into the fold

I tried to eat every morsel of remembrance on my trip back to Annandale, it was hot and on the ride there Donnie manned the music, and Charlotte manned the wheel, and Elyse and I sat in the back awaiting our fates. "McDonalds bought a nearly complete T-rex skeleton for a museum in exchange for it's own wing. How do you guys feel about this?" Charlotte asked.

We arrived on campus and went to explore the changes. There is a new baseball field, cut out of the woods where many a person had peed on those fresh-aired Smog-filled nights. There was a bench we found by the campus center, bright blue and fresh. The ropes on the swing had been changed, and on North Campus there was a barn that had only been in the minds eye last year. We went to the burrito stand and feasted (some things are reliably good), the smoky hot sauce and cool root beer went down my glutenous throat.



Glutenous for all I had missed: hours pouring over books, long walks and conversations, screaming from the community garden to hear my anger echo against the dorms and back to me, and the beautiful ephemeral bloom of magnolia blossoms each year. So much had not changed, but I am no longer there, it is no longer mine, and I am no longer part of the Hudson Valley landscape.

After lunch, my road-trip companions dropped me off at Sorrel's house, same one she had lived in last year, and Will and Hannah (back from France just last week) were there to greet me. There is so much more responsibility as a graduating person (I had forgotten). The balancing of visitors, and family, and friends graduating with you, and looking for advice from favorite professors!

So Will skipped off and Hannah and I made dinner while the night set in, Sorrel still tending to all her other responsibilities. Hannah and I sat by the window talking about the feeling of religious devotion without religion, depression and who you surround yourself with, solitude and lonesomeness. Nina asked what rituals we do in place of those religious ones so many have. Hours passed.

When Sorrel did come, we huddled on her bed, avoiding the crowded tent party in favor of the company of two. The shunting of conversations deeper than a kiddie pool that happens in the real world did not happen here, and depth of warmth to match. The effervescent eager conversation. Here: here is my heart and mind now, know how I have changed and how I love you.

The next morning Will, Hannah and I went to the Tivoli Bakery. Cranberry-corn muffin, cinnamon bun, sandwich, coffee. We sat in the grass with Will's friends.  Then we went to see our seniors walk.

When the fireworks came, I was surrounded by the right people. "If you lie down on your back, the sound reverberates in your chest" "Oh! It's true" Kelsey responded. Will kept berating me for missing the fireworks - "Look T---! Look! Turn around!". After that we all danced.

In the morning, I watched Kelsey pack.
Now it's their turn to go.

lilacs

One patient who has been there for a while: now not too paranoid to leave her room, hasn't showered in a month, thinks she is the fbi, keeps showing me and others her badge, making a motion by her hip as if lifting up a cover of a wallet. I tell her I don't see it, and I confirm that she has told me that she is the FBI. She doesn't like this – she now thinks I'm the Illuminati. When I denied it she said that I'm a bad liar. When I was dissuading her from going to check on someone who was getting restrained, and denied that I was killing him, she called me a selfish bitch. In the past, she has told me I look like her sister. A change of pace.

This morning, I woke at 9am, ate a banana, sat on the couch drifting off. Talked to Adrian. Went onto the balcony and continued writing a letter. Talked to a neighbor who was also trying to drink coffee outside, until he was herded back indoors by bees.

Another patient is here for a second time, having left in a state of catatonia – waxy movements, silence, not eating or drinking for days until his face looked shriveled. Now he is actively psychotic, taking his clothes off in the middle of the hallway, trying to kiss everyone and spitting at them when they do something he doesn't like. A different pace.

Having finished my lettering for the day, I smelled the lilac I had ripped off a neighbors bush in the middle of the night, and started off to a plant shop 40 minutes away. It is a hot day, but I returned, joyously, with lupin, angelface, sun parasol, clear crystal and some droopy plant, the name of which got lost in transport.

I had to restrain a man yesterday who was trying to hurt his foot. In the past he has claimed auditory hallucinations, but this time he said he was feeling not great. He demanded meds and ignored any healthy coping skills. After a very long time here, it has dawned on all of us that he is borderline – this is not something that is ever written in a chart. He did not like it when I told him that slamming his foot into a door repeatedly is not the appropriate way to express frustration, that medication is not the only part of the puzzle to feeling better, that he has to wait a little bit for the medication to kick in because it's not going to start working one minute after he has swallowed it. A shift of pace.

Max M is biking over to meet with me for something some iced drink.

This day in May has turned stiflingly hot, good for noon-day naps and lethargic conversation.

royal regal and junk

Today is my day off. I have to wake up early tomorrow so I can't go out tonight, and, as I just texted Amanda  I'm having trouble getting my regal ass out of the apartment
 
Other days I have more success. One time, recently - that is: in the month of April, before my birthday but after my bike had been stolen - I headed towards Cambridge Antiques in east Cambridge in an attempt to replace the aforementioned bike. It's a four-story building filled with, for the most part, junk. There are 150 areas owned by different people, one flowing seamlessly into the other, with porcelain and umbrellas and sewing machines and jewelry and I went through it all, unable to find the bikes until I was pointed to them in the basement. I didn't end up getting one, and am still bikeless (it's my first real adult purchase, in a way, and I can't research it in the same way I could a laptop or a camera, stiffing my attempts thus far). 

Empty handed, I started back, accidentally striking up a conversation with the owner of a historical bookstore, passing an old butchery, and settling in at an amazingly expensive restaurant for cake and coffee. Though, to the restaurants credit, 'Loyal 9' is a good Boston-history name, and it was airy and spacious and had a garage door fitted with glass which beautifully lets the light stream in even when it is closed to keep the hot air of the street out. They had a sign up which read "come and stay as long as you like" (which I tried to do but failed to come up with anything to do after I had finished drinking coffee from a hand-made cup.)

i supposed i should get some groceries

picture by MacDonald (https://www.baycitizen.org/news/visual-art/san-francisco-artist/)

what next?

The first restraint I had to do I didn't feel bad about -- angry males that are just trying to set each other off, even if they are schizophrenic drug addicts, don't make me feel as sad because that behavior, in this case, had little to do with the diagnosis. I think I bruised my rib because about a month later it still hurts, but that night I was running on adrenaline. I joined Paras and Amy after my evening shift had ended, meeting them at Charlie's Kitchen around midnight, and then the three of us went to the The Field. It was a Friday night and for once it felt like it, still wearing work clothes, watching people watching people.

This Friday there was a large goodbye party for a co-worker who left for nursing school, and it feels like everyone who is working here now has either been here forever and is old, or is about to leave, or has already left. We have a new CEO and DON that don't understand that everything they are doing is hurting them (but us first) like trying to increase census without increasing staff first. It means people get mandated (like I did for the overnight last weekend) and are less likely to help patients and more likely to get hurt. Everyone I could learn from is leaving, and that's a problem for me.

I went to the Hakusai exhibit with my family and it was great. It's a totally different type of printmaking than what I've done, and it's strange to realize that this one wave is the face of all East Asian art.

(which is to say, outside the hospital, it is spring and I am happy.)

yellow balloons

Mama and I went to Newbury St with one goal in mind: to get me a hat. The Goorin Brothers shop was filled with people listening to the Kentucky Derby crackling on the radio, drinking bourbon and wearing outfits alluding to some old-Kentucky time. The hat is brown and felt and with a very large wavy brim. My hair does not look silly sticking out from underneath - this was a very lovely birthday gift.

Sima's birthday was on Thursday, so they all came to me. We inflated nine yellow balloons (his favorite color) and we went to Baraka Cafe, which has good food and a chatty Tunisian lady. I told Sima that, since he has so many things, I'm not going to give him a physical gift. Instead, my gift to him is that he will come visit me for a day and sleep over. When Mama asked him what I had given him he said "She gave me love".