in stereo


day in and day out, i sit in this bed, in this hospital, looking out that window.  the views change subtly from season to season, but this is the bay area after all, and we only have two seasons round these parts: rain and fog.

they keep the window open during the warm days,  because they never expect me to do anything.  i suppose they are right.  five years locked up in a mental hospital, patterns are bound to show up somewhere.

the doctors have never really figured out physically or mentally what is wrong with me.  just another twenty-something angster who attempted to kill herself, albeit slowly.  the therapy, the drugs, the attempt at going back into society: none of it worked.

it would have been so easy for them to say, "well! she always did think she was better than everyone else.  always talking about things that were depressing and always  on another planet."  and truth be told, they have said it, time and time again.  my several attempts at reconciliation with society before this break always lead to a few moments of happiness, and too many nights of despair.

so here i sit, day after day, my arms at my side, my back to the headboard.  i don't speak, i don't move.  i just sit here, and stare out that window.

the nurses, hell, they love me.  they come in and play with my hair, brushing it till it gleams and opening the window shade just a tad bit higher to make it almost reflect sunlight.  they sometimes braid it, letting the heavy braid fall against my chest and push back any tendrils that might fall into my eyes.  

Once, one of them attempted to put make-up on me "to make you look pretty for your family darlin'" she drawled.  i turned my head and just glared at her, and she gasped and dropped the make-up brush.  she ran to get the doctor, but when he came back, i had already turned my head back towards the window.  he knows i'm listening.  he also knows that i can move: i just simply don't want to.

i don't know what it is, but i just don't want to be a part of life anymore.  not too long ago, i had these goals and these dreams of what i wanted to be, but, life and reality got in the way.  i used to lie awake, thinking, for nights on end about my life, watching other people during my waking hours just live theirs.  that was the difference between me and the generalized public: i lived for the future and they lived in the present. 

Jack, my boy friend, he always laughed at me, especially when i was always in hurry doing something.  "Ginny," he would say, "don't you know life is the here and now, not the possibility of the future?"  I would always glare at him, but the glare would turn into giggles, and I would hug him.

Jack would also say "You are the sanest person i know", and we would agrue about my sanity.  i was convinced i was crazy.  I wanted to be zelda fitzgerald and go nuts and have the world love me the all over.  but jack, he had different ideas.  he would sooth me by stroking my back and reading obscure short stories from authors only he would know about.  my mind would spin down, and finally i would sleep.

i don't remember how it began, but what i do remember is what i was doing.
first i stopped going out with my friends.
i stopped answering phone calls, email and pager messages.
i stopped sleeping.
i stopped going to work.
i stopped eating.
i stopped moving from my bed.

after a few weeks of this behavior, someone took me to the hospital.  i'm not sure who it was, i think it was jack.  the doctors could not find anything physically wrong with me, but since i had not had anything to eat in days, they hooked up an iv tube to my arm and left me alone.

shrinks came and went out of my hospital room like a revolving door.  i was talking then, but my speech was halted and usually my answers were short.  i knew about shrinks, have been seeing them since i was nine.  this wasn't anything new to me.  i knew what answers they would want to hear and so i provided them. frustrated, they would attempt to cajole me to give some sort of answer other then monosyllabic sentences.

that's when i stopped talking.

to me, it was pointless.  i had been talking for years, but, no one would ever listen.  thousands of dollars poured down the tubes in therapy, and no shrink was better than the next.

goddamn voyeurs.

after a few months, they sent me to a state mental institution, where i have been residing ever since.

this is my way of suicide.  

everyday, the doctor comes in and gleans over the paperwork, smiles at me and ruffles my hair.  he always smells like whiskey.  i guess working in a nut house can do that to a person. 

back in the early days, when my sickness wasn't so severe, they used to take me to the recreation center to be with the other patients.  the shrink at that time thought it was a good idea, to maybe expose me to other living beings, even if crazy, i would want to talk again.

well it obviously didn't goddamn work.

i saw too much, and they knew it.  i was forgotten, in my wheel chair in the sunny part of the room, so i was left alone for the most of the day.  i would watch the nurses pocketing the wonder drugs for the patients to take home for themselves, the orderlies smacking some of the patients if they didn't do what they wanted.  i watched one orderlie take little samantha out for 15 minutes, and when she came back, she couldn't stop crying.  samantha was in for some sort of nervous disorder, and so tiny, her thigh was as big as my calf.  basically, her family couldn't deal with her problems, so they sent her to this joint to get better.  when one of the nurses noticed she was upset, and asked her what was wrong, samantha started sliding on the floor towards me.  she would bury her face in my hair and just hug me from behind.  exasperated, the nurses would throw their hands up in the air, leave us alone and bitch that they were overworked and underpaid to deal with spoiled 'kids' as they called us.

samantha knew, somehow, that i knew what was going on, and she also knew, i would never tell.  maybe that was more important to her than having the orderlie dealt with.  Yet, sooner or later, an orderlie would be caught messing with the patients again and the hospital would pay the family off and fire the orderlie.

it was always circular.

after that incident, samantha would come and stand behind my chair, brushing my hair.  i don't know how she knew that i loved having my hair brushed, but she knew.  there was always unspoken communication between her and i, one look in her green eyes with my brown, and instantly we clicked.  with samantha, i always felt like i could be human again, because her recognization of what was wrong was so clear in her eyes.

i loved her.

it hurt me when she was taken away.  her family basically decided she was 'better', and had her discharged.  What really happened was what i stated above: they found out about the incident, and threatened to sue.  the hospital fired the orderlie, pay off the family and samantha was moved.

i found out, much too late, that she had attempted to come see me, but the doctor in charge always told her that i wasn't stable.  what samantha wasn't told was that after her discharge, i  had started pacing the floor at night.  up and down, for hours.  the doctors (and the nurses) thought that inactivity had made me immobile after the first few years, but, all that massaging had kept me in somewhat flexible condition.  after a few nights of my walking, they had to lock my door to keep me from supposedly upsetting the other patients.  but when i started pacing my bedroom, for hours, they attempted to knock me out with drugs so that i would sleep. after awhile, they just decided that since the drugs weren't working anymore, locking the doors won't work, they just would cuff me to my bed with those damn padded cuffs.  

i started screaming.

not one word out of me in two years, and they put those stupid padded cuffs on me, and i'm screaming bloody murder.  the whole hospital was in an uproar over my 'miracle', but the doctors weren't impressed.  they knew that i could walk/talk this whole time, that i just didn't want to.

they unlocked the cuffs and i stopped screaming almost instantly.  it was decided, that since i wasn't "violent", that they would just keep me in my room, and let me pace if that is what i wanted. 

and it was.

after a few weeks, exhausted by my late night wanderings, i finally started sleeping.  the doctor , noticing that i was sleeping, but tossing and turning all night, prescribed a new wonder drug to make me sleep peacefully.

and that is how i have been ever since.

i'm eating now, but it's soft foods and nothing much else.  since my bouts of near atrophy conditions, they have started walking me around the gardens for about an hour a day.  but when left alone, in the confines of my room, i don't move on my own anymore.

jack still comes and see's me for a weekend every month.  five years apart can do damage on a relationship, particularly when half of the relationship is locked in a nut house.   he's been wonderful to me, basically just being jack.  he brings me wild flowers freshly picked and combs my hair and braids it just so.  he tells me all of his life doings, and i just stare into his eyes, looking for some sort of lie.  it's never there.  

he's got a girlfriend now, and he loves her, but he swears that i'm the only one for him.  the girlfriend came to see me once, and  couldn't stop fidgeting with the things in my room.  she kept picking up the bric a brac that had started accumulating in my room and moaning about the atmosphere of the hospital.  jack never brought her back to see me, and i don't blame him.

this is my life.

but things have been changing for me recently, and perhaps it's because of the view i'm now seeing.  instead of a brick wall and some tree's, i'm noticing the details more refined now: something i've never noticed before.  i love watching the birds make their nests, and watching the mother bird feed her young.  seeing the different types of life existing, basically a whole world, outside of my bedroom window.

and i am not a part of it.