I’m writing this from a psych ward 230 miles from where I was born. Its not as dramatic as it sounds; I asked to be here. I even asked to stay when they said I was ready for discharge. The sympathetic psychiatrist agreed to leave me in treatment as long as my insurance didn’t object. They did not. Unfortunately, the last five days I’ve been here have been spent in isolation. I managed to somehow contract COVID in a closed ward after a few days here, but remain asymptomatic. I’m a strong believer in the efficacy of vaccines. The other two patients who tested positive apparently are not. I am bored, but they are miserable. For five days straight I’ve been reading National Geographic from the mid-1980’s (the space stuff—even the Earth stuff —is grossly outdated) and Time magazine from the late 2010’s just before novel corona virus meant anything to anyone. Unbelievably bored, but I am grateful. I don’t mean that sarcastically. It can’t be the Wellbutrin, it hasn’t been long enough. Maybe it’s the Depakote.
Had they discharged me over the weekend, or even Monday, that would have meant living on the streets until Wednesday night when my mother returned from Texas to see my son play Jean Valjean in a school production of Lés Misarables (this will be important later). And we all know how that ends. I’ve done it and survived–I’m writing this aren’t I–but being outside means having everything with you stolen when you finally succumb to sleep, and inevitably, always, ends with a death-defying blood alcohol content.
Three times now I’ve checked myself into a psychiatric facility out of desperation, mostly while in some stage of alcohol-induced psychosis or breakdown. I’ve learned how to say the right things to get admitted. I don’t think I’ve ever been consciously suicidal, I’m too afraid of dying. But they won’t admit you if you’re just desperate. There was a bullshit, involuntary 72-hour hold in those harried weeks after Linda moved out so many years ago. She called the police from work and said I was threatening to jump off a bridge. I was not. I sent her pictures from the overpass near our apartment on my way walking to the liquor store across Mopac (my intent was to capture a stylized disarray). It was literally the quickest route.
I suppose I had been poking myself all morning with the tip of a blunt steak knife before I decided I needed more vodka, but that was just to feel something. Suicidal ideation? Not even close. I wasn’t imagining any scenarios.
I was at the pool when the police got there, they had been searching for me in the Greenbelt. I saw the helicopter, but I didn’t make the connection until four officers emerged from the underbrush abutting my complex. When they took me back to the apartment, a cop noticed blood on my sheets. And not just drops. So they took me to Shoal Creek. I wasn’t under arrest, but I wasn’t free to say no. And as I would come to learn the psych ward, like holding cells and pre-trial detention, like emergency room hallways as you wait for a bed, like rehab and intensive outpatient, like life when it’s not shitty or great, is mostly wasting time.