Back in high school I was much more of an outside person. I went on many camping trips with my scouting/venture crews and enjoyed being alone outdoors as well. Once school started getting more difficult, though, I let that part of myself slip away as I spent ever longer chunks of my time looking at various flat surfaces in attempts to find wisdom. I lost contact with most of my outdoorsy friends and let the stress of life keep me inside.
After about a year of this, I decided to go on my old Venture Crew's next scouting trip. It was fall, and the trip was the last one before the winter. The thing I enjoyed rediscovering most was how quiet everything could be. I had forgotten that I didn't need aural input during my every waking moment. I remembered that it was possible to enjoy the company of others just by walking together, sharing an experience, and that every moment of silence spent with others didn't need to be filled with banal chatter. I basked in the lovely quiet as we walked unspeaking through the leaf-littered woods, six of us I think, and felt perfectly content as we sat around looking at the fire, all of us deep within our own minds yet still somehow sharing in the loveliness of the moment.
After so many packed lunches full of individually wrapped goodies to be scarfed down during a short lunch break, it felt refreshing, and even oddly taboo, to cook successive meals in the same cast iron pot with only a splash of water to cleanse its palate in between. The main course's beef would flavor the apple crisp dessert, which would in turn give a faint sweetness to the bacon or sausage cooked the next morning. The tastes alway carried over just a little, giving a vague but satisfying sense of gustatory continuity to the trip.
When the sun set and the glowing fire burned down to its last glowing ember, I retreated into my dark tent where the only stimuli available to my usually racing mind was the musty smell of the ground that was unaccustomedly close to my head. Trying to pack light, the only thing I ever brought as a pillow was the jacket I had worn all day. As burrowed my face into it, I was pleasantly reminded of all the smells of the day that had been trapped in its folds. They always seemed to come back in order, ending with the smoke of the campfire, and I wondered what wood we had burned that night, and if there might be any way to imbue its scent into a car freshener so I could replace the omnipresent chemical pine smell in my mom's suv.
I have always wondered why I sleep so well on hard ground with rocks pressing into my ribs and a tent's damp fabric pressing against bare skin whenever I rolled over. I think this is probably the reason- there is really nothing for your mind to do but drift off into the sea of the unconscious.
This wasn't one of those well-slept nights, though. At some dark hour of the night, I awoke to hear something rustling outside my tent. Probably just one of my fellow campers stumbling into the night after drinking multiple nalgene's worth of water that day. But it kept rustling, and seemed to have paused right outside my tent. Hello? No answer. This was just the excuse my mind needed rush off and remind me of all the unlikely possibilities. In my adventures with that very group, I had encountered everything from fellow scouts waking up with squirrels joyously pillaging the contraband food items stashed in their sleeping bags to seeing a bear kill and drag off a young dear forty feet from our campsite. I knew I didn't have any so-called "smellables" in my tent, so whatever it was would likely leave me alone. But it didn't go away. It didn't sound large enough to be a threatening predator, said the rational part of my brain, and was movingly timidly enough that it was probably a good sized deer... which was probably being silently stalked by a much larger bear.
As the minutes wore on I had to know what is was, no matter what the purely-imagined danger. My plan was to unzip my tent-flap as quietly as I could, and then open my rainfly as quickly as possible and blind the lurking beast with my flashlight. I didn't have much of a plan after that, but I figured it was good enough. I executed it perfectly. But after ripping open the rainfly in record time and dashingly pointing my flashlight at the source of the noise, I saw... nothing. Nothing at all. I was prepared for my ego to feel shamed and embarrassed at seeing that the source of my nighttime dread was just a 'possum, or at least a very large squirrel, but I was completely baffled to see that there didn't seem to be anything outside my tent at all.
I waited, listened, and eventually heard the noise again. From outside of my tent, I could now tell that it was coming from beneath leaves on the ground. I got down close enough to see a dead leaf shutter and tremble, and then another one nearby did the same. I held on to my last chance to save my pride, hoping that it was a least some fangy, dangerous snake I would discover as I flipped over the leaves. It was a spider. A slender, friendly, almost translucent daddy long legs, working laboriously to navigate his comedically long limbs through the leaf litter.
In all my time wrapped up in the every day life of cars and central heating and headphones, I had forgotten the noise a single spider makes as it walks through crunchy leaves on a crisp autumn night. I gently uppicked my nocturnal nemesis and moved him far from my tent, a just punishment, I think, for such an obvious breach of the peace. As I drifted off for the second time that night, I wondered how I could possibly fall asleep back in the real world among sounds many magnitudes louder than the one that had just caused me to lose a half hour of well-earned sleep. Actually, I still kind of wonder.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Raccoons
(Note- as I get into the habit, I'm going to try to limit the editing I do, since that is the part I most dread and most keeps me from it. Please forgive)
I worked at a waterfowl conservancy one summer, which is essentially a place that breeds endangered (and non-endangered) ducks, geese, and swans for release or zoos or sometimes private collectors. I lived on the grounds with my boss and the grounds-keeper, and the other employees lived pretty close, so it wasn't uncommon for us to go out to eat together. It was in a fairly rural part of Connecticut, so of course the closest Chinese food was a terrible all-you-can eat buffet that would ruin your digestive track for weeks at a time. One night we came back from that greasy but delicious GI destroyer and I was immediately in the john for about three hours as my body tried to cleanse itself. When the flood gates finally closed, I remembered that I was actually scheduled for a interview with the Magic Online people for a moderating position. I was thinking about canceling it because it would be awkward to have to repeatedly run off in the middle of it, when I heard what sounded like a gunshot from bird enclosure, followed quickly by two more.
"Hmmmm thats's odd," I thought to myself, but since I was in a place where everyone owned four or five guns, I didn't think much of it. A minute later, though, my cellphone rang. It was my boss. A raccoon had gotten into the enclosure and killed a half-dozen of our chickens. I had to come help him look for the perpetrator. My stomach twisted into a knot, and not from the General Tso's. Raccoons are mean motherfuckers, and actually seem to kill stuff just out of curiosity or fun. My boss one time had several dozen quail murdered by a pair of them. They had just come in and squeezed their little heads off. Sometimes the raccoons took a bit or two, but mostly the left the corpses laying around.
But my interview!
Doesn't matter.
But my bowels!
Doesn't matter.
The place's grounds-keeper had gone out and I was the only person on premises to help. I briefly e-mailed the contact I had for the interview and, grudging and miserable, walked into the night to go find my boss.
On the property we had some birds of whose species there are only only a few thousands left in the wild. We also had birds that were slated to be sold to zoos for tens of thousands of dollars. I knew we had to find that raccoon. It was just that my innards were in such revolt that I had to make a constant, concerted effort just to keep myself isotonic with my environment. But you gotta do what you gotta do. My boss showed me the gory chicken coup to give me an idea of what could happen if the raccoon found its way into the pens of anything important. It really did seem like it had been enjoying itself the way the blood was festively smeared all over the walls and floor, with the entrails hanging around like streamers. The survivors cowered in loft. I was determined to make the raccoon pay.
As I was thinking of all the terrible things I would do to that stupid mammal, my boss handed me a gun and a flashlight. "Whoa. I have no idea how to use this thing." "Ummm... point and shoot, idiot." We had a good rapport. "Don't you have, like, a sword or a taser or something?" "Shut up. What did you think we were going to do. Let's go." I've used shotguns and rifles before, but only in the context of Boy Scout Camp. The only pistols I had ever used were in Counter-Strike, and sometimes in Unreal Tournament, but only before I found a nice flak cannon. The only hint he gave me was to use the flashlight to catch the eye-shine of the raccoon, and we went off our separate ways, keeping parallel to make sure the intruder couldn't get past us.
We didn't find him. We spent at least an hour checking every tree and bush he could be hiding in. Hopefully he had left after murdering the chickens, and hadn't made it into the main enclosure. Still, we had to make sure the electrified fence hadn't somehow been compromised. Of course that meant -I- had to check while my boss continued to make the rounds of the high-priority tenants. So I spent the next chunk of my night walking the entire length of the fence that surrounds the entire conservancy. In the dark. Alone. With a gun. While my body desperately tried to rid itself of excess MSG. And did I mention it was electrified? And there wasn't really a path that went around it so much as just brambles. Lots and lots of brambles. Many flesh wounds and minor electrocutions later, I happily reported back to my boss that I didn't find any holes under or in the fence, and could 100% confirm that it was in fact electrified the entire way around. I breathed a sigh of relief as he said he hadn't found anything either, so the raccoon must have left after his chicken massacre. "Do one more walk around, though, just to make sure."
I ended up getting back to my bathroom at around 2:00 am and my bed at 2:30. Luckily my interviewer was in PST, and was a night owl, so I still got the chance to exhaustedly do my interview. One positive was that the night had given plenty of pre-and-post interview small talk, and they did end up offering me the position.
This is why I hate raccoons.
I worked at a waterfowl conservancy one summer, which is essentially a place that breeds endangered (and non-endangered) ducks, geese, and swans for release or zoos or sometimes private collectors. I lived on the grounds with my boss and the grounds-keeper, and the other employees lived pretty close, so it wasn't uncommon for us to go out to eat together. It was in a fairly rural part of Connecticut, so of course the closest Chinese food was a terrible all-you-can eat buffet that would ruin your digestive track for weeks at a time. One night we came back from that greasy but delicious GI destroyer and I was immediately in the john for about three hours as my body tried to cleanse itself. When the flood gates finally closed, I remembered that I was actually scheduled for a interview with the Magic Online people for a moderating position. I was thinking about canceling it because it would be awkward to have to repeatedly run off in the middle of it, when I heard what sounded like a gunshot from bird enclosure, followed quickly by two more.
"Hmmmm thats's odd," I thought to myself, but since I was in a place where everyone owned four or five guns, I didn't think much of it. A minute later, though, my cellphone rang. It was my boss. A raccoon had gotten into the enclosure and killed a half-dozen of our chickens. I had to come help him look for the perpetrator. My stomach twisted into a knot, and not from the General Tso's. Raccoons are mean motherfuckers, and actually seem to kill stuff just out of curiosity or fun. My boss one time had several dozen quail murdered by a pair of them. They had just come in and squeezed their little heads off. Sometimes the raccoons took a bit or two, but mostly the left the corpses laying around.
But my interview!
Doesn't matter.
But my bowels!
Doesn't matter.
The place's grounds-keeper had gone out and I was the only person on premises to help. I briefly e-mailed the contact I had for the interview and, grudging and miserable, walked into the night to go find my boss.
On the property we had some birds of whose species there are only only a few thousands left in the wild. We also had birds that were slated to be sold to zoos for tens of thousands of dollars. I knew we had to find that raccoon. It was just that my innards were in such revolt that I had to make a constant, concerted effort just to keep myself isotonic with my environment. But you gotta do what you gotta do. My boss showed me the gory chicken coup to give me an idea of what could happen if the raccoon found its way into the pens of anything important. It really did seem like it had been enjoying itself the way the blood was festively smeared all over the walls and floor, with the entrails hanging around like streamers. The survivors cowered in loft. I was determined to make the raccoon pay.
As I was thinking of all the terrible things I would do to that stupid mammal, my boss handed me a gun and a flashlight. "Whoa. I have no idea how to use this thing." "Ummm... point and shoot, idiot." We had a good rapport. "Don't you have, like, a sword or a taser or something?" "Shut up. What did you think we were going to do. Let's go." I've used shotguns and rifles before, but only in the context of Boy Scout Camp. The only pistols I had ever used were in Counter-Strike, and sometimes in Unreal Tournament, but only before I found a nice flak cannon. The only hint he gave me was to use the flashlight to catch the eye-shine of the raccoon, and we went off our separate ways, keeping parallel to make sure the intruder couldn't get past us.
We didn't find him. We spent at least an hour checking every tree and bush he could be hiding in. Hopefully he had left after murdering the chickens, and hadn't made it into the main enclosure. Still, we had to make sure the electrified fence hadn't somehow been compromised. Of course that meant -I- had to check while my boss continued to make the rounds of the high-priority tenants. So I spent the next chunk of my night walking the entire length of the fence that surrounds the entire conservancy. In the dark. Alone. With a gun. While my body desperately tried to rid itself of excess MSG. And did I mention it was electrified? And there wasn't really a path that went around it so much as just brambles. Lots and lots of brambles. Many flesh wounds and minor electrocutions later, I happily reported back to my boss that I didn't find any holes under or in the fence, and could 100% confirm that it was in fact electrified the entire way around. I breathed a sigh of relief as he said he hadn't found anything either, so the raccoon must have left after his chicken massacre. "Do one more walk around, though, just to make sure."
I ended up getting back to my bathroom at around 2:00 am and my bed at 2:30. Luckily my interviewer was in PST, and was a night owl, so I still got the chance to exhaustedly do my interview. One positive was that the night had given plenty of pre-and-post interview small talk, and they did end up offering me the position.
This is why I hate raccoons.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Humor and Sanity
Back during sophomore year of college, I was involuntarily committed to a psyche ward. They weren't especially nice about it. The calm, maddeningly dispassionate lady at student health "recommended" that I check in "of my own accord." When I told her that I didn't want to, she strongly recommended it, and I strongly restated that I was disposed otherwise. She broke the awkward silence that followed by tenatively asking what I was thinking. Since I have the unfortunate defense mechanism of naive honesty, I told her I was wondering what would happen if I tried to leave. I had blinked first, and she excused herself from the room, leaving me alone with the increasingly disturbed Calm-Lady-in-Training, who, with wide eyes, made small talk with me as I tried to remember what floor I was on and how I might make it to the front door.
My defense honesty and genuine curiosity broke through again: I asked her if it was standard practice to bring a new recruit into such an unconventional "counseling session". She said that it wasn't, but only said a few words of explanation before realizing her mistake and clamming up. Apparently my "case" was informative enough for a neophyte to cut her teeth on. I laughed at this, since it wasn't the first time my internal idiosyncrasies had been put on display. Before I got my tonsils out I used to get strep throat or some other bacterial infestation of the ENT area once every few months or so since I was very young. My tonsils were got so ravaged, and my lymph nodes swell up to such abnormal sizes, that doctors would often call in their peers and students to check out just how bloated a face can get. One time, with a fever of around 103, I had to sit on the cold, adjustable bed for an extra half-hour while my doctor rounded up three med students from UNC and gave them all a lesson on neck palpation.
Anyway, it turns out that "we strongly recommend" really means "we're calling the cops," and they were on their way. As the Calm-Lady-in-Training got more and more visibly excited, I began to shut down. They were locking me up, against my will, and there was nothing short of physical flight that I could do about it. They even brought in a big burly dude to stand behind me with one hand on my shoulder so that I wouldn't cause any trouble. But I had accepted my fate. I was forced to make the most surreal phone call of my life. "Hey mom. Yep, I'm crazy I guess. Yep, been like that for a while. Nope, never told anyone. No I'm not going to hurt anybody." They had actually told my parents that I might be a danger to other people. What?
The cops showed up and very politely asked me if I needed to be handcuffed. My brain actually slipped out of gear for a few seconds. There are some questions that feel so bizarre that your brain doesn't really know how to go about processing them. What if I said yes? Would that make them think I was more crazy, or less? Would a sane person be more or less likely to tell a cop they needed to be handcuffed? My brain did kick in, though, as I saw the handcuffs come out, and said no if I actually had a choice I did not prefer to be psychically restrained. So instead of a cop car in handcuffs, I got a ride to the hospital strapped down to a gurney in an ambulance. The ambulance technician was actually great. "Shit, you look fine to me. What do you get to lie down on a soft bed for?" I know! Tell them that! It was the last time someone treated me like a normal person and not some fragile, glass doll for a long time.
They took me to the suicide ward, which is the worst. They take all your stuff from you, including your shoe laces, and leave you to floppy-footedly stumble around a cell with only three walls and no place to hide from the disapproving, large black nurse who gives you annoyed glances every five minutes. I guess it's to make sure your sorry ass isn't trying to smother yourself by shoving your shirt down your throat, or however people manage to kill themselves in such uninspiring circumstances. The worst part is that it's freaking cold and you have no blanket. You don't really have anything at all, so there is nothing to distract you from everything that has just happened... and everything that might happen. All there is to do is lie down, shivering, and do battle with all the malicious thoughts that have set out to wreck your brain.
I did have a nurse, though, come and patch me up. As she applied the disinfectant, she worriedly warned me, "this may hurt a bit," and I flinched. I flinched at the thought that the liquid meant to treat my self-inflicted wounds might sting a little bit. Dumbass. But the worst part, the thing that made me realize how far gone I actually was: I didn't laugh. I didn't laugh at one of the most unintentionally hilarious thing that had ever been said to me. I always laugh. But I didn't.
The next stop was the pysch ward, which was straight out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. My two roommates were a guy who would go back to our room at least thrice an hour to make sure the FBI hadn't bugged it while he was drinking his apple juice, and a fellow student who had experienced a "prolonged psychotic break from reality". A few doors down from me from a lady who had an entire room to herself, kept dark. She was always strapped down to her bed, and screamed horrible things at the top of her lungs every moment she was awake. It was mostly incoherent shouting, but when I could make out words, it was usually about how she didn't belong there and how she wanted to call her lawyer, and that she demanded to be released right that moment. But... that's how I felt. If she couldn't tell how crazy she was, or at least how crazy she was acting, how I could I? It was that woman's incessant, mind-fracturing howls that convinced me that I was, in fact, crazy; that I was, in fact, broken; and that I did need to be locked away. Why else would I be there, with all those other crazy people?
My mind shut down, and I was completely numb in the brain for a good thirty-six hours as my body went through the motions of being a person. I colored... a lot... with crayons. I think I still have the drawings somewhere. I got to call my new girlfriend and tell her where I was. She actually stayed with me, but I think she regrets it now. I interacted vaguely with all the other crazies and met with doctor after doctor who tried to diagnose me. I stumped them all. I didn't quite fit anywhere. Like when your car won't stop making that funny noise, but every mechanic swears there's nothing causing it- my glassy-eyed stories didn't place me solidly into any medically established category. They recommended that I stay on for observation, though, and informed me that they could hold me for fourteen days without consent. I knew not to argue.
But then I found the thing that would make me feel human again. I laughed. It was in the "lounge" where people dully watch TV all day. I was staring out the barred, frosted glass windows at what I guessed was a tree, half-heartedly trying to figure out exactly where in the city I was, when they made the daily announcement that "All patients who wish to shave should report to the back room for supervision." I glanced around as half the clientele drowsily got to their feet and started shuffling down the hallway. I accidentally met the gaze of a woman, not much older than me, who had come in around the same time I had. We both broke off eye-contact immediately (you never know what sort of shouting fit that might set off) and watched as two of the more out-of-it patients started to loudly argue and scuffle over who got to shave first. Our eyes met again... and we laughed.
We spent time talking after that. She was a law student sent in for almost ODing on pain killers. She had some brutal scars that put anything I had to shame. We shared stories of family reactions and future worries. She had once kicked a cocaine habit cold turkey with nothing but a dark room and the series run of I Love Lucy. Wow. She was married to her cousin. Wait... what? Oh yeah, she and her cousin drunkenly made out one night at a family reunion, and the thrill compelled them to keep it going. They discovered, much to their dismay, that they were actually quite compatible and ended up getting hitched. She calls him her cousband. They keep a picture of their shared ancestors on the mantle just so people will ask who they are and they can reply with "our grandparents." That's actually how most people find out.
That story, shared with a smile, did more to help me than anything else at the center. From then on, I had someone with whom I could revel in all the little absurdities of living full time in a nut house. I told her the story of the nurse on suicide watch. The nurse had warned her too! She had heard it before, though, and had already prepared a witty retort ready. I told her how our Nurse Ratched would slightly move my schizophrenic roommate's stuff around just to bug him out because he always put up a fuss about medicine, and she told me how cliques would form among the women around mental-illness lines. Depressed against anorexics. What, a depressed anorexic? Girl, you got to pick a side.
Once, when we happened to roll the same group therapy session, we both got to hear the story of The God Lady for the first time. We called her that because she was always rambling on about the end of the world and judgement and salvation, which I figured was enough per se to get her impounded with us. But it turns out she had actually broken into and vandalized a church. I intentionally avoided catching my friend's eye. Specifically, she had set fire to a crucifix and drawn something sexually suggestive on some of the Jesus paintings. Look at the ground, just look at the ground. You can always pretend to be crying. Why did she do all that? Because God told her to. I had to tap out. I faked a sob to stifle my giggles, excused myself, and ran to my room where I broke down in laughter loud enough to drown out the screams of the woman next door. My friend followed me and we sat there gasping for breath at having found out the true nature of God Lady.
These weren't laughs of feigned superiority. I laughed at myself, often, and was ribbed by my friend for my own insecurities and bizarre tendencies. The deepest, darkest secrets you would never tell anyone become the small talk in places like that. But finding humor in it all allowed me to process and filter the things that I was feeling and experiencing in a healthy way. When I could jokingly share tips at how to hide scars (I would cut on my scalp), or talk about the crazy things I would use to inflict pain without leaving marks (keys worked well), it all helped me understand how messed up I actually was, but at the same time compartmentalized the damaged bits so that I could have another, healthy part of my brain objectively analyze and start to fix it. Laughing helped me realize that it wasn't -me- that was broken, it was just a part of me, and that there were plenty of systems still functioning.
That is, essentially, how comedy and humor kept, and keeps, me sane.
My defense honesty and genuine curiosity broke through again: I asked her if it was standard practice to bring a new recruit into such an unconventional "counseling session". She said that it wasn't, but only said a few words of explanation before realizing her mistake and clamming up. Apparently my "case" was informative enough for a neophyte to cut her teeth on. I laughed at this, since it wasn't the first time my internal idiosyncrasies had been put on display. Before I got my tonsils out I used to get strep throat or some other bacterial infestation of the ENT area once every few months or so since I was very young. My tonsils were got so ravaged, and my lymph nodes swell up to such abnormal sizes, that doctors would often call in their peers and students to check out just how bloated a face can get. One time, with a fever of around 103, I had to sit on the cold, adjustable bed for an extra half-hour while my doctor rounded up three med students from UNC and gave them all a lesson on neck palpation.
Anyway, it turns out that "we strongly recommend" really means "we're calling the cops," and they were on their way. As the Calm-Lady-in-Training got more and more visibly excited, I began to shut down. They were locking me up, against my will, and there was nothing short of physical flight that I could do about it. They even brought in a big burly dude to stand behind me with one hand on my shoulder so that I wouldn't cause any trouble. But I had accepted my fate. I was forced to make the most surreal phone call of my life. "Hey mom. Yep, I'm crazy I guess. Yep, been like that for a while. Nope, never told anyone. No I'm not going to hurt anybody." They had actually told my parents that I might be a danger to other people. What?
The cops showed up and very politely asked me if I needed to be handcuffed. My brain actually slipped out of gear for a few seconds. There are some questions that feel so bizarre that your brain doesn't really know how to go about processing them. What if I said yes? Would that make them think I was more crazy, or less? Would a sane person be more or less likely to tell a cop they needed to be handcuffed? My brain did kick in, though, as I saw the handcuffs come out, and said no if I actually had a choice I did not prefer to be psychically restrained. So instead of a cop car in handcuffs, I got a ride to the hospital strapped down to a gurney in an ambulance. The ambulance technician was actually great. "Shit, you look fine to me. What do you get to lie down on a soft bed for?" I know! Tell them that! It was the last time someone treated me like a normal person and not some fragile, glass doll for a long time.
They took me to the suicide ward, which is the worst. They take all your stuff from you, including your shoe laces, and leave you to floppy-footedly stumble around a cell with only three walls and no place to hide from the disapproving, large black nurse who gives you annoyed glances every five minutes. I guess it's to make sure your sorry ass isn't trying to smother yourself by shoving your shirt down your throat, or however people manage to kill themselves in such uninspiring circumstances. The worst part is that it's freaking cold and you have no blanket. You don't really have anything at all, so there is nothing to distract you from everything that has just happened... and everything that might happen. All there is to do is lie down, shivering, and do battle with all the malicious thoughts that have set out to wreck your brain.
I did have a nurse, though, come and patch me up. As she applied the disinfectant, she worriedly warned me, "this may hurt a bit," and I flinched. I flinched at the thought that the liquid meant to treat my self-inflicted wounds might sting a little bit. Dumbass. But the worst part, the thing that made me realize how far gone I actually was: I didn't laugh. I didn't laugh at one of the most unintentionally hilarious thing that had ever been said to me. I always laugh. But I didn't.
The next stop was the pysch ward, which was straight out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. My two roommates were a guy who would go back to our room at least thrice an hour to make sure the FBI hadn't bugged it while he was drinking his apple juice, and a fellow student who had experienced a "prolonged psychotic break from reality". A few doors down from me from a lady who had an entire room to herself, kept dark. She was always strapped down to her bed, and screamed horrible things at the top of her lungs every moment she was awake. It was mostly incoherent shouting, but when I could make out words, it was usually about how she didn't belong there and how she wanted to call her lawyer, and that she demanded to be released right that moment. But... that's how I felt. If she couldn't tell how crazy she was, or at least how crazy she was acting, how I could I? It was that woman's incessant, mind-fracturing howls that convinced me that I was, in fact, crazy; that I was, in fact, broken; and that I did need to be locked away. Why else would I be there, with all those other crazy people?
My mind shut down, and I was completely numb in the brain for a good thirty-six hours as my body went through the motions of being a person. I colored... a lot... with crayons. I think I still have the drawings somewhere. I got to call my new girlfriend and tell her where I was. She actually stayed with me, but I think she regrets it now. I interacted vaguely with all the other crazies and met with doctor after doctor who tried to diagnose me. I stumped them all. I didn't quite fit anywhere. Like when your car won't stop making that funny noise, but every mechanic swears there's nothing causing it- my glassy-eyed stories didn't place me solidly into any medically established category. They recommended that I stay on for observation, though, and informed me that they could hold me for fourteen days without consent. I knew not to argue.
But then I found the thing that would make me feel human again. I laughed. It was in the "lounge" where people dully watch TV all day. I was staring out the barred, frosted glass windows at what I guessed was a tree, half-heartedly trying to figure out exactly where in the city I was, when they made the daily announcement that "All patients who wish to shave should report to the back room for supervision." I glanced around as half the clientele drowsily got to their feet and started shuffling down the hallway. I accidentally met the gaze of a woman, not much older than me, who had come in around the same time I had. We both broke off eye-contact immediately (you never know what sort of shouting fit that might set off) and watched as two of the more out-of-it patients started to loudly argue and scuffle over who got to shave first. Our eyes met again... and we laughed.
We spent time talking after that. She was a law student sent in for almost ODing on pain killers. She had some brutal scars that put anything I had to shame. We shared stories of family reactions and future worries. She had once kicked a cocaine habit cold turkey with nothing but a dark room and the series run of I Love Lucy. Wow. She was married to her cousin. Wait... what? Oh yeah, she and her cousin drunkenly made out one night at a family reunion, and the thrill compelled them to keep it going. They discovered, much to their dismay, that they were actually quite compatible and ended up getting hitched. She calls him her cousband. They keep a picture of their shared ancestors on the mantle just so people will ask who they are and they can reply with "our grandparents." That's actually how most people find out.
That story, shared with a smile, did more to help me than anything else at the center. From then on, I had someone with whom I could revel in all the little absurdities of living full time in a nut house. I told her the story of the nurse on suicide watch. The nurse had warned her too! She had heard it before, though, and had already prepared a witty retort ready. I told her how our Nurse Ratched would slightly move my schizophrenic roommate's stuff around just to bug him out because he always put up a fuss about medicine, and she told me how cliques would form among the women around mental-illness lines. Depressed against anorexics. What, a depressed anorexic? Girl, you got to pick a side.
Once, when we happened to roll the same group therapy session, we both got to hear the story of The God Lady for the first time. We called her that because she was always rambling on about the end of the world and judgement and salvation, which I figured was enough per se to get her impounded with us. But it turns out she had actually broken into and vandalized a church. I intentionally avoided catching my friend's eye. Specifically, she had set fire to a crucifix and drawn something sexually suggestive on some of the Jesus paintings. Look at the ground, just look at the ground. You can always pretend to be crying. Why did she do all that? Because God told her to. I had to tap out. I faked a sob to stifle my giggles, excused myself, and ran to my room where I broke down in laughter loud enough to drown out the screams of the woman next door. My friend followed me and we sat there gasping for breath at having found out the true nature of God Lady.
These weren't laughs of feigned superiority. I laughed at myself, often, and was ribbed by my friend for my own insecurities and bizarre tendencies. The deepest, darkest secrets you would never tell anyone become the small talk in places like that. But finding humor in it all allowed me to process and filter the things that I was feeling and experiencing in a healthy way. When I could jokingly share tips at how to hide scars (I would cut on my scalp), or talk about the crazy things I would use to inflict pain without leaving marks (keys worked well), it all helped me understand how messed up I actually was, but at the same time compartmentalized the damaged bits so that I could have another, healthy part of my brain objectively analyze and start to fix it. Laughing helped me realize that it wasn't -me- that was broken, it was just a part of me, and that there were plenty of systems still functioning.
That is, essentially, how comedy and humor kept, and keeps, me sane.
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