On that evening, the newish pair of cowboy boots sat by my door, a token of earlier commitment to living, now a signifier of failure. I had worn out my first pair while travelling, studying, working, trying to figure out what it meant to be human, but nothing came of it and years passed. Efforts to nurture friendships seemed hopeless, and I felt like I was becoming invisible. Leaving my apartment was becoming difficult; a torture that made me feel even more alone. I stopped therapy for financial reasons and thought I would be fine, but realized that those sessions were the only times I could speak from deep within. Now there were no productive, enlightening conversations that fueled me, that I depended on to kept me fascinated and rooted into the process of living. Nobody twigged to this. I was the best actor. Damned nice boots. Fuck.
Oh the disbelief, but also a full body feeling of sad disappointment. I had had faith that if I kept trying, things would turn out well. With a sigh of resignation, a “well, this might as well happen,” I took the pills. Life was cheap in that moment, as if I was doing something mundane, like returning a rental car or getting the mail. I woke up two days later, August 2nd, 2024, annoyed that I was still alive. I tried a different modality, but stopped as I found myself gazing at photos of my kids on a far shelf; instead of curtailing the ancestral cycle of darkness, I was perpetuating it like a real asshole. I love my kids more than anything else, so yes, I stopped and in the same second, relented to living and whatever that was going to entail.
I needed assistance, but I had to think outside of town for a person; a clue that I was living in the wrong place. A few hours later, I was in a hospital holding room speaking with a psychiatrist. Security guards confiscated all of my things in exchange for a hospital gown and a plastic bracelet on my wrist with my own barcode. The only item in the room was a gurney fitted with retaining straps that hung unused, but give me chills. A nurse took my vitals and taped my neck. There was a camera on the ceiling–I was being observed of course. Early in the morning, I was moved to a proper room in a high security area of the mental health ward. There was a bed in the middle of the room, a window that looked out onto a walled courtyard, and a door with a window in it so that I could be observed and checked on with a flashlight at night. The nurse brought food. I slept for two days. More disbelief as I felt completely untethered to the regular world. There was no relatable thread, nothing to weave this surreal experience into daily life. I couldn’t believe that I was where I was.
The nurse explained that she wanted to move me to the regular ward, but needed to see me “use my privileges,” which meant eating meals with the other patients in a small dining room, taking a shower in the one shared bathroom, and going with her for a tour of the regular ward there beyond the locked door at the end of the hallway. I did all of the things and was moved that same day. My new room had large windows with internal, fixed blinds so there was privacy with lots of natural light. The door had no window in it but nurses opened the door often for bed checks. There were cameras everywhere except for inside the rooms; for obvious reasons staff wanted to know what we were doing at all times. I was encouraged to have my meals in the dining room along with everyone else, and to participate in the group activities listed on the board across from the nurses station. Though I didn’t feel like it, I knew that participating was an essential requirement to being discharged. I felt a hint of, “There’s been some mistake, and I’m fine and I should just be released,” but then I felt the tape on my neck. Perhaps it was wiser to stand down for a bit, to stop trying to be super human. I began walking the halls–a thing we all did, sometimes wrapped in a blanket against the chill. Not everyone on this ward had tried to off themselves. Most were dealing with bipolar, or schizophrenia, or any number of thought troubles. The irony of my particular scenario; one day I wanted death, but now since the bad pills I had taken had made me remarkably constipated, I was concerned about hydration and avoiding sedentary behaviour for health reasons, an analysis I found darkly hilarious.
The nurse’s station was set like a clubhouse behind plexiglass windows at one end of the ward. Apart from daily in-person meetings, the psychiatrists observed us via a camera in any part of the ward, and directly from a raised platform in the station where they typed in relevant notes. The nurses all seemed kind. I think us patients observed those in the clubhouse as much as they observed us. On occasion, I would approach a window and ask for a train ticket to New York and tickets for a baseball game, delighted to make them laugh.
It didn’t take long to find comradery with other patients. All of us had experienced difficult processes of thought and perception, and there seemed to be an unspoken respect for this fact. A group of us walked and ate together, and when the weather was nice, we lied out on the courtyard grass in the sun, watching the pigeons fly sorties off of the hospital roof. We took none of the pigeons for granted, nor the sun, nor the blue sky and passing clouds. We spoke of how beautiful these were. I grokked that my new friends suffered whatever flavour of cruel mental fuckery largely due to their being sensitive, vulnerable humans with big hearts.
The best thing was that here, with these people, I felt engaged instead of depressed. There was no tap dancing, no seeking validation. We were sincere, and present, and supportive without trying to “fix.” We laughed about the absurdity of life, and how difficult it was to talk to “normal people,” the word “normal” undefined.
Alarms went off, mostly at night, with a voice that hollered in code over the speaker system to signal that someone was in distress. Such an event seemed distant until I spoke more with the other patients about their struggles. One day, I was in the courtyard watching the bees on the flowers. I thought about how lucky they were, leaving whenever they wanted. In that moment a shot of anxiety fired through me as I realized that I was locked in, not at all free to go. I wasn't going to flip out, but I did register unease.
Days passed. The bunch of us grew closer, sincerely relieved to hear that someone’s medication had leveled out, or another had managed to get a good night’s sleep. I was glad to graduate from hospital robe to my own clothes, though still no belt, shoelaces, or underwires–as if I might “lift and separate” myself to death.
The evening before I was to leave, there was a fire in another part of the hospital. The alarm sounded, and we all gathered in the dining lounge though we were in no danger. I was going to miss this crew; the older Chinese lady with whom I played cards, my kind and patient chess partner, the restaurant owner, the woman from Prague, the woman who recited Rumi by heart, the young man with sickle cell, wiser than his years, the Tamil woman who came out of her shell and tried to teach me the language, the young woman who slept all the time and made me do a spit take when she admitted that she “liked to watch the porn!” The young woman who missed her young daughter, who lead us in yoga despite struggling with her medication. The singer. The tough-acting weight-lifter whom we realized was a big puppy dog. The older man who surprised everyone when he sang out while passing the lounge doorway. Even the young man who never spoke to anyone, who avoided eye contact; there was something about him that I loved. I’m serious when I say that I would do anything for these people. I wanted them all to be okay.
Leaving was strange. August 9th, my son came to take me home. I introduced him to everyone before we left. My card partner walked me to the door, hands on her walker, eyes straight ahead. She was the matriarch of the ward, but here I noticed a child-like vulnerability in her that I found touching and gave her a big hug. It was raining, so I stood out on the hospital sidewalk as my son retrieved the car–and I had nothing to reference. We stopped for groceries and I felt like an alien in the store, like I occupied a liminal, hidden space. I balked at the idea of my apartment being “home.” The apartment, this town was not my home and never had been. I had moved there in order to tend my elderly mother, and I should have moved out long ago.
I’m sharing this with you, because there is a mental health crisis–this isn't just me. I want you to consider who in your circle of friends might be at their threshold. I would bet money there is someone. The loneliness I experienced was real, and brutally soul crushing. I am different now and still uncertain, which I do not care for. The gift is that I am aware of what happened, observed it all in the broader context. I have always seen life in relation to the cosmos, so I’m offering this quote from N.J. Berrill, “…Above all, we need not be afraid, either of the universe at large in all its’ oneness and multiplicity, or of our own nature which itself has been created by a star.” If life meant nothing we would all be bankers, but because meaning is the thing, we each experience different paradigms, some of us relegated to the darker realms. I am grateful for my experience; I get to wear my boots again, but this doesn’t mean that I’m not…furious.