Home is Where the Unit Is

It seems as if you are miles away from the person who checked into this facility, that stammering mess who begged for a mood stabilizer. That person is still in there, of course, but he is a little quiet now and that’s ok.

You couldn’t be that far from him, after all. This was only a week ago, so you can stop romanticizing this mess of yours, ok?

Ok. Sheesh.

You weren’t baptized in the river Jordan and sent on some grandiose mission, so tone down the theatrics and let’s review: A week ago, you threatened to stop existing on planet earth; these threats were so impressionable that two different humans decided law enforcement should pay you a visit. You had a nice little chat and little too much whiskey, and then woke up to find that you would, in fact, be heading to this nice little hotel. The theme of the hotel turned out to be prison, at least you think. You have never been to a proper prison.

Back to earth then, ok? Ok.

Sheesh.

But you are feeling better. Probably because all babble between you and the doctors and the floor staff has pointed to this fact: unless you somehow demonstrate that you are a threat to yourself or others (good luck with that idea in the palace of squiggly pens!), you know that you will be free to leave. Relatives, the same generous ones who recently brought you food and a DVD and some other goodies, are on the way.

Also, Prozac. That’s part of the better.

Your things are packed in a brown paper bag; the rest of your contraband is waiting down several floors and past who knows how many double doors (each set an elopement risk!). But you will get your things back. You already feel like you’ve gotten something back, but you are not sure what it is yet.

You attend a therapy session that morning but can hardly concentrate. The group leader, a polite red-headed young woman, talks and talks, but your mind tunes out and settles on fixations of home; images of children smiling and playing, of cats purring and pawing. You think about everything waiting for you, and you can’t wait for that moment when you take a break from home, only to return to it and smell it again for the first time.

You know the smell will be lovely, even if it isn’t.

After therapy there is seated yoga. You don’t really bend but decide to be a good sport. As always you find yourself both refreshed and reminded of your inflexibility. Now it is time for meds. You generally prefer pharmaceuticals to yoga.

The meeting with the nurse is, for you, tense. You previously had a rather spirited encounter with her. In this context, spirited means that you felt offended and overreacted. You realize that you have been performing this trick for sometime, perhaps with the bizarre expectation that someone was finally going to give you a treat for it.

You cannot ask for the medication without avoiding eye contact and choking up. The nurse says things. Tender things. You are so upset that making the words out seems impossible. You are staring at your feet and trying to queue up some instant dissociation from yourself, but there is no time for that. The easiest thing to do is to decide that you are at fault again, but you know this is false.

Maybe you could start acting this way? Decide that a baseless idea is false. Then kill the idea.

Should a baseless thought really have any right to live? It is either you or the insanity, Nathan, so repeat after me:

You do not have to be sorry all the time. You do not have to be sorry all the time. You do not have to be sorry all the time.

You tell that nurse that you like her, really, really like her, and that she has been so kind and patient with you. You talk about how ashamed you are, and how when feelings like this come on you know that you will be stuck in the emotional muck for hours, if not the better part of a day. No amount of looking at your feet helps, and you eventually drift away, somehow disappointed that you could not cram in 600 apologies into a single incident.

You return to the main unit and begin something of a goodbye tour with the patients. You reflect on how it is so strange to know people for 7 days and feel as if you have had a lifetime of access to them. You wonder how things will go when you are gone and free to roam the planet again. Will the next person put on a pair of headphones and take the same path to the same music from the same station? It seems that when you leave you won’t really be gone, that some part of you will linger on the floor of Unit 11. Something like a ghost.

This place must surely be filled with them. The type of pain seen in here doesn’t simply go away at discharge. It stays behind.

As your farewell stops proceed, a new client enters the room. You immediately wonder, as you do with all new patients around here, whether the client came in here on a 302 or a 201. This thought makes you feel sad and judgmental. Who are you to care whether this individual came here of their own volition? They are here, just like you.

If you hadn’t brought your own clothes in, your hospital gown and socks with the rubber grippy thingies would be the same as the ones on the new patient. Just remember that.

You sit down and eavesdrop on the conversation. New Patient One (NP1), you learn, used to be a journalist of sorts in the music industry. Before mental health issues made the position too difficult, NP1 was able to talk to and interview some notable acts in the rock and roll community. This makes you happy, as rock music is the largest defining part of your musical wheelhouse. You speak to this person for just a few minutes and get a feeling that immediately pains you.

You feel as if you have been talking to a childhood friend. You have only been at this for 10 minutes, and your moment of discharge is coming anytime now.

It’s ok to have mixed feelings about going home. You have met some beautiful people in here and you will probably never see them again. You ate with them and learned their names and it wasn’t long before you were exposed to many of their most intimate secretes and sources of trauma.

And you will never see them again.

This is a thought that will haunt you, that the things you treasure have the potential to be so fleeting. You are angry with the cosmos and feel it patently unfair that people cross paths and never meet again.

What is this sort of cruelty?

At the end of your chat, NP1 tells you, without a hint of irony in their voice, that they have learned more about the current and past music scene from you than anyone they have ever met. Since you have a long history of being teased and bullied for the music you like (and especially on the internet, where insults are so common that they have become background noise), you are certain that this person must be joking. But this is no joke, and no such thing has ever been said to you.

You will never forget this moment, as you will surely need it when the slings and arrows fly again. You tell this, or something like it, to NP1. People in Unit 11 always need a reason to feel good about themselves, and you know that NP1 will be no exception to this rule.

Eventually there is that call from the floor attendant: you have family here, Nathan, and it is time to go.

Suddenly your life feels like it is in slow motion, perhaps at the series finale of some kind of TV show; the kind where the ending is a little somber and it becomes very clear that the party is, in fact, over. You imagine yourself, translated and pixelated into the space of some television in the past, your face coming through in a soft a pallet of black and grey. There is a family sitting on a couch, watching you as you survey the psyche unit one last time. The family is confused that you have lingered a moment. They have watched your whole story and know how badly, how painfully you wish to see your family.

You walk to your room, one last time, and stare at the door. NP1’s name is there instead, and you suddenly miss that odd bed with the dip in it. You suddenly miss all of it, including the patient who said hi to you before anyone else did on that first horrible day.

This person is sleeping, you think, and you decide that your goodbye is going to have to be a quiet one. You know that you will regret this decision.

You turn and walk, your pixelated form passing down the hallway for the faithful at home. Two familiar silhouettes approach, their faces hidden from viewers.

The family on the sofa turns the TV off, and its screen shifts from a moving grey painting to a thin silver line and then a fine white dot and then nothing.

You are going home, and you are leaving home.

Yours Mentally,

Nathan