vermruka

i'm still leaning toward keeping my writing private, since i'm really starting to get serious about it. i think it'll prove important to keep my progress hidden, even from me, really. i need to write and write with wild abandon and then stuff the pages into a drawer for safe-keeping, until i'm ready to regard it all with a fresh eye. it's the only way anything will get done, i'm afraid. offering up bits and pieces and having them discussed is nice, and somewhat encouraging, but it always results in stagnation. 

at work. there's a nurse here called nell, her name is everywhere. i bet she isn't as lovely as your nell is. you've brought me to the point of feeling dim pangs of secondary appreciation for your long lost lover, to the degree that even seeing the name in this setting causes a faint sense of affection to pass through me.

i haven't written with a proper pencil in a while and it feels nice. this is one of those working environments that provides everything. freshly sharpened number 2 pencils, for instance, are scattered in abundance. there are electric sharpeners at the ready. stacks of tea, mostly decaffeinated so we can offer it to the patients. you see, we don't want them staying up late, they're troubled, they need their rest (this is what they tell me). if i get hungry, there's a refrigerator. coffee, there's coffee. they pay me extra if i work in the afternoon, they pay me even more if i work in the middle of the night. i'm all set, really. it's the job i'd always wanted, i'm officially a mental health counselor – i even have to sign all documents that way. and yet if i were to be truthful, i'd much rather slave away in that crummy, cockroach-infested restaurant. it offered me more spirit and more satisfaction. it sounds ridiculous, but food is very alive, the people there were very alive, and here … it's just death. everyone and everything is dying. the feelings of hope are few and far between and yes, as an adolescent it had all seemed very mystical and frightening – well, i suppose it still does – but i almost feel as though my curiosity has been sated. already, i know. i'm such a ridiculous person, never satisfied by anything, always wanting more, more, more. maybe the trouble is that it's exactly what i'd always imagined it would be. and that is … less fascinating and more distressing. but i'll continue to come, because i do enjoy it. i just suppose i'm far too self-involved to go on helping others while completely neglecting my own fulfillment in the meantime.

the environment is quite depressing, as i suspected it would be. when i was a teenager just embarking on the world of college, i enrolled in a dreadful english course that was centered around the proper structure of an argument. i was bored by the class and didn't particularly feel like arguing any points, so i chose extremely vague subjects and wrote seven to ten pages of complete and utter bullshit with little or no valid support. they were basically opinionated tirades based on topics i knew nothing about, in any legitimate sense. this was a time during which my interest in mental illness was in full effect, not to mention my propensity for lying and spinning the most ridiculous of tales, so naturally i decided to construct an argument that claimed that the environments set forth for mentally ill patients in locked facilities were actually detrimental to the overall state of their health and the progress of their recovery. i wrote the paper from the [false] perspective of an actual employee at an actual mental health facility, who'd experienced the alleged misery first-hand. i wrote with inexplicable fervor about the materials made available or not made available to the afflicted, and i managed to churn out about fifteen hand-written pages on the matter. what was i thinking, you ask? (no, i'm sure you weren't wondering that at all.) But in case you were (you weren't), the answer is, "i don't know." at any rate, some of my theories (presented as facts, remember) were that it seemed, to me, very improbable that anyone affected by a mental illness – whether that be schizophrenia, major depression, post-traumatic stress disorder or plain old psychosis would benefit positively from being subjected to greasy, paint-chipped walls in unfortunate shades of white or seafoam green; being made to pad silently across stained carpeting, presumably a faded mauve not at all conducive to optimism. i researched, in vain, in an attempt to discover any corroborating evidence – statements from patients declaring their distaste for their surroundings. i found such admissions, much to my relief, for when you begin fabricating quotes and bibliographical sources, professors are sure to catch on. well, if they know what they're doing, that is, and the majority of my professors have. it's strange, though, because every personal supportive statement in that paper was blind speculation – quite simply, i was spouting pre-conceived notions that had no basis in reality about, first, what it must look and feel like in most mental hospitals, and second, what the patients must feel about all of it. my seemingly naive suspicions were eventually confirmed, however, and continue to be confirmed, at least in the settings i've dealt with so far.

i've worked in two facilities at this point – one centered around caring for children (ages 8-17) and the other for adults, 18 and up. both of them are quite similar in appearance, in that they strangely resemble kindergarten classrooms. (sort of disturbing, isn't it?) the ceilings are low, there are locks on everything in sight – these are cumbersome, obsolete padlocks that clang noisily whenever there's the slightest bit of activity in a room. fluorescent tube lighting, which is depressing no matter who you are, where you are, or why you're there in the first place. the food is literally prepared by prison inmates and then whisked to us in friendly wheeled containers made of plastic in primary colors. and the food is bland, lifeless – not even salt or pepper to appease the tongue. the bread is often two or three days old, with a strange texture due to having just been defrosted from the freezer. a chilly pat of margarine is offered alongside, rubbery and unyielding. i listen as each and every patient complains about the food, wishing for just one herb, one spice, one beverage other than sickeningly sweet fruit juice or tepid tea. (we must purposely deliver it to them in this temperate state, as we don't want them scalding themselves or others. we must also assiduously remove any staples from the teabag, itself, for obvious reasons.)

i've listened as a 19 year old girl (i'd be chastised for this if it ever got out, i'm sure, but she's my 'favorite' and i probably pay more attention to her than i ought to) cried emphatically to me about how depressing she found the place, and how she didn't see how anyone could expect her to combat her turmoil while locked in a cold tile room with an inflatable mattress. more or less, these people are being treated as though they've done something wrong, when in most cases they're merely the inadvertent victims of unfortunate genetic coding. why, then, are they being punished? is there nothing else to do with them, nowhere else to direct them? i will admit that it's almost too much sadness for me to handle, at times. my inception as an employee corresponded absolutely with the onset of my first panic attacks, and the ensuing cyclical disaster of convincing myself of my own impending insanity. it's starting to seem as though my experiences here have permanently re-wired very key aspects of my psyche, and this has certainly led to instances in which i wish i could turn back time and accept a different, less emotionally demanding job – one that would offer me peace and quiet reflection. either an ordinary job that would require little brain-power or a creatively challenging job that would inevitably lead to inward enrichment. of course i'd prefer the latter. here, too much empathy is required of me. too much wondering very deeply about others' lives, silently wishing that they, too, could turn back time and find themselves situated – nestled, even – within that unattainable perfect home, feet warming by the fire, chatting over piping hot mugs of what-have-you. i can see this position being easier on an unfeeling individual, one who could observe the misery with a purely clinical eye, but within my own limits, this will never be possible. i don't just want to hug that 19 year old girl in order to console her (and i can't even do that, not even if she were to tearfully and honestly fling her arms open for me, offering the youthful expanse of her chest) – i'd sooner adopt her. i know that she isn't getting the help she needs here, and she never will. and yet i can't say i'm hopeful for her release. i think she'll always be here. and if not here, another place, similar; perhaps even worse. it drains me even to think about her future – how must she feel?

at any rate, it's been interesting. i've been here less than a month and i'm beginning to wonder how some of them have lasted years. it must be that clinical, unfeeling edge that i mentioned. what are they thinking about, i wonder? what's their secret? i suppose i don't care, because i still won't practice it, whatever it is.

you know, we once had a conversation about handwritten letters, and we both spoke fondly of them. i wonder, then, why we've taken so long to set the exchange in motion. the dialogue took place on a climatically unpleasant afternoon, one of those horrendously cold yet sunny days that lacked even the idea of a cloud, which you knew would have brought some comfort. it was probably january, for it had already been made clear that i'd be moving, and we were walking up a side road toward washington avenue. i believe we were destined to get soup.

i remember quite vividly, for i was staring intently at the sidewalk before me, plotting my maneuvers around the slippery ice. you were shuffling alongside and lamenting that you hadn't been sent any good, substantial handwritten letters in quite a while. when i asked if you'd be willing to write some to me in return if i would, indeed, agree to provide you with these much-coveted letters, you stated that you would love to, but you didn't think you'd be as good at is as perhaps you once were. doubting this, i smiled broadly and steadied you as you began to slip.

i've been pausing to read the book that we're both working our way through and i just happened upon something interesting. something that relates to what i was just saying about the supposed emotionless undercurrent that courses through my colleagues:

"whenever in the course of my life i have come across, in convents for instance, truly saintly embodiments of practical charity, they have generally had the cheerful, practical, brusque and unemotioned air of a busy surgeon, the sort of face in which one can discern no commiseration, no tenderness at the sight of suffering humanity, no fear of hurting it, the impassive, unsympathetic, sublime face of true goodness."

what do you make of this passage, as far as relating it to my own speculations? i suppose that the above is quite probable in my co-workers' cases, but shouldn't there be an acute difference between the way a surgeon and a psychologist mentally approach their form of healthcare? it seems as though they're likely adhering to a standard that should never have been expected of them. but alas, i've discussed this enough. perhaps we'll talk about it more a little later.

now i'm peeling an orange, and it's reminding me of christmas. i've never quite understood why until the other evening, when i climbed into a car being driven by my mother and began peeling one that i'd excavated from the bottom of my shoulder bag. she turned to me and casually commented that the odor reminded her of christmas. startled, i raised the fruit to my lips and asked her why. she answered that it was because she'd always found them in her stocking as a child, hanging heavily in the decorative toe of the thing, so eagerly draped over the hearth. i then realized that the same was true of me and my childhood except, at the time, i'd resented the gifted oranges – rolling them across the table to my father, who would eat and enjoy them while i sucked greedily on candies.

today i sometimes find it difficult to think of anything more plainly erotic than an orange. inserting a nail into its skin with a deliberate force, spreading it apart with warm fingers. and once the skin has been removed, the nearly sexual act of burrowing your fingertips into the fruit in order to spread it open into halves. the resistance provided by the sinewy flesh makes me delirious, and the sound it makes – it sounds like something being pried apart, it sounds like someone trying to get at something quite desperately.

i feel as though i could benefit from a short nap at this point. just a gasp of sleep is all i need, really. just a sip.

i took a 100-second nap on the sofa in the visitor's lounge. obviously i was awake if i was able to count to 100, but it was dark in there and i closed my eyes, so it wasn't all bad. i don't feel rested but i think i've successfully convinced myself that it helped somewhat. oh, and while i was back there, i stole a glance out of the skinny window mounted in the door and what i saw was … fantastic. the sun's just beginning to rise, so the forest (the hospital is resting snug in an expanse of evergreens) is laced with a rather electric pink hue, made slightly creamy by the fog that's snaked its way in. the yellow glance from the occasional pole-mounted lamp lends an air of antiquity that's only rivaled by the apparent age of the trees.

how would you like to see it? i'd love for you to see it, personally. the walks we've discussed – i fantasize about them, now. i draw upon memories of our walks in philadelphia to add credence to these fantasies. when i write about us (and i've been doing so at a steady rate since we first spoke) i often write about walking with you, and how i'd constantly suppress the urge to link my arm in your own, or to pat your head because you're smaller than me. or how i'd wonder what the people we'd pass were thinking. middle-aged black man, with your radio propped on soggy cardboard – what do you think when we cut across what i'd jokingly call your living room (though it was only a small square of sidewalk on 9th street, just a few yards down from the fish merchant)? i especially wondered about the thoughts of your acquaintances as we'd strut past. who did they think i was? what role did i play in your life, to them? i always hoped for something sordid and raunchy – your lover, of course. perhaps a fellow drug user or even your provider. if only they knew of our innocent musings upstairs in your drafty apartment: posing in hard-backed chairs and eating cookies served on small, mismatched plates.

it's the next day and i'm eating dinner. i've been working for almost 24 hours now, with only a small two-hour restful interruption, but i'm feeling quite lucid. while writing to you last night, i was in the children's unit. today i've been with the adults. it's killing me. today's been hard, though not in the sense once might initially assume.

first of all, the 19 year old girl i mentioned above is leaving us in three days. whereas i'm delighted that she'll have another chance at rearranging her life, she's confided to me that she doesn't plan to continue taking her medication (she denies having a mental disorder altogether, actually, though she's schizo-affective). before she resigned to taking the pills at all, she was quite the troublemaker – throwing water on two doctors, hitting a nurse in the face with a bible, even managing to escape. not to mention her daily yelling and pacing sprees. over time, i observed others' treatment of her, in a general sense – how she was approached, spoken to, dealt with. and it seemed, to me, that her outlandish behaviors were actually being nurtured. if she was acting like a child, she'd be spoken to like a child. no one seemed to want to genuinely know anything about her. she was being asked things like what her favorite color is and what kind of breakfast cereal she prefers. not exactly soul-plumbing inquiries. and maybe that isn't the position we should be in, maybe we are only meant to placate them and to numb them. but if you can do more, do more, i say, so long as it's within reason. and i find that what i'm doing certainly is.

(i did actively reach out to her, and i'm still trying to decide how i feel about it. i guess i feel that proactively offering yourself completely to one person is better than nothing to no one at all.)

the first tactic i assumed was to approach her as calmly as possible, initially only making (earnest) eye contact. at first, she silently questioned this, matching my inquisitive gaze with her own wary, more fierce version, reducing her eyes to guarded slits. 'who are you?' they asked, but i didn't relent. i pressed on with a mouthed 'hello', which she found humorous. in no time at all she was asking me to do things for her – make her tea, help her with the laundry, provide her a bar of the leftover hotel soap that we dole out. it was miraculous. she even began greeting me when i'd come in for the day. eventually, small compliments were given: 'nice hat,' she'd say truthfully, or 'i like your eye makeup.' little gifts, these phrases. treasures. all of this opened the door to more intimate conversation, in which she'd confess that she didn't feel helped by the program ('the system', as she called it – something she's apparently been an unwilling part of since the age of ten or eleven). i asked her who she'd be re-joining once she was out in the wilderness again, and of course her answer was 'no one'. sad. sad, i say. i've often tried to envision any semblance of a life she may have had outside of here … it's challenging. i don't mean it's difficult for me to actively imagine these things, i mean the visions, themselves, are challenging to see. does she know what happiness is, in any sense? what were her happiest moments, how could they be re-created? what do holidays look like for her? what was high school in her experience, what are friends? lovers? despite having been raped on more than one occasion, has she ever known a man?

she's so young, so young that i should be able to relate to her very intensely. but i know what it's like to have a stable family, one free of divorce and court orders and excommunication. i have siblings, we get along okay, we're there for each other if needed. there are people who care deeply about me, i can turn to them if i have to. most importantly, i know what it's like to a experience a quote-unquote normal childhood, with the birthday presents and the outdoor celebrations, baked beans on the lawn. the band concerts, the lust-filled pages of my diaries, the staying up late on a school night, eating ice cream in my warm bed, warm bedroom. i know the odor of a home-cooked meal, night after night. 'clean your plate, i care about you. i care about your health. what's wrong, child? how can i help you?' …

to not know these things, to live a life devoid of them, seems as frightening and foreign a notion as not being born at all. what is life without unwavering support? i know not. she, on the other hand, knows nothing else.

she's gone, now. she left two days ago, today being saturday at 2:06 in the morning. i didn't get a chance to say goodbye. the last time i spoke with her she was asking me to live with her, on the outside. her eyes pleaded with me. 'i don't have any friends,' she reminded me. 'i need someone like you.'

she needs someone like me. i considered the information cautiously. 'what makes you say that?' i urged, curiosity getting the better of me.

the all-too-familiar response: 'you're not like the others.' she'd actually said it. scarier still, she meant it, i could tell. i know how to discern between a blind, meaningless latching-onto of a person born out of the desperate need for support and the genuine belief that a bond exists. touched, i inwardly composed my reply. nurses and doctors loomed like malicious scarecrows, casting what i knew to be stares of warning, though i didn't look directly at any of them. 'watch it,' those looks intended to say, so i watched it. i offered a meek, pre-recorded rationalization to the poor girl: 'for your benefit and mine, staff and clients are not permitted to acquaint themselves with one another outside the confines of this facility .. ' – i'm sure she knew it was bullshit, that i didn't really mean what i was saying. and she did know, because she said, 'i wouldn't want you to lose your job or anything,' at which point we chuckled convivially, much to the chagrin of my lofty colleagues.

for the remainder of the last day that we spent in each others' company, she followed me around as stealthily and inconspicuously as possible, repeating that she wished we'd met in a different environment, and that she suspected we had a lot in common. and oh, how right she was, probably moreso than she'll ever realize. she's just a girl, a desperate girl. i won't forget her, i'm sure of it. she's so bright, so intuitive, so able to discard falsehoods and pretense. a remarkable human. a rare breed.

now, then. onto other, more important matters. how goes it, in the lonely world of david? i will admit my embarrassment arising from that frantic, tear-drenched phone call i made to you no more than two weeks ago … don't quite know what came over me. it was real, though – i'm not discrediting the emotion that was involved. i'd never felt so bleak as i had that day, so very deeply entrenched within that yawning, colorless crevasse that embodies what we call helplessness. and there i trembled, scruffy and taciturn, writhing about on my mother's flowered bedsheets. it was fiercely unsettling, to actually experience such emptiness. i wondered where the better me could have escaped to – was she off somewhere, loving life as she always had? whistling down a narrow street on her bicycle, so verdant in the black night? meanwhile, the shell of that person was trying to fend off the lugubrious side effects of thinking too fucking much. but i can't tell you anything new, david. that's the problem we now must deal with.

by the way, i find it positively charming that you have such a rough time facing criticism! is this wrong, is it sick? let me be sick, then. you remind me so much of myself, the foreshadowing increases with every conversation.

a question: after i'd left and you hadn't heard from me in some time, did you ever worry that you'd never see the likes of me again? (listen to me prattle on – 'the likes of me,' as if i'm some sort of scoundrel, an outlaw.) as i've already stated, there were definitely times when i thought your inability to pick up the phone was a certain indication of your death. the day on which you finally chose to answer, i felt the concentrated mass of worry that had formed in my throat slowly unravelling – you were still there, still waking and shifting about, still pressing styrofoam cups to your lips and tasting the coffee there. the joy i felt! to know that you were still trudging your way through the positively calamitous affair that is south philadelphia; it made me happy. knowing that i'd one day pull you from the wreckage made me even happier.

so here we are, miles apart. vast expanses act as our partition, limitless terrains. and speaking of which, i'm riding the ferry, staring at the earth, what little of it i can see. i just paid a visit to my dear friends baklava and fresh mint tea. i've found a little place in the city whose cuisine is nearly as delicious as that of where i was a waitress, and that's saying quite a lot. it's good for the nostalgia, at any rate.

it really is quite beautiful here. it's especially nice outside my window today, the water rough and green, belching forth long streams of white foam. the islands rise importantly; so contained, so mysterious. seattle is gradually disappearing, now, a motley cluster of chess pieces shrouded in fog.

such flowery language for such a dreary day. but you know that's how i like it. a seagull is streaming by. mount rainier is invisible, but i know its proportions so exactly that i may as well be looking at it. a single yellow tree winks at me from a nest of green. do the others see it as an outcast or a miracle? the rain is light but always present. there are no longer clouds, but one very large cloud, commanding the afternoon. these are the things i know, david. i can't recite passages from meaty foreign novels, i can't let political jargon fly from my tongue quite so easily. you have seemingly limitless knowledge. i, on the other hand, have only my intuition.