Sixteen days to be exact. For the past sixteen days, I've been unable to access a computer, and least of all one connected to the Internet. The reasons why this happened are long and complicated, but the lack of computer access can be explained in a fairly simple manner. For the past two weeks and two days, I was in a crazy house.
Or, more accurately, a mental hospital. I won't name it because this particular hospital carries a certain stigma. Rest assured that I'm not insane. I became severely depressed over the past five weeks, to the point that I thought my life was over at twenty. I never attempted suicide—thank God—but I began to grow afraid that I would. And I know enough about the body and ways to kill it that I would have been unlikely to screw it up and fail, thanks largely to my former karate instructor.
So I sought help and received it. It has been an emotional roller-coaster, but I'm fairly stable now. I'm not completely better, but I can feel my depression beginning to lift. I want to live. I really wanted to live all along, I just forgot it along the way.
Wisdom From the Looney Bin
There's a certain wisdom that one can learn from being held captive in a hospital that more closely resembles a prison than a typical medical center. Not all this wisdom comes directly from the counselors, but sometimes from observing other patients. And sometimes it comes from sitting down and just assessing yourself and your own beliefs.
1. Nurse Ratchet is a lie; the cake is not. Most of the nurses at my hospital were incredibly kind and caring people, and cake is served at nearly every meal. Granted there were a few Ratchet-lites in the bunch, but they were the minority.
2. There's always someone worse off than you; you're never as bad as you think you are, and you're never alone. In my stay at the place. I encountered a woman who had lost her husband and both her parents in a span of five months; I encountered two neo-nazis, members of the Aryan Nation and the Supreme White Alliance; I encountered a man who was fascinated by sexual interactions with goats and heard that sheep were even better; and I saw a guy who cut his own throat to 'end it all' and live to tell the tail.
3. Good people have problems too. Aside from the horror stories above, I met some of the nicest people I've ever had the pleasure of knowing in the hospital.
4. Faith is like a good pair of underwear. You may not be able to look down and see it, but you have it on all the time. God doesn't need you to run around in nothing but your underwear, he just wants you to wear it. Ever seen a well-endowed woman run without a bra? Underwear subtly influences the way we move—the way we live and interact with the world, to extend the metaphor. Some people, like Superman, can wear their underwear on the outside. They tend to have names like Graham and Falwell; and some are super villains. They tend to have names like Fred Phelps and Osama bin Laden.
5. The Good Lord Taketh Away, but when He Giveth, He Giveth Good. I have lived with religious anxieties for years, but this year they finally started to really get me. Part of the reason was circumstances. On the first day of 2008, I found my cat of 11 years dead in our garage. Two days later, I wrecked my truck. I began to grow paranoid, because I took these bad happenings as signs of punishment from God. They weren't. I know this now because while I was in the hospital, my truck was fixed and tuned up, and now runs better than ever. And my youngest cat had her first litter of kittens, five healthy new mouths to feed. Awesome sauce.
No Konami Code
Depression is a cruel disease, and I'm not over it yet. But I'm getting there, a day at a time. There's no secret code that I can press, no magic combination, no Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right A B Start. I still have a long way to go. I feel better, but not great. Sometimes not even 'good'. But I have people I can lean on. My parents drove thirty miles ever day (or nearly so) to come see me. All my family was gathered for Sunday dinner and were overjoyed to see me. Even the nurses at the hospital were sad to see me leave.
So at the end of the day, to borrow a line from the incomparable humorist and sports writer Lewis Grizzard, the real answer to how I feel is: "Loved. I'm feeling very loved."