“Gaby, I’m delirious again,” Emma cries, galloping around the room. She weaves between the pillars and beds, giggling riotously. I laugh with her from my usual spot on my frumpy mattress, surrounded by piles of unread books and word searches. Emma stops hopping now, hiding behind the perpetually pulled-back curtain between our beds.
“Peekaboo!” Her head pops out from the right side of the curtain, her long, dirty-blonde hair preceding her. It is funny, if a bit childish, and we keep our eyes locked on each other as we laugh. Right now, I love her dearly. She is the last real person in my world, which is otherwise filled with fearsome creatures.
I wonder aloud if our mandated half-hour of quiet time in our rooms is over. Another patient has just been given a watch by her sister, and Emma has taken it upon herself to pester her for the time every three minutes. I can feel from her tone each time she asks that she fruitlessly hopes Melissa will say: “It is a week from the last time you asked me, and we are far away from here.”
It has been, at this point, about seven days since I’ve been admitted to the psychiatric hospital. I was put here because I’d flimsily attempted suicide. My attempt was impulsive and half-baked, but I say “flimsily” with great caution—it is not a flimsy thing to try to hurt yourself, or to feel as if your life is no longer worth living. I speak only for myself, in the sense that as I’ve thought about it, I have realized that I didn’t actually want to die; not then, at least, and not since I’d been admitted. There is something distinct between wanting to die and wanting the pain to stop. I wanted the latter, and by an unfortunate series of events, I landed myself in a hospital that attempts to help one do just that: to learn how to handle the pain and retain a hope that one day it will stop.
On my first day in the ward, I cried mercilessly. I cried at the people around me, at my boyfriend who came to visit, at the psychiatrists who saw me, at the other patients sitting about or wandering the cold, sterile halls. I thought that if I cried hard enough, someone would feel guilty. They would realize that they’d messed up, and let me go home. I didn’t belong in the looney bin with a bunch of schizophrenics. I don’t hear voices or see visions—I want to be an astronaut, I go to a good school, and everyone tells me I’m a smart, mature girl. I do not belong here; I am no monster. This plan of mine was grandly unsuccessful, and probably contributed to me staying for ten days, the length recommended for those who attempt suicide.
It was difficult to look at any of the other patients. One boy, though, silently called out to me: his shoulder-length brown hair hung tangled and oily, and he wore a tearful expression on his face. His back hunched as he walked on end in a circle around the ward, speaking only to the nurses to ask for discharge or more sedatives. Watching him made my throat constrict and a wave of needles roll over my skin. I didn’t want to begin wondering what brought him here, because doing that would mean I would have to come to terms with what led me to be put here, with him. There is no version of me that would look or act like that. I settled for crying at him, and when his constant sobs and wandering began to dizzy me, I cried in my room. Emma, then a stranger, sat silently beside me for the duration of my weeping.
~*~
For these ten days, my life was counted in showers. Only nine more showers, eight, seven, six, and so on. Time flew by when I was showering; I only had to ask the nurses for my toiletries and a towel, sit around until a bathroom opened, and wait until the water changed from frigid to lukewarm. As the water heated, I would stare at myself in the mirror. First, I would look at myself with my clothes on: when my friends came to visit, when my boyfriend’s parents came, how did I look? Normal? I wore the same clothes everyday, a sweater and jeans because another patient told me the outfit looked like something a college student would wear. When I was satisfied with the clothed inspection, I undressed myself and stared at my naked body. I would study it from every angle; I posed, sucked in, stuck my chest out, flexed my arms, exposed my stubbled underarms. I could not recognize myself. Murky skin hung limp and pale off of jagged bone, my breasts and buttocks tumorous lumps of flesh. It seemed impossible that this same body could have been accepted into a world-renowned university or travelled grand portions of the world. No, this was a joyless creature that belonged in the obscenely lit bathroom of a psych ward.
My visitors saw the same thing: a monstrous body contorted to mirror whatever sick thing toiled in my mind. They became simply a mode of entertainment I had the pleasure of seeing two or three times a day.
This doesn’t mean that all the other patients became real—no, they were monsters too. That oily-haired boy was a monster, bent and grotesque, slithering down the halls. Other patients were varying levels of verbal, often physically and always mentally scarred, and spent their time sobbing or sleeping. This is why Emma stood out. She glowed—not a glow of beauty, although she was incredibly pretty, but a glow of free-flowing joy. Whatever led her here was simply a failed attempt at dampening this shine.
She and I quickly became childish friends. We began speaking because she asked me, half-laughing, why I had been crying in our bedroom. I told her I couldn’t believe I was in a psych ward, and she agreed. She explained we were in there for the same reason. But she didn’t cry about it, instead joking that I was annoying her with my crying. I laughed despite my tears—a real laugh, like the ones she let escape constantly and freely. I never wanted to leave her side.
Emma was a short, thin girl who read shitty romance books to pass the time, and her tiny frame seemed to fit an impossible amount of cutely snide comments: “Ooh, wow, James Baldwin. Aren’t you smart,” she teased about my choice of novel. I stuck my tongue out in response, wanting to pick up some cheap paperback just so we could share that together.
But I didn’t, for I wanted to feel that I was still the kind of girl who would read James Baldwin for fun. I think Emma sensed this. She would ask me about my studies, what I like to read, my writing, and sit there with a little smirk on her face before saying “Okay, Ms. Ivy League.” But she said it with love, as she’d always ask more about it and brag about me to other patients or her parents. She was equally as good a student as I was, I made out from what she told me, but she treated me like that because she knew it made me feel like the smart girl I felt I was before I’d attempted suicide and ended up with a stint in the hospital.
We were just normal friends. But she knew, innately, that I was afraid we weren’t—that we were just some trauma-bonded psych ward freaks who grappled onto each other to stay alive, and she did these small things to comfort me. And, all the while, she glowed with that mirthful serenity, warming every moment in that cold hospital.
~*~
Once, the oily haired boy came up to us when we were sitting in the front lounge, racing each other at word searches. He looked less horrifyingly disheveled than when I first saw him, and wore a red flannel that almost suited him. His aura had improved, or maybe I’d just accepted it. I felt none of that earlier terror with Emma next to me—in fact, I was preparing a quick retort to whatever this kid was going to say. He asked if we liked 1960s music and if we would follow his account on Instagram when we got out. On his account he posted videos of him practicing guitar riffs and singing.
“Sure, man. Do you play Taylor Swift?” she asked, and we all giggled. I was relieved to see him brighten.
Maybe this boy is a monster, but so am I. We are kind monsters, freaks who dream and want, who can cry and mean it. Who can need help and still be worth a damn.
FOR T.K., WITH ABOUNDING HOPE