The Lamborghini

The frequent offender. There he goes again, off his drugs. Off the chemicals that would keep him balanced. Another broken toy to be fitted into the shattered glass menagerie. Fragile but not frail. Racing thoughts like a Lamborghini crashing into a wall. Hey, you! I’m talking to you, now! You should be glad you’re still alive. Yes. This would be another pit stop. No, the doors won’t open. Silly, you. You thought you could just burst out of here into the sunshine of your life. Ha.

This would be your first instance where you volunteered to be on a psych ward. This time you would not be getting over twenty thousand dollars for doing crossword puzzles and eating crackers and sipping flat ginger ale. No, but at least the US government will pick up the tab that would’ve been thousands of dollars.

They’ve got you on the strong stuff, again. This makes your eyes roll back in your head while circling the nurses’ station. It’s like a scene out of a science fiction horror flick. The food is great, though. You become nauseous, however and can’t eat until hours later.

You have some pencils and paper. Do you write? You scrawl. You offer a bloated and meandering essay that you tear to shreds anyway.

When they finally get you under control after a minor outburst, you meet some of the other patients. One man from Morocco says he knows people that are here in this country not planning to find work or be productive. He alludes that they’re bent on destructiveness. You meet a skinny woman with glasses. She has sheet-of-paper white skin and glasses and brown curly hair. She says she likes my eyes. The thought of remembering her name and number strikes you but you choose to not go that route. Just the thought of saying, “Yeah, we met in a psychiatric facility” leads you to recoil.

Your status as a literal veteran and a veteran of what some people call “puzzle factories” gives you an understanding of what you’re supposed to do. The doctor comes in on Mondays and Wednesdays. You meet and they prescribe all the bad medicine.

It takes every ounce of strength to maintain your dignity. There’s talk of you going to another ward. You then comply with the rules. The Lambo gets fresh tires and the damage that it sustained is being cleaned up.

You rejoice that you won’t be in the place for too long. Just a month flies by just as easily. In that time, though, you don’t see your father graduate from minister’s college. Your atheistic sense still respects the men and women who believe. You speak to him on the phone, congratulations color your speech. There’s a sense of melancholy in his voice, wishing his only son could have been there to see him earn his certification. You don’t cry but an idea of sadness creeps into your spirit.

You witness again just what goes on in private mental hospitals. A young man streaks across the hallway like a bowling ball rolling down the lane. Before he strikes another patient, he is stopped by the staff. There is a man who steals your clothes that your parents and sister bring you. He wears them with brazen aplomb. You don’t care. The drugs make you woozy.

As you keep going, you’re on your way around the nurse’s station once more. This must be your thousandth lap. You’re not even paying attention anymore. The gnawing at your soul is more than what these drugs can do. “You have bipolar, bit it doesn’t have you” reverberates in your head wondering who was the first person to say that line. With every step you also ponder about whose idea it was to set up psych wards like this. Why this schedule? Drugs…Breakfast…Recreation…Hours of nothingness…who constructed all of this? For now, you’re just trying to figure out what’s on the menu. This facility actually has some excellent cuisine.

This place in Delaware is so much better than another private locale that started the journey of having to wait until a bed opened up for you. Of course you were in a federally run facility before that time while you still represented the US Marines.

The Lamborghini slows down and finally gives you a chance to even catch your breath. You watch television. A Science Channel show of the countdown of the best inventions includes the wheel as the top idea put into practice. You think it is the light bulb. Nope. Nowhere in nature does a wheel exist. That’s pure human ingenuity. The show offers you a salve to just deal with the other patients and the fact you’re in a locked facility once more.

You watch a patient, a pretty brown skinned thing walk with you arm in arm before she is ordered to break from your brief embrace during your laps. She then goes over to the phone and brings up the receiver and slams it like a gavel, plastic pieces flying everywhere. You continue your stride as the professionals seek to subdue the woman.

You’re used to this. You remember when you had to be strapped to a bed and witnessed first hand what so many movies fuss over. Reality usually is never as bad as they show on movies and TV you tell yourself, again. Now, it’s still not so bad. The film Quills (2000) comes to mind. You consider the positive idea of an artist in a sanitarium willing to do anything for his art. You return to your pencil and paper. You jot down all the ideas soaring through your mind’s sky.

With every word pouring out of you, wringing your soul of whatever ails you, what you write consists of a rebuke for your time in this particular circumstance. You are ready to present it to your doctor, not next Wednesday but the one after that. You use your best penmanship, ensuring that she will understand your plight.

While you asked to be in this position, you don’t think this would take as long. The Lamborghini continues to receive repairs from the pit crew of nurses and orderlies. You wear a Christian Dior suit and stand out amongst the other patients in their drab clothes. You have thick lenses in your frames on your face. You keep going nevertheless.

This all happens in that thirty day time frame. You receive your discharge and continue on with your life. That is until the mania takes hold again eight months later and you’re back in a similar crash site as before this episode. You don’t worry, that stint’s only for a week. Time to go see the pit crew again.