Asylum Walk (62)

The teenage lovers, loitering in the grove, passed each other chestnuts that they found. Due to the furious activity of the squirrels, an unopened nut could only be a freshly fallen one. Sometimes they heard a soft thud behind them (never in front, curiously) and turned to see the green spined planet lying in the grass.

Such sinewy pleasure to open. Finding the seam encouraged by the fall, cracking it on the trunk to widen it; prying the tough green apart with the thumbs, the glossy brown nut lodged in the moist white flesh.

Two in one were lucky, of course. They laughed and kissed, each pocketing one for the bedside table at home.

Three were more rare but less lucky. The third was always smaller, and seemed by its position to belong more to one side than the other; its partner chestnut smaller too, to make room for it. The interloper brought asymmetry, hinting at the difference between freakishness and wonder.

They marvelled at it, for its rarity, but left it for the squirrels.

Asylum Walk (61)

(2009)
The War. Hearing news of a suicide, I feel what a veteran soldier might feel upon hearing of a fallen comrade: sadness spiking sharply, then blunted by the rituals of repeated mourning; relief and disbelief at having narrowly evaded the same fate for so long; fear oscillating between gloom and hope at future odds; a professional determination to hold out for as long as possible.

It’s personal. (And most so in this: that the personal, drawn out over time, becomes impersonal.)

(1979)
One day when J made a run for it, three male patients—B, R and W—were watching through the windows beyond the Meds Station. J flew out a black door, nightgown flapping, but stopped at the service road, puzzled or uncertain.

Two attendants rushed out after her. When they touched her arms—gently, respectfully—she flew into furious motion again.

Flailing white. (Forcing greater roughness by her handlers.)

“Like a pile of papers in the wind,” B said to the other two watchers. He had written poems in the other life, as they called it.

White here, white there—pieces gusting from the pile, then pinned by awkward fasteners.

Asylum Walk (60)

How a conversation starts:

“When you write, ‘...my wife, who also suffers from mental illness...’—do you mean she suffers from it, or is living with it? Just asking.”

Which leads to:

What is the difference?

And which did I mean?

Which do I mean?

And...

...Who am I talking about?

Asylum Walk (59)

(Doorman) This is the Hotel Pain. Yes, as high as you can see. And as low. The Hotel Help? Here, too. They occupy the same premises. Share the same space. No, no need for a reservation. Your room is waiting for you. Any one you like. All our rooms come fully equipped.

Asylum Walk (58)

They value reason who suffer its loss. No—or the whole world would be sane. They value reason who know its loss.

Not pain, not pain plus time. Pain plus operations—which take time.

Asylum Walk (57)

Medicine cabinet prayer. Don’t just show me shaving mirror news: stubble’s daily trespass and beheading, dental scuzz and floss. Return me to myself all-angledly: what I am, am not, would be, would stop being. Make of prismed rays one beam.

Asylum Walk (56)

Exchanges:

Where’s the hope?

Everywhere, or nowhere.

You said there would be hope.

No, I said there is hope. There’s sunlight, too. It doesn’t mean you’re standing in it. It doesn’t mean it’s not night.
______________________________

When did you finally accept your diagnosis?

If by “accept” you mean absolutely, unconditionally—then never. But as a useful shorthand, I adopted it at age 49, four years ago.

Why then?

It fit facts I could no longer dispute. And it’s hard to talk about anything without a name.

It became useful?

Necessary. I didn’t want to waste another second fighting a name when I needed all of my energy to fight what the name refers to.

So you’re okay with labels?

Okay, not-okay. I’m less interested in labels than in what they mean to the people using them.
______________________________

Who determines what “high functioning” means?

You do. Who else?