Insanity

When I was in The Hospital last year, it was a very anxious time for me. And it didn't help that I had doctors and nurses asking me why I was anxious. I was in a freaking hospital. Duh.

I was worried that I wouldn't be able to go home within a few days, or that they'd keep me there indefinitely. I was afraid I would be hurt by one of the other, more violent patients, or that they'd start doing experiments on me.

One thing I wasn't worried about, though, was that I was worse than I thought I was. I kept thinking at first that maybe...I don't know...maybe I was schizoid or something else. Psychotic. Delusional. Something more than just very depressed. And then I met "Dave."

Dave was barely over the age of twenty, and he liked to sit with me and one of the other girls there. He confided to us about all of the people in the hospital, and how they would walk out the door, and then come back with new faces. "That guy is freaking me out," he'd say. "Don't let him look at me, okay? I like my face." If it was one thing that helped me know I could be okay, it was Dave. I think about him alot, and I hope he's okay. I hope he got the medication he needed to be right again, and I hope he continues to take it. He was obviously very smart, and he seemed smart enough to understand that what was happening wasn't normal, and that it was wrong, but because of the schizophrenia, he couldn't rationalize it.

This is basically mental illness in a nutshell: you can see that everything is wrong, and yet you can't rationalize it. You can't help yourself, and you're kind of adrift. Poor Dave. Poor anyone like Dave. Maybe some day, I'll get to see him again. I just hope I have the right face on when I do.