, really – with Carrie who's got a kind of quiet Wise Woman thing going on. I began to really focus in on what Pryor was saying.
He was telling her that he'd been shot in the back a long time ago, and he was a ghost now. And then he started describing the time travel watch the Army gave him. As I watched him draw an invisible diagram of the time machine on the wall, I really got it about him. Dude was just lost, caught in an unsolvable mental maze built from the X-Files, Star Trek, Total Recall and dim memories of (maybe) having been a Foucault.
And so I reached out to him. I walked up behind him and waited for a break in the torrent of delusion. That was a long wait. I started getting really frustrated with him, and then I found absurdity in my frustration. Hey, pal, will you just shut the FUCK UP so we can share a warm human moment?!
But he did eventually pause, and I stepped in. I put a hand on his shoulder, and said, “hey, Big Dog, I gotta get some sleep, but you take care, all right? And hey, you're looking pretty sharp in that eagle shirt.” And he thanked me profusely, telling me that if I go to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he'll tell them to give me an F-14A jet fighter!
Yeah. I know it was all delusion. But that was the size of his gratitude. He wanted to give me a $40 million aircraft because I'd let him have my beloved Eagle.
That felt pretty damn good.
We had music therapy again. I only wanted to hear Steve Earle's Darlin Commit Me and PJ Harvey's On Battleship Hill.
We noticed that Andrea sang exceptionally well.
For the second time since I got onto the ward, I heard a rendition of Dust in the Wind.
Later that day, Andrea invited me over to play Spades with her and a couple of other patients. I surprised myself by not totally sucking at the game.
At lunch, I heard that damn Yellow song by Coldplay for the fifth time in three days. I desperately needed to hear the Jello song. I was really starting to miss my MP3 library.
When the afternoon Group ended, Tammy took me aside and said that she thought it would be a marvelous idea if, when I led the next Group session, I would talk about community resources. Apparently, in New Bedlam, all you need to be an expert in community resources is to know that the Xpress is a thing. I told her that I really had no idea what community resources existed, and she waved that objection aside; if I didn't know the answer to a question, I could just defer to her. I told her that I'd be doing that a lot, and if I had no idea what I was talking about, what business did I have leading a Group session? She didn't have an answer for that. I wonder if I'd hit too close to home with that last bit.
I thanked her for her interest, but explained that I felt that I had to explore other options. Like figuring out Gin Rummy strategies or something. Too bad, I thought, Tammy just missed out on a psychiatric miracle.
I found myself missing Cassie.
Music therapy time again. We'd all noticed how well Andrea could sing, and so we gently conspired to get Andrea and Katya together. That was a damn fine music therapy session.
Later, at the end of lunch, when most everyone had left, Andrea noticed that a song by Loreena McKennitt was playing on the radio. Andrea moved closer to the radio.
Done with my hamburger and fries, I was putting my tray, And Andrea began to sing along to The Mummer's Dance.
It was like suddenly seeing a fox in the woods. I backed slowly to the door and listened. I didn't dare move or speak, fearful of breaking the spell. I prayed that the nurse in the room wouldn't somehow interrupt this holy moment. I was transfixed by what Andrea was capable of. I mean, during the music therapy sessions, she was good and all, but I never suspected she was capable of doing this.
After the song was over, I waited for her to get into the hall. I took her aside and tried to explain just have awestruck I was at what I'd just heard. I think I said something like this, that it was walking past something pretty, day after day, and then one warm morning, the sun hits it at a different angle, and suddenly that thing that you just thought was pretty is revealed to be a thing of rare wonder, and all you can do is stare at the beauty that had been hidden so long by the shadows.
When I'd said my piece, I just walked away, not even waiting for a response, hoping that I'd get another chance to be there when the sun hit that one angle again.
Guildenstern stopped by again. The decision had been made. No ECT. That was... very disappointing. She switched topics, saying that the staff felt that it would be valuable if I were to lead a class on community resources. Oh, c'mon, this again? I began to gently explain that I– “Ah, excuse me,” she interrupted, ”can I finish?”
I don't know why that interruption was the trigger. But the frustration and resentment that had built up in me from a week and a half of just trying to communicate with this chick finally ignited into a hellfire that burned away compassion and frivolity, leaving behind it a coldly analytical antagonism that was absolutely unconcerned with reaching out to a fellow human being. That shit was over. This bitch was just fucking around with me now. OH. OKAY. Apologies, madam – please, by all means, pray continue. Yes. I can assure you that you now have my UNDIVIDED, FOCUSED FUCKING ATTENTION.
She continued. “I believe you have much to offer a community resources group.” Oh, sure. No question. I can imagine my approach now: HEY, YOU FUCKS. READ A NEWSPAPER ONCE IN A WHILE, YEAH?
She then moved on to treatment strategies they'd cooked up for me. These strategies can be succinctly summarized by the following video.
I decided that Guildenstern no longer required the benefit of my doubt.
We got a new patient on the floor. Her name was Wendy, she was thin as a rail, and for that first day, she was pretty cool. After breakfast, Katya Wendy, Andrea were I are sitting at the card table in the day room, just talking shit. In the last few days, Katya had been making noticeable progress in bridging that inner distance between her eyes and ours, and on that morning, she was present in the moment. No delay. No echolalia. She was a bit quiet but she was fully engaged. It was kind of like,hey, cool! Katya has finally joined the group.
Somehow the conversation made its way to vaginal surgeries. I didn't have anything useful to offer on the topic, so I contented myself with working on my coloring project. Andrea started chuckling malignantly. I guess she thought I was horrified by all this talk of... ew, female trouble, and tried to tease me. “Hey, Matthew,” she said, with a sinister gleam in her eye, “what do you think of all this talk?”
I looked up. I pushed my purty colors away, and joined the conversation. “Well, it's funny you should mention this. I once read a fascinating account of a situation that happened at this very hospital.” I then told the story of the budding potato. When my story reached its end, she stared, aghast. “But... but that would take weeks. And those vines?!” “Yep,” I agreed, “but at least they caught it before the potato had begun to rot.” Andrea backed away from the table, and left the room.
The moral? I can play many, many games. Choose carefully the ones you want me to join.
That afternoon, I finished my coloring project. It looked... okay. You couldn't even tell a mental patient did it. I felt okay abandoning it on the pile of patient art in the day room. Someone would find a use for it.
After evening snacks, I played Rummy with Will and a couple of new guys. I looked over to my right and saw a new-ish guy looking over at us. I recalled seeing him the night before, watching the gang do its thang. I figured, what the hell, invited him over, and he pulled his chair over to the card table. He didn't say much that first night, but he quickly joined the crew as a member in high standing. His name is Sam.
After breakfast, Andrea brought me my completed flower-mandala thing. She asked me if she could have it, and when I said yes, she asked if I would sign it for her. I did her one better. I got three colors of markers, took it to my room, and dedicated it specifically to her.
I love doing that kind of stuff.
Later, we had music therapy. Wendy waved me over to the seat next to her. I sat down, but got back up again and walked to the sink for a good handwashing. Behind me, Wendy told the music guy that she wanted him to play Phil Ochs' Changes... and she was dedicating it to me.
Uh oh.
Later on, during the third Dust in the Wind cover that I'd heard since getting into the ward, Wendy leaned over to me and whispered, “stay in the room with me after the class is over. I've got a special song for you that I want the guitar man to play.” Then she sat back in her chair and pulled her t-shirt down tight over her breasts, giving me a look that I think was meant to be read as lustful.
OH SHIT. DO NOT WANT - DO NOT WANT - DO NOT WANT
Somewhere in the world, children were laughing. Dogs were frolicking in the sun. Sunflowers were reaching for the clouds. Old men waved joyously at passing trains.
And I was standing in a doorway of 5 South, listening to a woman butcher a song I had never heard.
Eventually, as with all atrocities, it ended. “Well. That was... sure something,” I managed to say. And I made fast tracks to my room.
In my absence, Wendy broke bad. Real bad. I really can't say whether or not my rejection played any part, but she'd turned aggressive. It made things on the ward very tense. She took offense at baffling turns of phrase. Maybe someone would be talking about a night nurse. “She's nice, I guess, I just wish she'd do her job better.” And Wendy would leap from her chair in the far corner, and start in on some rant about how comments like that perpetuated rape culture. Forget choosing one's battles – she was firing indiscriminately into the wrong crowd entirely.
Katya had retreated back into herself. I wondered if that had been Wendy's fault
Guildenstern again. I greeted her by saying that I no longer wished to stay in New Bedlam. I politely – if coldly – thanked her for her services, but explained that I felt that I was getting nothing of value from the coping skills they had to offer, and considering that the entirety of their treatment plan consisted of daily pharmaceuticals, I felt reasonably confident that I could continue that line of treatment as an outpatient.
She put on this expression of bewilderment, and said that she just couldn't understand why I wished to leave – at first I'm demanding ECT and pills, and when I don't get to be Joey Ramone for a day, I'm making unfathomable demands to be released?ZOMG! Like, what's wrong with you, fella?
I carefully considered every interaction she and I have had up to date. I paid especially careful consideration to the words I had spoken to her this very day. And I came to the conclusion that this bitch was either fucking stupid or willfully obtuse. I decided on willfully obtuse. She was wearing a name tag on her blouse, after all, and I felt that it was reasonably safe to presume that she possessed the ability to put it on without assistance.
So: homegirl appeared to be making a long-term, conscientious effort to disregard any attempts I made at getting my most important points across. Breaching that one-way mirror of communication seemed to be an impossible task. I couldn't say shit to this woman.
Fine. I was done. I resorted to joyous cruelty.
The weapon I chose was patient silence. I nodded sagely, saying nothing. Yes. I can see the source of your confusion. You've offered me many wondrous option from the shining halls of the psychiatric sciences, and yet, without rhyme or reason, I've chosen to cast them all upon the ground, unexamined and undervalued. Yes, I can see how that might be confusing.
I waited.
“Don't you feel that you should try harder to engage with our program?”
I gazed softly into her eyes. “Mmm.”
She pushed off from the wall and left.
Later that day, I developed an obscenely graphic parody of a Wendy rant involving a bucket of cheese grits and a wooden spoon. It's pretty fucked up, but thanks to New Bedlam, I can now recognize that behavior as an effective coping mechanism for dealing with stress. Hey, maybe Guildenstern was right about engaging more deeply with the New Bedlam program!
I pissed Will off today. Badly. I walked past just as he was finishing up a conversation with a nurse, and I spouted off some stupid-bullshit joke. It doesn't even matter what I said. He turned on me and basically told me I was full of shit.
I had nothing to say to that. I just went to my room, closed the door and sat down at the window. That's what I do. Just like the teasing I did to Cassie. I don't even have the sense to think before I talk. I say some stupid shit I think is a laugh and a half, and I manage to fuck up someone's day without even trying hard. I thought I had it under control years ago. But no. It's still there, and it's never going away. I stayed in my room the rest of the day. Even avoided dinner because I couldn't work up to looking Will in the eye.
I might have stayed in my room for the rest of my stay in New Bedlam, but around 10pm Will and Sam came by and knocked on my door. Kyle had gotten a call an hour before, and it was impossibly bad news. Unspeakably bad. Suddenly, my little pity party was rendered irrelevant in comparison to what Kyle was having to deal with.
I stepped out of my little cave, and we did for Kyle what we could.
I couldn't get out of here fast enough.
And it was a wonderful little thing, in a way a perfect artifact of my stay in New Bedlam. The work she'd put into it was deeply touching, and I was speechless at this unexpected, sweet gesture. I was embarrassed that I didn't have anything to offer in return. I could only fumble for inadequate words of thanks. We ended with a hug. Suddenly bashful, I walked with her to whatever bullshit therapy meeting we had to attend.
In the afternoon, the hospital went on tornado-warning lockdown. All of the staff and patients were moved into the hall, where we were obligated to stay until the danger had passed. Maybe it's because I was leaving the next day, but the whole thing had a last-day-of-camp feel to it. Eventually the lockdown was lifted, and the halls emptied.
Once the rains receded, Sarah was allowed to leave. The New Bedlam gang gathered at the double door that led to freedom. We watched as Andrea approached the exit. She waved wildly to all of us. “Hey, guys, we survived a tornado!”
And she was no longer there with us.
After the Group ended, I caught Tammy in the hall, and made a heartfelt apology.
A meditation group was beginning, but I saw no reason to stick around.
I was gone.
I've renamed all the players and institutions in this drama. If you recognize yourself and wish to be identified by your real name (what the fuck's the matter with you, anyway?!), let me know and I'll make the necessary changes (no, really –what the fuck's the matter with you?!), but otherwise, I've chosen to err on the side of pseudonymity. And while I'm being ridiculously open and honest about what I put myself through, I'm not going to betray the trust of the friends I met in 5 South. Their stories are their own, and frankly, those tales are none of your fucking business.
Also, there are going to be lots of parenthetical asides in this post, but rather than use parentheses...
...they're going to be formatted like this.
* * *
If your private myth, your dream, happens to coincide with that of the society, you are in good accord with your group. If it isn't, you've got an adventure in the dark forest ahead of you.
– Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
After five years of virtually no forward progress in my life, I decided to end my life. Generally speaking, the last five years of my life had been an endlessly-repeating cycle which, if programmed as a BASIC script, would look kinda like this:
10 FEEL MORE DISSATISFIED WITH LIFE
20 MAKE A VOW TO CHANGE
30 DO NOTHING
40 GOTO 10
20 MAKE A VOW TO CHANGE
30 DO NOTHING
40 GOTO 10
To switch metaphors, it was like reading the same three chapters of a book, over and over and over again. Maybe sometimes those chapters were written by another author – different locations, different cast of characters, somewhat different turns of phrase – but essentially the SAME DAMN STORY. And I was so very tired of reading it.
This next clip, taken from a season 2 episode of Louie, doesn't quite match up with my experiences, but it's close. And, hey – Doug Stanhope!
So I spent a few days tidying up what few affairs could be tidied, planned my escape route, and gathered the required materials. Google Earth was the pair of waxwork wings I used to fly above my little corner of the world to find the likeliest resting places, and I chose my spot: a secluded spot in the woods just off the Blue Ridge Parkway. I packed my sack, drank a bunch of coffee, and stayed up all night to reach the point of exhaustion that would help ease my transition to... whatever comes next.
Here's some pitch-black humor for you: the method of self-pwn I chose was suffocation via sleeping pills and plastic bag. One of the reasons I chose this method was a scene in episode S08E05 of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, where the gang gets analyzed by a therapist, played by Kerri Kenney. Here we see an excerpt from Frank Reynolds' therapy session (no mention of the Frog Kid, sadly):
A few days prior to the attempt, I got a black Sharpie and carefully wrote “SPACE HELMET” on the oven bag. That's me, yeah? Almost nothing is so grim that I can't make it funny – even if I'm the only one laughing.
Note that this isn't the last we'll see of It's Always Sunny references.
THE WOODS
May 21
I exchanged my loose-fitting plastic glasses for an older pair with metal frames. These were tighter than the plastic pair, but I found a delightful-if-sorta-inaccurate frisson of metaphysical symmetry in both literally and figuratively seeing the world through an ill-fitting and slightly out-of-focus lens. That's me, too, you see: even at the bottom I recognize a light peeking through the world – and, yeah... nothing is so divine that I can't make it funny. (Sometimes the laughs can be at one's own expense, but with the right eyes, that can be okay, too.)
I then dragged my tired ass to the bus stop, eventually making my way to the woods. Halfway to the endpoint, I was definitely feeling the prior two years of sedentary agoraphobia. I found the path, walked a ways down the manicured walkway, and with the above Campbell quote foremost in my mind, I stepped off the path.
I made my way uphill, crouching under branches, slipping past thorned vines, stepping over crumbling, fallen tree branches, finally to discover a clearing just my size. I dropped my pack and sat dOW FUCK!!! – the ground was littered with fallen holly leaves whose thorns had lost none of their sting. Luckily, I'd packed a change of clothes, and used these to pad the bed of soft nails.
I got sort of comfortable, and took one last look around at the forest.
And then I went for it.
I downed forty 50 mg Benadryl gelcaps to tranquilize myself, and waited maybe thirty minutes for the pills to take effect. Once I felt drowsy, I put my helmet on, and as distant thunder got closer, I closed the bag off. I managed about half a minute before jerking the bag away. In the distance, I heard fire trucks race toward my location. I tried again. Thirty seconds and I chickened out again. I sat up.
And saw him.
There was a man down the hill, staring at me. I tried squinting my eyes – was he real? I stared at him for a while, and then chanced a wave at him. He just stood there, silent. I moved my gaze to the left, and saw a greenhouse I hadn't noticed before. It was obviously a greenhouse used for the manufacture of marijuana, and that guy down the hill –where was he now?– was a cartel enforcer eying me as a DEA agent. It was evident that this was no longer a secure location to die unnoticed. I had to get away from here. It wasn't safe. I had to move now.
Twenty minutes later, I stood up. More silent observers had appeared on the hill. I put my backpack on and promptly fell forward. My legs were rubber. I made my slow way down the midday hill, doing more rolling and tumbling than anything else. Halfway down, some campers asked if I was okay. I said “no,” and they fell silent. I fell to my knees and–
–it was late afternoon. I was closer to the beaten path than I had been. A blackout? I looked towards the path. It swarmed with cop cars, fire trucks and ambulances. A police cruiser pulled into the path and a black cop stepped out. He hollered, “I'VE GOT A WARRANT FOR THE ARREST OF KINSEY TYLER BODE!” Obviously, I'm not Kinsey Tyler Bode, so I calmly turned away, only to find myself at the far end of a short nature trail. At the entrance stood a crowd of people, silent observers to a man. I managed to stumble five feet towards a fallen log, and landed my ass down. A woman stood a few feet away from me, and I pleaded to her – to anyone in the crowd, really, for someone to send the nearby paramedics to pick me up and take me to the hospital. Not a single one of them did a thing. Useless fucks, the lot of 'em.
I stood up, and turned back towards the black cop. He'd gone out of sight, but there was a second cruiser now, and a young white cop was huddled behind the open passenger door, his gun aimed right at me.
Now, it's probably important to mention that during all this time, I'm having absolutely no emotional reaction whatsoever, except for a very mild concern. So when the gun-wielding cop demanded that I drop my weapon, I just shrugged, my hands wide open and empty, thinking,dude, I got nothin'. He said, "Okay... if that's the way you wanna play it." He holstered his gun, turned around, grabbed the handle of a push mower, and started mowing the grass.
And I thought to myself: hey, wait a minute...perhaps I'm hallucinating wildly.
I recently did a Google search for "Benadryl hallucinations" and it turns out that, with a high enough dosage, yeah, you'll trip, all right. And, brothers and sisters, 2000 mg of Benadryl will get you some fucking hallucinations. It also offers the distinct threat of kidney damage, so unless you relish the possibility of spending a week getting potassium chloride via IV drip, I can't really recommend this method of getting out of your head.
Anyway, as the sun dropped below the horizon, I watched the cops stand around with their backs toward me. Only when it got too dark to see the path to the road did I begin making my slow way to the road. The backpack was a liability, constantly overwhelming my balance and forcing me to my knees. At one point, I saw what looked like a water fountain, and I decided to throw the backpack towards the road so I could get to the fountain easier. That's the last time I saw my backpack. But what about the flashlight in the backpack, you ask,which might've made it easier to find your way out of the woods? Never during that night did I remember that I owned a flashlight.
After a fruitless search for both water fountain and backpack, I spent the night sitting, motionless, near the edge of the embankment aside the road. It rained a lot.
Around midnight, I noticed that there was a cave on the other side of the road. There was a guy in a white hoodie, and throughout the night, he paced back and forth in front of the cave. Every so often, a guy would walk out of the cave, smoking a cigarette. Sometimes he was accompanied by a couple of buddies. Gosh, thought I, that cave can only be a secret meth lab. Look – there are guys at the top of the trees with sniper rifles. Huh.
One of the times it rained, I raised my head upwards, parched, trying (and generally failing) to gulp down some of the falling rain. In a spot where the tree cover fell away, I saw a guy directly above me, suspended in the branches. He was obviously a scout, keeping an eye on me. Lots of cars passed by. They took many photographs of me. I was going to be a laughed at by strangers on Facebook. Huh.
May 22
Eventually, the first tendrils of morning sunlight gave some definition to my surroundings, and I took a look around for my pack. Nothing. By then, the hallucinations had receded to a manageable level. I attempted to stand. But my legs were fucked. My legs were FUCKED. A ring of unbearable pain encircled the joints where my legs met my pelvis. Couldn't even crawl on my hands and knees. Even lying down and rolling from side to side was beyond me. I surrendered. I hollered to the guy in the hoodie, "Please! Call 911! I swear – I'll tell the cops nothing!" He didn't respond. Walked away. Shit. Maybe I will squeal to the pigs. That'll teach him.
I managed to use my hands to monkey-bar my way close enough to a tree branch which nearly reached the road. I looked across the road. That guy in the hoodie? Nothing but a concrete mile-marker. The meth-lab cave? Nothing there – just woodlands, dropping down towards Sweeten Creek Road.
Fucking hallucinations. Can't trust 'em.
Anyway, when cars approached my location, I'd shake the branch wildly, shouting for help. As I waited, I tried to get the attention of what was either a kitten or a small fox (or much more likely just a hallucination), but it stayed where it was. Eventually, a van stopped, and a woman approached. I looked down at her, and saw my legs. After several hours of tramping through thorn vines and holly bushes, I had Frankenstein legs – slashed and scraped, but mercifully washed clean of blood by the rain. I also somehow had switched my shoes onto the wrong feet, but I didn't find this out until later at the hospital.
Despite the vision of horror that I must have presented, this angel of mercy didn't run screaming to her wheels. She waited as I told her that I got lost in the woods at night and couldn't walk, and would she please call 911 and get the EMTs out there? She made the call, bless her anonymous heart, and when she hung up, I told her that she could leave me – I mean, come on, a woman in the woods with an obviously unhinged drifter with Frankenstein legs? How many horror stories can you imagine?
But she stayed with me until the ambulance came, and even gave me some desperately-needed water. It was stale, but I was beyond caring. Soon the ambulance arrived, and the EMTs helped me down the embankment and into the ambulance. We were on our way.
It was 7:14 in the morning.
THE HOSPITAL
The EMTs who picked me up didn't try to hide their derision towards me and didn't even pretend to offer much in the way of bedside manner. Can't say I blame 'em – I mean, let's be honest: we can talk all day about the Hippocratic Oath and compassion for all mankind and all that groovy empathy stuff, but dude, how much compassion can you reasonably demand from a human being who has to start their day by dealing with an unhinged woodland drifter fucktard with Frankenstein legs and shoes on the wrong feet?
Really. Come on.
So, yeah, I took my lumps and laughed along with 'em. What else could I do? We arrived at the ER, where I was moved from the stretcher to a bed. A nurse took down my general backstory and symptoms. She asked me what my intentions were when I went into the woods – and remember, I'd heard the fire trucks and saw the fleet of ambulances, and the tail end of the Benadryl was still working on me, so I figured that she'd already read the eyewitness reports of me and my space helmet. The jig was up. Might as well take my whoopin'. "Yeah," I say, "I tried to kill myself."Aw, shucks. Ain't I a goober?
In retrospect, I kinda don't think all those ambos cruising in the forest were entirely real. Might've been possible for me to tell the RN that I was just a poor ole dumbass in tha woods, and they'd have laughed in their purple nitrile gloves as they sent me on my way. But that's not what happened. However addled my head might've been, I chose the path of truth, and I rode it into the sky. (Floor 9 of Sacred Heart, you dig. Sometimes a turn of phrase is just what it is, and searching for symbolism is a fool's errand.)
I was still hallucinating, but much more mildly. Medical equipment was twisting into faces, an IV stand was sporting a wind sock that spun as though caught in a hurricane, and the speckled patterns on the floor reconfigured into a really quite fascinating paragraph of music criticism, but I was generally aware that I was tripping.
As an aside, I'd wanted to ask someone what kinds of acronyms got tacked onto my records, but I figured that there was no chance that the hospitals would risk a lawsuit by confiding to me that I'd been classified a45Cor something. I'm still curious, though –hint hint, you cool New Bedlam RNs...
Eventually I was moved into a pretty plush room in Sacred Heart, and settled into a week-long stay. Later that afternoon I was introduced to the singular experience of catheter insertion. Twice.
Attempt #1 failed. They explained what went wrong, but I didn't catch it, preoccupied as I was with the second twelve-foot coffee stir-stick tracing its way through innards I'd been happily unfamiliar with up until then.
Now, the two nurses who attended to this procedure were, ah, quite easy on the eyes, but... well... how does one put this? When one has experienced eighteen hours of assorted traumas, and spent a night beneath 49F rainstorms, and has spent the last six hours in intense groinal agony... well, one might well be compelled to give two purty nurses a variation of the grower-not-a-shower explanation. But somehow I still had my patchwork dignity.
Day slowly faded into early evening, and I met my first sitter, named Petra. Sitters, for those of you who have never been under suicide watch, are nurses whose job it is to keep you in their sights throughout their twelve-hour (!) shifts. They just make sure you don't succeed in your efforts. Just the very kinds of people that Ayn Rand tried to warn us about, really. Tsk, tsk.
Petra and I didn't talk much, and I soon fell asleep.
May 23
I decided to stress-test the stories I'd seen on TV and the movies about chocolate ice cream in the hospital. Yes, it's true. The hospital does, in fact, have chocolate ice cream. It's an industrial-grade dairy product, and not particularly great, but they gave me as much as I wanted.
I met the psychiatrist Dr. Foucault for the first time. He looks like a significantly handsomer version of a popular horror novelist. I gave him the rundown – I'm generally a happy, joyful guy, but I'm beyond tired of the life I'm living and oh-dear-what-am-I-to-do? He told me they could get me into New Bedlam, a crisis care facility that he believed may be able to give me some glimmer of hope. They'd hold me for no longer than 72 hours (hah!), and, hey – if I committed myself and then decided that it wasn't for me, why, I could just sign myself out, and POW – I'm back on the streets!
I'd find out that it's nowhere near that easy to get out. And that 72-hour window would prove to be a wildly optimistic underestimation.
He also mentioned that they administered ECT, with an attitude that suggested that they gave out the zaps like cheap shards of bubble gum. My ears perked right the fuck up at that. I'd read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and I actually wanted to try it. I figured that my trip up the mountain had been intended to be a shattering, life-changing (read: life-ending) crisis, and if I was going to turn my life around and do all that experience-life-to-the-fullest shit, I probably needed an experience that presented itself as a life-changing crisis of comparable severity.
I reviewed my options, figured that I had literally nothing to lose, and signed up for New Bedlam.
In the afternoon, I met a physical therapist, and got a walker of my very own. It took three days of practice before I was able to move more than two feet without aid.
May 24
The catheter was removed. It went in with the diameter of a stir-stick but exited with the diameter of a fucking turkey neck. I thought of the Dan Savage columns where he mentioned sounding, and took an immediate and consuming dislike to all those dudes.
My sitter that day was Motormouth Maybelle. Motormouth Maybelle talked a lot. Yak yak yak. Non-stop talking. I wondered about methods of inducing comas. Is there a pill for that?
May 25
Motormouth Maybelle again. I began tuning her out, and when the background Motormouth Maybelle noises emitted the waveforms indicating questions or pauses, I'd utter some guttural noises to verify that I hadn't died yet. She seemed to catch on to this gambit, though, and began asking what I thought about the last thing she'd said. No matter what my stated opinion was, she'd just disagree and go into torturous explanations of why I was wrong.
Around midday, she took a look on her Facebook page, and mentioned that a friend had posted Grateful Dead lyrics on her ex's page. She then recited the entire lyrics of Touch Of Grey in a tuneless monotone. I remembered hearing the song and even seeing the video, and knew on a bone-deep level that I disliked the song, but that didn't stop my brain from beginning a week-long attempt to dig down deep for the memory of the guitar licks. Just for kicks, my brain whispered, hey, friend, you've heard Box of Rain before, right? Don't you wish you could remember how that one goes, too?
Around midday, she took a look on her Facebook page, and mentioned that a friend had posted Grateful Dead lyrics on her ex's page. She then recited the entire lyrics of Touch Of Grey in a tuneless monotone. I remembered hearing the song and even seeing the video, and knew on a bone-deep level that I disliked the song, but that didn't stop my brain from beginning a week-long attempt to dig down deep for the memory of the guitar licks. Just for kicks, my brain whispered, hey, friend, you've heard Box of Rain before, right? Don't you wish you could remember how that one goes, too?
Not for the first time, I wished that I could kick my brain in the nuts. Get a good, running start, you know?
Once I got home, I fired up iTunes and gave Box of Rain a listen. It's really not that bad. It's off the American Beauty album, which is the only Dead album I kinda like. Certainly, I've found emotional resonance in Brokedown Palace.
I learned later that patients have the right to request a replacement sitter.
Woulda been useful to know!
Woulda been useful to know!
May 26-28
The rest of my stay on the ninth floor was spent in hurry-up-and-wait mode. I scarfed up lots of choc ice.
NEW BEDLAM
A NOTE ABOUT DATES: Dates of events are largely approximated. When I was in New Bedlam, days and dates weren't posted where patients could see them. As a consequence, I often had no idea what day it was. Yes, I did leave a suggestion in the suggestion box. Group therapy professionals made a point of saying that all suggestions were read. I made a point not to ask if they were only being read by the janitorial staff – a distinct possibility given that a sugar packet waggishly dropped in the box by a patient – not me!!! – remained in the box a full week later.
May 28
I finally moved to New Bedlam on a Tuesday. I arrived late enough to have missed all of the scheduled activities. There was a dude who walked up and down the halls, staring into every room he passed. He had an expression on his face that suggested that he was there because he had been caught molesting shoes at bowling alleys or something. I quickly learned to hate the guy.
Dinner was served at 5pm. I waited with the rest of the patients in the hall outside the dining hall while the meal wagon was wheeled into the room. As we waited, I noticed that I'd assumed what I imagine to be a convict posture: back against the wall, eyes down and unfocused, alert for any overtly threatening approaches within my two-foot personal space. It seemed I metabolized those Andrew Vachss novels more deeply than I ever imagined. Before I could stop myself, my eyes started looking for the Prof. And, hey – there was, in fact, a black dude in the crowd, talking crazy shit! Ah, but he wasn't talking in rhyme, and I got a tighter hold of my imagination.
I ate as quickly as I could, and retreated back to my room.
May 29
I pretty much stayed in my room the first two days of what would end up being a two and a half week stay in New Bedlam, only coming out for meals and mandated therapeutic activities. I didn't speak up much in Group sessions.
I met my psychiatrist Dr. Guildenstern for the first time. When she introduced herself, I was behaving pretty much the same way I'd been doing ever since settling into Sacred Heart: open, outgoing and funny. It wasn't an act. Even when I was approaching the mountain, I was feeling a genuine, goofy joy at life.
But Dr. Guildenstern seemed blind to this. I gave her the same song-and-dance I gave to Dr. Foucault – happy guy but I can't seem to move forward and I'm tired of staying in one place. But Guildenstern wasn't having it: I was obviously a sad-sack depressive sumbitch. I was never able to disabuse her of that conviction. Within five minutes of meeting her, I despaired of ever changing her diagnosis about me. It was as though she had a checklist of symptoms on her clipboard, checking off the applicable ones and ignoring the symptoms that I actually had.
I'd given her a list I'd written containing all the things that had been beating me down for years, and she seemed to have not even read it. Near the end of our interview, I asked her if we could talk about my list, and she waved it in her hand, saying, “but we already have discussed these symptoms.”
Half the shit on that list didn't even get mentioned. And that was the good stuff – the down-deep important, gotta-get-this-checked-the-fuck-out shit. The shit that didn't appear on her useless damn checklist.
So I gave up. I came to the realization that no amount of conscientious discussion would get me the help I needed. And the kicker? At the end of her ten-minute monologue – because that was what it was – she triumphantly declared that I was a textbook case of clinical depression: just look how sad I was right then. There was no point in setting her straight. I just fell silent and waited for her to leave. Shit. I thought I stopped doing that silent-treatment business years ago.
Later on, I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. She was probably hella overworked, and maybe she was just trying to give me as much comfort and succor as possible with the time she had to offer me. Yeah. Bet that's it. Poor gal. I'll be gentle with this one. Least I can do.
May 31
By my third day on the floor, I started speaking up in group-therapy sessions. And I was being playful and clever, doing that whole present-in-the-moment thing, and the crowd ate it up. The therapist, a sunny woman named Tammy, told me she loved my sense of humor. It's called Daisy Age Gallows humor, dearie, and I can do it all day.
I dimmly noticed a patient named Katya. She didn't say much.
Around mid-morning, my nurse introduced herself. Her name was Jenna, and she's got that happy, radiant self-confidence that's such a joy to see. She asked me how I was feeling, and as I spoke, I quickly realized that she was actually listening to what I had to say. It was that genuine active listening that most of the psychiatric staff love to talk about but don't actually do. She said she'd do what she could for me and left, and despite my trust issues, I wholly believed that she really would do that. Damn good woman, that Jenna. She'd be administrator material for sure, if only she weren't so damn competent.
Later, it was art therapy with Jodie. She also led the therapy group that discussed CBT, which at a glance appeared to be NLP with the serial numbers filed off. Jodie's a cool person. She's also one of the best-dressed women of the floor – perfectly feminine without looking like she tries too hard. I suspect that this is harder than it looks, but what do I know about fashion?
June 1
In the morning, I hung out in the day room for the first time. As I was just getting into the newspaper, I noticed that Katya was standing beside me, staring silently. Benadryl flashback?! No, she was real, all right. And she was presenting me with a serious social dilemma – namely, what to say to a (tangible) silent observer? I ventured a query. “Do you want to read the newspaper?” I've read about echolalia, but I'd never dealt with it, so when after a five-second silence, she asked, “do I want to read the newspaper?” I was totally at sea. I gently nodded, experimentally. Five seconds, then she said, “no.”
Oh. Okay.
I looked into her eyes, and there was just no indication of... anything, really. Assuming that she was running on some kind of cognitive autopilot, I slowly turned my eyes back to the paper. But there she stood, unmoving, still staring at me. I made another gentle attempt. “How are you feeling?” Not the cleverest of questions on a crisis ward, but I wasn't being given much to work with here. Five seconds, then, “how am I feeling?” Five seconds, then, “bad.”
Let's come to an understanding, here, okay? From now on, let's just assume that there's a delay before Katya repeated what she last heard. It'll be easier for me to write, and I bet it'll be less painful for you to read.
I asked her why she felt bad, and she made her slow way over to the chair next to me and sat down. Turning towards me, she asked, “why do you feel bad?” Woah. She seemed to have misinterpreted the question, but she also seemed to be making a tremendous effort to reach out from a huge distance behind her eyes. So, I went with what she'd given me. I didn't know how much she was able to process, so I used short words and hopefully easy-to-follow concepts. I still don't know if I did right by her. With any luck, she never felt condescended to. I just don't know.
Fortunately, breakfast appeared, and I took the out.
Guildenstern made a mid-morning appearance. They were going to see how I did on meds. Maybe ECT later. Okay. So... how about those problems of mine that haven't really been addressed yet? Well, they weren't really on the checklist of textbook symptoms of clinically-defined chronic depression, and she felt that her – I mean, our – wisest course of action was to focus on that checklist. Oh. You mean those symptoms that I don't actually have? Well... whatever you say, doc. I hope you have a nice day. You know. Trying to make her job a little easier.
I still don't feel like she's really hearing me.
Before lunch, we had music therapy. We each chose a song from a list of good ol' classic songs, and the music therapist played the song on his guitar. When my turn to choose came around, I chose I Shall Be Released. It's a Bob Dylan song, but I was thinking of the cover by Pearls Before Swine.
A few songs later, someone chose Lean on Me. By the first chorus, Katya had begun quietly singing along. She was pretty good, actually. I could almost feel her memories of learning the song in happier days, could almost see her as a kid, sitting in a circle of friends or family, learning how to sing like an ocean, waves of notes splashing against the other voices.
How had she come here?
Empathy, man. It's a fine thing, no doubt, but when you're surrounded by human wreckage, and you're staring out from your own emotional rubble, you have to find a point at which to close yourself off for a bit, or you run the risk of immolating yourself in second-hand tragedies. So by the time lunch ended, it was a blessed relief to be persecuted by my brain for not knowing who sang some 80's pop song. Thank fuck, really, for that earworm attack. Not every human hardship needs to end in razor blades and pills. Or so they tell me.
And that's how I found myself at the nurses' station, pestering Jenna about the guy who sang a song with “oh oh oh oh oh oh” in the chorus. She mulled it over a bit, a then declared that it was Tears For Fears. I had my doubts, but I'd only heard the one album. Well, hell. I'll just have to Google it when I get my walking papers.
As I pushed away from the counter, another nurse piped up. “No. Howard Jones. Things Can Only Get Better.” She had the lyrics up on her phone and everything.
Satisfaction. That pure hit of satisfaction that you get when a nagging question is answered with finality. Yummy. I almost asked her to pull it up on YouTube so I could hear it, but I'd already disrupted their workday with a five-minute triviality. I thanked them all, and strolled away, a half-forgotten song in my heart.
Here's the song in question. No wonder I couldn't recall the lyrics.Dude needs to enunciate, yo.
June 2
I got my clothes back that morning. I changed out of my constant-companion paper scrubs, and into my faithful black button-up and cut-off khaki shorts. Felt pretty good.
A new patient appeared on the floor. A blonde girl named Andrea. I almost say hello, but decide that I'm probably not the most reassuring ambassador of peace that the ward could offer her.
In the art therapy session, I decide to color. I don't want to create, I don't wanna think. Just color. No complexity. I choose a flower-mandala kind of thing, and start scribbling. It doesn't take long to realize that, with all the tiny graphic elements in the thing, it's going to require exactly the kind of complexity that I'd wanted to avoid.
Typical.
After breakfast, I walked over to the picture window at the far side of the hall. Most of the view was of rooftops and HVAC equipment, but a dense treeline lay beyond. We weren't allowed outside, and none of the windows opened up to allow a breeze through, so that stroke of treeline was almost like freedom. Katya soon joined me. We spoke of the weather, and I lamented that we couldn't feel the rain, We began talking of distant rains, and as she recalled warm summer storms, her hands began tracing memories of trickling raindrops cascading down her body, and as I watched her fingers splash down her belly, I felt a startling sense of human recognition – yes, yes, I know that feeling, I've felt it, we've both felt it, the distances between us, between our lives and experiences, made irrelevant with the memories of rain on skin.
Nothing more was said. Nothing more needed saying.
So later (yes, I know: abrupt tonal shift, but fuck it, I'm in a crisis ward, half the patients are there for suicide attempts, the other half are there because of catastrophic alcohol or drug hijinx, and some people there are just plain fucked in the head (just wait till I get to Pryor), so you'll forgive me if this chronicle whiplashes around human experience like a fuckin' pachinko ball), yeah, so later, there I am, chillin' in my room, reading a spy thriller, door wide open, when a nurse walked by. She saw my Frankensteen legs, revealed by my cutoffs, and with concern in her voice, she asked how I came to this low state.
And I START TALKING.
Soon I noticed that my water jug needs a refill. So we go to the day room, where the ice machine is. I got my refill. AND I KEPT TALKING.
And eventually we were kicked out of the day room, so we walked back to my room, and I'M STILL TALKING.
Finally, she begged off. It had been 45 minutes since I opened the floodgates, and you know, she's got an actual job to do and all. So, yeah, I did that whole oh, damn, sorry I kept you thing, and I released her from the chain of my words. Her name's Cassie.
Late afternoon arrived. Another nurse stopped by, ostensibly to check my heart, but she'd heard me in Group earlier, talking about how hard it is for me to go out, wrestling with agoraphobia the whole way, and do things, social things, things with people. Her purpose in visiting me was to encourage me to just pick one thing out of the Mountain Xpress or something, and do it. Once a week.
As we talked, she revealed that she had the same problem of just putting herself out there. And as the talk drew to a close, she made a vow to herself that she'd do that one-thing-once-a-week thing, and as she spoke those words, I could see a light come on in her eyes, and she began to stand up taller with the conviction of her intent. We said our goodbyes and she walked back to her job.
Too late, I realized what I should have said to her:
Listen. You're kind, and you're attractive. Take heart: whatever flaws you think you have, those two qualities will outshine them all.
But of course, by then she was gone. I never saw her again. I hope she makes her move.
The day shift was coming to an end. Cassie came back by with a new night nurse. She playfully introduced the night nurse to me. “This is Matthew. He has stories. So if you ever wanna hear one...” And I started in on this stupid routine, where it's, “oh, I get it, you don't really care about meee, you just wanted a way to avoid work, yeah, okay.” And she replied, “Matthew!” in a jokingly-scandalized tone of voice, but I imagined that I heard a note of genuine hurt underneath. She said her goodbyes and walked out, and I began to mull over my apparent insult.
See, I used to do that shit all the time. HAHA look at me being such a hiLARious asshole! Ain't I a stinker?! Hey, gimme some chocolate. I thought I'd successfully eliminated that part of my personality... but, nope. No avoiding it. There it was. Alive, and kicking the people who'd shown me kindness.
I tossed and turned on my bed for a minute, bitterly cursing myself, and then I stood up. I had to make it right. I walked out into the hall, searching for Cassie. When I found her, I made an apology that mercifully didn't devolve into tear-stained grovelling. I don't know. Maybe it should have.
Cassie, bless her heart, accepted my apology with grace.
I slept peacefully that night.
June 3
Hokay, gang. Time to reveal the final It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia reference. You all remember that in the therapy episode, the analyst was played by Kerri Kenney, right? Check this out:
Okay. HONEST TO GOD. I walked in to this day's Group session, and the therapist LOOKED AND SOUNDED like a twenty-six year old Kerri Kenney.
I mean, DEAD FUCKING PERFECTLY.
WHAT
DA
FUQ
? ? ?
It's like the universe was saying to me, oh, so you like that It's Always Sunny episode, huh? “Space Helmet” on a plastic bag and all? Cool. Well, check this out, homes.
Sad to say, nothing funny happened in the session. I never mentioned a Frog Kid. And I certainly never asked if she was any relation. But still.
It. was. a. mind. fuck.
Anyway... moving right along... Later in the day, Tammy asked me to lead a group session sometime. Apparently, I'd caused quite a stir with The Right People. I considered the offer, and said, “sure, why not?” I immediately came up with this bit where, on the day of my Ascension Into The Big Chair, I'd immediately declare everyone in the room cured, of every malady, forever! And I'd turn to Tammy and demand to be put on salary, to which she'd of course jokingly refuse, at which point I'd turn back to the patients, and I'd revoke their cures. Everybody laughs.
After lunch, my social worker gave me a much-needed change of clothes. I got three shirts, one of which was a bright red polo shirt (not my style) and one shirt had a decal of a Proud American Eagle (which, I mean... dude, NO). I was walking back to my room with the shirts, trying to figure out how to get rid of the homely ones, when I bumped into Pryor coming from the opposite direction. Pryor was the crazy old black guy I'd seen around the ward. He noticed the red polo shirt and asked if he could have it. HOTCHA! Solution found! Yeah, sure, Pryor, take it! But as I was handing him the polo shirt, he noticed the American eagle shirt.
Pryor lost his shit.
I would come to discover that Pryor had, among other qualities, a kind of lunatic patriotism. And the American eagle with the flames at its back pressed that button hard. He immediately began begging me for the shirt – I mean, desperately begging for a shirt that I couldn't get rid of fast enough. My eyes met his, and I had a realization: man, this guy's very much like a child. He's lost in his own head. I kinda know what that's like. At this moment, nothing would make this man happier than to own a shirt with an eagle on the front.
So I decided to give him the shirt. And just out of a feeling of... I dunno, basic human decency, I decide to sweeten it for him. I go, “well, I don't know...” I look down at the shirt as though it means a great deal to me, and look back up at him and say, “look, I really like this shirt... but I tell you what. I'll let you have it. Just take good care out it.”
And it was exactly like watching a kid at Christmastime getting something infinitely cooler than anything they'd dared to ask for. He was overcome with joy. “Thank you, friend! Thank you!” And he hugged me, forgetting for a moment about all the paranoid terrors that ruled his world.
Human contact, man. All it cost me was a stupid-ass shirt.
And yet, it's still a psych ward.
I found my way back to the picture window, taking in the sun. Katya soon joined me. I made some tentative conversational approaches, but she wasn't saying much. She then looked at me, and said, “I'm going”
...and then jerked a foot backward. Thinking she was about to fall, I immediately shot a hand out and grabbed her arm. Her eyes got wide, and I explained that I thought she was about to faint or something. But no. “I was going to walk away.”
Shit.
I then watched as she made a what might have been a minute-long retreat from my grasp. Once she was able to turn and walk away, she got gone, taking fearful glances behind her to where I stood.
I think I scared Katya very badly with that grab.
And yet, it's still a psych ward.
Around 9pm, I was in the day room. I had just decided to go to sleep, when I noticed Pryor having a conversation – more of a monologue, really – with Carrie who's got a kind of quiet Wise Woman thing going on. I began to really focus in on what Pryor was saying.
He was telling her that he'd been shot in the back a long time ago, and he was a ghost now. And then he started describing the time travel watch the Army gave him. As I watched him draw an invisible diagram of the time machine on the wall, I really got it about him. Dude was just lost, caught in an unsolvable mental maze built from the X-Files, Star Trek, Total Recall and dim memories of (maybe) having been a Foucault.
And so I reached out to him. I walked up behind him and waited for a break in the torrent of delusion. That was a long wait. I started getting really frustrated with him, and then I found absurdity in my frustration. Hey, pal, will you just shut the FUCK UP so we can share a warm human moment?!
But he did eventually pause, and I stepped in. I put a hand on his shoulder, and said, “hey, Big Dog, I gotta get some sleep, but you take care, all right? And hey, you're looking pretty sharp in that eagle shirt.” And he thanked me profusely, telling me that if I go to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he'll tell them to give me an F-14A jet fighter!
Yeah. I know it was all delusion. But that was the size of his gratitude. He wanted to give me a $40 million aircraft because I'd let him have my beloved Eagle.
That felt pretty damn good.
June 4
At the end of the day's Group session, I made a public apology to Katya It wasn't public because I wanted everyone to see what a thoughtful, enlightened Alan Alda-type of dude I was. I did it because I suspected that if I had scared her the day before, and approached her when there was no crowd to protect her, she'd be terrified of my intentions. I don't know if it helped.
We had music therapy again. I only wanted to hear Steve Earle's Darlin Commit Me and PJ Harvey's On Battleship Hill.
The music guy didn't know the Steve Earle song, and I was not prepared to accept anybody's cover version of On Battleship Hill. It had to be the original, or none at all.
We noticed that Andrea sang exceptionally well.
For the second time since I got onto the ward, I heard a rendition of Dust in the Wind.
Later that day, Andrea invited me over to play Spades with her and a couple of other patients. I surprised myself by not totally sucking at the game.
June 5
Our first group activity consisted of stretching exercises. At the end, a guy asked about where he could find out more about stretching. I mention the events calendar in the Mountain Xpress, a local free weekly newspaper. Later, at the end of the CBT, a woman asked about support groups in the community. Again, I mention the Xpress. (Patience – I'm going somewhere with this.)
At lunch, I heard that damn Yellow song by Coldplay for the fifth time in three days. I desperately needed to hear the Jello song. I was really starting to miss my MP3 library.
When the afternoon Group ended, Tammy took me aside and said that she thought it would be a marvelous idea if, when I led the next Group session, I would talk about community resources. Apparently, in New Bedlam, all you need to be an expert in community resources is to know that the Xpress is a thing. I told her that I really had no idea what community resources existed, and she waved that objection aside; if I didn't know the answer to a question, I could just defer to her. I told her that I'd be doing that a lot, and if I had no idea what I was talking about, what business did I have leading a Group session? She didn't have an answer for that. I wonder if I'd hit too close to home with that last bit.
I thanked her for her interest, but explained that I felt that I had to explore other options. Like figuring out Gin Rummy strategies or something. Too bad, I thought, Tammy just missed out on a psychiatric miracle.
I found myself missing Cassie.
June 6
I'd become friends with a patient named Will. I'd quickly sussed out that he'd be the guy who'd really appreciate the filthiest jokes I could devise. We cracked ourselves up trying to remember 90's hip-hop songs. We went up to Chuck, the black RN who rapped on the side, and pretended to tearfully confess that, though we were otherwise white dudes in good standing, we had to shamefully admit that we couldn't remember the lyrics to Ice Cube's Today Was A Good Day – why, we couldn't even remember the Fresh Prince of Bel Air theme! Could he, as an authentic black man, please school our honky asses? Chuck was already cracking up, but when Will asked to be taught how to dance like rhythmically-challenged white guy on the dance floor, Chuck had to leave the room to catch his breath.
Music therapy time again. We'd all noticed how well Andrea could sing, and so we gently conspired to get Andrea and Katya together. That was a damn fine music therapy session.
Later, at the end of lunch, when most everyone had left, Andrea noticed that a song by Loreena McKennitt was playing on the radio. Andrea moved closer to the radio.
Done with my hamburger and fries, I was putting my tray, And Andrea began to sing along to The Mummer's Dance.
It was like suddenly seeing a fox in the woods. I backed slowly to the door and listened. I didn't dare move or speak, fearful of breaking the spell. I prayed that the nurse in the room wouldn't somehow interrupt this holy moment. I was transfixed by what Andrea was capable of. I mean, during the music therapy sessions, she was good and all, but I never suspected she was capable of doing this.
After the song was over, I waited for her to get into the hall. I took her aside and tried to explain just have awestruck I was at what I'd just heard. I think I said something like this, that it was walking past something pretty, day after day, and then one warm morning, the sun hits it at a different angle, and suddenly that thing that you just thought was pretty is revealed to be a thing of rare wonder, and all you can do is stare at the beauty that had been hidden so long by the shadows.
When I'd said my piece, I just walked away, not even waiting for a response, hoping that I'd get another chance to be there when the sun hit that one angle again.
Guildenstern stopped by again. The decision had been made. No ECT. That was... very disappointing. She switched topics, saying that the staff felt that it would be valuable if I were to lead a class on community resources. Oh, c'mon, this again? I began to gently explain that I– “Ah, excuse me,” she interrupted, ”can I finish?”
I don't know why that interruption was the trigger. But the frustration and resentment that had built up in me from a week and a half of just trying to communicate with this chick finally ignited into a hellfire that burned away compassion and frivolity, leaving behind it a coldly analytical antagonism that was absolutely unconcerned with reaching out to a fellow human being. That shit was over. This bitch was just fucking around with me now. OH. OKAY. Apologies, madam – please, by all means, pray continue. Yes. I can assure you that you now have my UNDIVIDED, FOCUSED FUCKING ATTENTION.
She continued. “I believe you have much to offer a community resources group.” Oh, sure. No question. I can imagine my approach now: HEY, YOU FUCKS. READ A NEWSPAPER ONCE IN A WHILE, YEAH?
She then moved on to treatment strategies they'd cooked up for me. These strategies can be succinctly summarized by the following video.
She bade me farewell and breezed her way out of my room.
I decided that Guildenstern no longer required the benefit of my doubt.
June 7
The drain in my shower clogged up, at the same time the toilet in the adjacent room overflowed. I got a room in the Geri(atrics) ward. I made a point to use the word Geri every chance I got. Some white dudes litter their speech with hip-hop slang. Not me, homes. I steal my slang from the hardcore RN gangstas.
We got a new patient on the floor. Her name was Wendy, she was thin as a rail, and for that first day, she was pretty cool. After breakfast, Katya Wendy, Andrea were I are sitting at the card table in the day room, just talking shit. In the last few days, Katya had been making noticeable progress in bridging that inner distance between her eyes and ours, and on that morning, she was present in the moment. No delay. No echolalia. She was a bit quiet but she was fully engaged. It was kind of like,hey, cool! Katya has finally joined the group.
Somehow the conversation made its way to vaginal surgeries. I didn't have anything useful to offer on the topic, so I contented myself with working on my coloring project. Andrea started chuckling malignantly. I guess she thought I was horrified by all this talk of... ew, female trouble, and tried to tease me. “Hey, Matthew,” she said, with a sinister gleam in her eye, “what do you think of all this talk?”
I looked up. I pushed my purty colors away, and joined the conversation. “Well, it's funny you should mention this. I once read a fascinating account of a situation that happened at this very hospital.” I then told the story of the budding potato. When my story reached its end, she stared, aghast. “But... but that would take weeks. And those vines?!” “Yep,” I agreed, “but at least they caught it before the potato had begun to rot.” Andrea backed away from the table, and left the room.
The moral? I can play many, many games. Choose carefully the ones you want me to join.
That afternoon, I finished my coloring project. It looked... okay. You couldn't even tell a mental patient did it. I felt okay abandoning it on the pile of patient art in the day room. Someone would find a use for it.
Later, I happened to be the conscripted audience for Wendy's tear-streaked reliving of past wounds. I played my part. In places like this, sometimes people just need to talk. And the best thing you can do is just listen. She got through her story, and thanked me for being there for her. Hey. It's what I do. And then she began telling me about all the heroin, crack and meth she'd done. That's the moment I decided to leave.
After evening snacks, I played Rummy with Will and a couple of new guys. I looked over to my right and saw a new-ish guy looking over at us. I recalled seeing him the night before, watching the gang do its thang. I figured, what the hell, invited him over, and he pulled his chair over to the card table. He didn't say much that first night, but he quickly joined the crew as a member in high standing. His name is Sam.
June 8
I woke this morning with the realization that I was done with New Bedlam. The coping strategies that the Group sessions offered me were either variations on things I already used or simply not applicable in my specific case. I wanted out.
After breakfast, Andrea brought me my completed flower-mandala thing. She asked me if she could have it, and when I said yes, she asked if I would sign it for her. I did her one better. I got three colors of markers, took it to my room, and dedicated it specifically to her.
I love doing that kind of stuff.
Later, we had music therapy. Wendy waved me over to the seat next to her. I sat down, but got back up again and walked to the sink for a good handwashing. Behind me, Wendy told the music guy that she wanted him to play Phil Ochs' Changes... and she was dedicating it to me.
Uh oh.
Later on, during the third Dust in the Wind cover that I'd heard since getting into the ward, Wendy leaned over to me and whispered, “stay in the room with me after the class is over. I've got a special song for you that I want the guitar man to play.” Then she sat back in her chair and pulled her t-shirt down tight over her breasts, giving me a look that I think was meant to be read as lustful.
OH SHIT. DO NOT WANT - DO NOT WANT - DO NOT WANT
Eventually, the songs were sung, and the rest of the patients had filed out, safe from the advances of this woman. I stood near the door, ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble. She went to the music dude, and asked if he knew a song called Whiskey Lullaby. He said no, but before I could shout for joy, she went right into it.
Somewhere in the world, children were laughing. Dogs were frolicking in the sun. Sunflowers were reaching for the clouds. Old men waved joyously at passing trains.
And I was standing in a doorway of 5 South, listening to a woman butcher a song I had never heard.
Eventually, as with all atrocities, it ended. “Well. That was... sure something,” I managed to say. And I made fast tracks to my room.
June 9
I stayed in bed all day.
June 10
I rejoined the crowd.
In my absence, Wendy broke bad. Real bad. I really can't say whether or not my rejection played any part, but she'd turned aggressive. It made things on the ward very tense. She took offense at baffling turns of phrase. Maybe someone would be talking about a night nurse. “She's nice, I guess, I just wish she'd do her job better.” And Wendy would leap from her chair in the far corner, and start in on some rant about how comments like that perpetuated rape culture. Forget choosing one's battles – she was firing indiscriminately into the wrong crowd entirely.
Katya had retreated back into herself. I wondered if that had been Wendy's fault
Guildenstern again. I greeted her by saying that I no longer wished to stay in New Bedlam. I politely – if coldly – thanked her for her services, but explained that I felt that I was getting nothing of value from the coping skills they had to offer, and considering that the entirety of their treatment plan consisted of daily pharmaceuticals, I felt reasonably confident that I could continue that line of treatment as an outpatient.
She put on this expression of bewilderment, and said that she just couldn't understand why I wished to leave – at first I'm demanding ECT and pills, and when I don't get to be Joey Ramone for a day, I'm making unfathomable demands to be released?ZOMG! Like, what's wrong with you, fella?
I carefully considered every interaction she and I have had up to date. I paid especially careful consideration to the words I had spoken to her this very day. And I came to the conclusion that this bitch was either fucking stupid or willfully obtuse. I decided on willfully obtuse. She was wearing a name tag on her blouse, after all, and I felt that it was reasonably safe to presume that she possessed the ability to put it on without assistance.
So: homegirl appeared to be making a long-term, conscientious effort to disregard any attempts I made at getting my most important points across. Breaching that one-way mirror of communication seemed to be an impossible task. I couldn't say shit to this woman.
Fine. I was done. I resorted to joyous cruelty.
The weapon I chose was patient silence. I nodded sagely, saying nothing. Yes. I can see the source of your confusion. You've offered me many wondrous option from the shining halls of the psychiatric sciences, and yet, without rhyme or reason, I've chosen to cast them all upon the ground, unexamined and undervalued. Yes, I can see how that might be confusing.
I waited.
“Don't you feel that you should try harder to engage with our program?”
I gazed softly into her eyes. “Mmm.”
She pushed off from the wall and left.
June 11
Wendy was still boiling over from the heat of her inconsolable rage. We were almost capable of forecasting her righteous frenzies. One trigger seemed to involve another patient discussing what chain of events brought them to New Bedlam. She'd tear into the conversation and begin spitting out descriptions of the cavalcade of horrors that she'd been victim to all her life. She was an open wound that never healed. One time, she interrupted a patient's description of suicidal despair, saying, “hey, listenhoney, before I got here, I had a needle in my fuckin' arm okay? And all I had to do was drive the plunger home.” And she stormed off. I refrained from suggesting that maybe she should have just gone ahead and done it. That would not have been helpful.
Later that day, I developed an obscenely graphic parody of a Wendy rant involving a bucket of cheese grits and a wooden spoon. It's pretty fucked up, but thanks to New Bedlam, I can now recognize that behavior as an effective coping mechanism for dealing with stress. Hey, maybe Guildenstern was right about engaging more deeply with the New Bedlam program!
I pissed Will off today. Badly. I walked past just as he was finishing up a conversation with a nurse, and I spouted off some stupid-bullshit joke. It doesn't even matter what I said. He turned on me and basically told me I was full of shit.
I had nothing to say to that. I just went to my room, closed the door and sat down at the window. That's what I do. Just like the teasing I did to Cassie. I don't even have the sense to think before I talk. I say some stupid shit I think is a laugh and a half, and I manage to fuck up someone's day without even trying hard. I thought I had it under control years ago. But no. It's still there, and it's never going away. I stayed in my room the rest of the day. Even avoided dinner because I couldn't work up to looking Will in the eye.
I might have stayed in my room for the rest of my stay in New Bedlam, but around 10pm Will and Sam came by and knocked on my door. Kyle had gotten a call an hour before, and it was impossibly bad news. Unspeakably bad. Suddenly, my little pity party was rendered irrelevant in comparison to what Kyle was having to deal with.
I stepped out of my little cave, and we did for Kyle what we could.
June 12
Wendy finally got around to aiming her crazy at me. I'd gotten comfortable enough with a small circle of friends to tell them the Space Helmet story. I was beginning the tale with a preface that it was going to involve black humor, when she pounced, saying that “black humor” was an offensive term – I was allowed to say gallows humor, morbid humor or sick humor... but the phrase “black humor” was racist hate speech.
I couldn't get out of here fast enough.
June 13
Andrea got her walking papers today. In the morning, she waved me over to her room, and picked up something from a shelf and brought it to me. “It's for you,” she said. It was a yellow paper square with filigreed floral pen strokes highlighting words of inspiration.. I brought it over to the picture window to see it better.
And it was a wonderful little thing, in a way a perfect artifact of my stay in New Bedlam. The work she'd put into it was deeply touching, and I was speechless at this unexpected, sweet gesture. I was embarrassed that I didn't have anything to offer in return. I could only fumble for inadequate words of thanks. We ended with a hug. Suddenly bashful, I walked with her to whatever bullshit therapy meeting we had to attend.
In the afternoon, the hospital went on tornado-warning lockdown. All of the staff and patients were moved into the hall, where we were obligated to stay until the danger had passed. Maybe it's because I was leaving the next day, but the whole thing had a last-day-of-camp feel to it. Eventually the lockdown was lifted, and the halls emptied.
Once the rains receded, Sarah was allowed to leave. The New Bedlam gang gathered at the double door that led to freedom. We watched as Andrea approached the exit. She waved wildly to all of us. “Hey, guys, we survived a tornado!”
And she was no longer there with us.
I also said some goodbyes of my own. Jenna and Cassie were both back on the ward after a week's absence. I had some big things to thank each of them for. I'm fairly sure I managed to get my gratitude across without crossing the professional barricade of appropriate patient conduct. Mainly, I'm just glad I didn't act like a total psycho stalker with anyone. So, you know. Hooray for me not slobbering on anybody.
June 14
Both Will and I were getting out today. We were crazy with the thought of almost being free.
I went to my last Group session. Tammy had some topics she wanted to cover, but first she asked if any of us had something we wanted to discuss. And, yeah, I had some topics I wanted to cover.
And for the next 45 minutes, Kyle, Will and I laid out the multitude of grievances we had with the place. About a half hour in, I started feeling sorry for Tammy. She hadn't been behind many of the things that we were complaining about. I'm almost certain she was unable to change most of those things. But she was the one who had to listen to these devastating precise takedowns of New Bedlam procedure. She finally declared that she was officially going to ignore us. And at that point, there was no reason for me to stay.
After the Group ended, I caught Tammy in the hall, and made a heartfelt apology.
A meditation group was beginning, but I saw no reason to stick around.
I made a last trip to the nurses' station. Signed all the discharge papers. Got my shoes back. Stuffed all my belongings into the big white PATIENT BELONGINGS bags.
I was gone.
END
I'd like to offer my thanks to all the sitters (except for Motormouth Maybelle), the nutritionist on 9, the nurses (especially all y'all bad-asses on 5 South [exceptions for certain night staff RNs – seriously, fuck those guys]), doctors (yeah, there were a couple of 'em worth their sodium chloride) and especially that nameless motorist with the cellphone.
Gratitude also to my New Bedlam social worker B. – sorry I couldn't find an interesting way to work you into the narrative.
A special shout-out to my sitter Petra, for making my first night in Sacred Heart very, very memorable.
Of course, big ups to my New Bedlam homies – Katya Andrea, Will, Kyle, Sam, Carrie and even poor, doomed Pryor.
And, finally, thanks to you, dear reader, for sticking through thirty pages worth of... whatever this is. I hope it has been worth your time.
And, finally, thanks to you, dear reader, for sticking through thirty pages worth of... whatever this is. I hope it has been worth your time.
Bless you all.
Hey, 'Pratchett', this is 'Sam '. Loved the narrative. It was very engaging, and those thirty pages flew by. By the way, thanks for choosing Sam as a pseudonym for me, I know you could have chosen something horrid. For the record, I don't mind you using my real name.
ReplyDeleteYou know, I was always curious about the healing scars on your legs. I figured you'd tell me when you felt like it. Well, now I know! Mystery solved.
'Wendy ' seemed to become more and more unhinged after your departure. One morning I was drinking some of the tepid brown water they call 'coffee' on 5 South. I think I was speaking to Kyle about the difference of opinion I had with a night nurse. It was enough to set her off. She held forth and sermonized at length about the plight of the poor downtrodden night nurse and her twelve-hour shift. She kept on and on, and I finally reached a breaking point. I half-spoke, half-shouted at her " Why don't you please, SHUT THE FUCK UP!!! ". She stared at me, speechless, and then put a finger in my face and said, " Nobody talks to me that way. Don't talk to me never (yeah she actually used the dub neg) again". So that is how, the last few days on the ward, Wendy avoided me and I was never sermonized to again.
Anyhoo, what edge of the Earth did you fall off of? I received your e-mail only yesterday, because my dumb ass forgot the password to the e-mail I gave you, and gmail made me wait almost an entire week to access it. I've sent you an e-mail back, phoned you many times ( no answer, and a very bizarre voice mail greeting. ), I even followed the directions and map to find your apartment complex, but the directions only say [deleted] and there isn't even a building with that number on it, and further, you never say what apartment number you're in, and further still the Entrance Nazi's wouldn't give me that information.
Thanks for the eloquent narrative, man. Great job. Now email me, or call, or send a text. C'mon man. Time's a wastin'.
"[...] those thirty pages flew by."
ReplyDeleteWish I could say the same for writing the fucking thing. But thanks.
"You know, I was always curious about the healing scars on your legs."
I think I was leading up to that when I was interrupted by Wanda's "black humor" diatribe. I don't remember if you were there for that.
"'Wendy' seemed to become more and more unhinged after your departure."
I suspect she wanted a relationship with me -- maybe not a sexual one, but possibly some kind of emotionally-deep sort of thing. But while I'm relatively free with my kindnesses, she would have just kept taking and taking until she'd sucked me dry.
OH SHUT UP YOU KNOW WHAT I'M SAYING
"'Don't talk to me never again.'"
Errant apostrophes and missing commas piss me right the fuck off. But I'm not that strict about double negatives. Maybe there's too much Dixieland in the Mason-Dixon line of my vocab. Even so, that's an unusual sentence structure. I've heard, "don't never talk to me again," but Wanda's roaming never kinda hurts my eyes.
Now email me, or call, or send a text. C'mon man. Time's a wastin'.
Yeah, yeah. I'm gettin' around to it.