Holes

The psychiatrist on call pulled me aside. I hadn't seen him before; it was a Saturday, and my "usual" psychiatrist - whom I had also only met once - was off for the weekend. The psychiatrist on call pulled me aside. "What are you here for?" he asked.

Maybe it was my calm demeanor, my anger, or my resolve. Or my heartbreak, fear, and bitterness. But those things always seem to go together, don't they?

"I got burned out at work," I said.

I couldn't even cut correctly. I couldn't bring myself to kill myself. I just slept, the entire time I was in the ward, and when the nurse came into my room to tell me "You will get out of here faster if you join group activities" was what finally made me get up, put on my hospital slippers, and draw the same line over and over again on construction paper put out by some art therapist who probably felt like she was changing us.

The psychiatrist on call asked me what medication I was taking. And - what were my symptoms? How long had I had them?

"Look," I said. "I'm taking ____, _____, _____, and _______. They work great. I'd like some refills to my local pharmacy. I'd also like to be out of here by tomorrow."

The psychiatrist nodded, typed some notes into his portable computer, and left. I was in the hallway, surrounded by bad art on the walls and no way to kill myself. I wasn't even sure if that was what I wanted. I was just fed up, angry, and only had complete disdain for a broken medical system that would end up costing me $22,000 for a three day stay (thankfully, I had health insurance and "only" ended up paying $2,000).

I had no love for a "psychiatrist", on call or not. I had no love at all.

Here's the thing: life fucking sucks. It hurts, and then you drink, or cut, or smoke, or throw up, or starve yourself, and it feels better for about three minutes. Rinse, and repeat.

I walked out of the hospital the next day. It's incredible, being surrounded by sharp objects again, traffic, people out walking their yippy dogs that have no idea what lies behind just three feet of concrete.

I texted my friend, the one who I had had a falling out with. "I'm out," I said.

No response. Not a minute later, not the next day. Just never.

Maybe it was my calm demeanor, my anger, or my resolve. Or my heartbreak, fear, and bitterness. I was alone, and what is there to do alone but drop off my hospital bag at my apartment, and stare at the wall, and drink, cut, smoke, throw up, and starve myself?

Covid hit one month later. As if God had an envelope, and lips to seal it, I was now completely cut off from the outside world.

It's not what you love that saves you. It's what you love that hurts you. It's what you love that leaves a hole in your heart that only destruction can fill, the kind you inflict on yourself, the kind that is not kind, at all.

My friend didn't talk to my again for another year.

Sometimes, we make mistakes. And sometimes, it's just you and your personality, a bottle of gin and a full pack of cigarettes. It's just you.

The psychiatrist on call had indeed refilled my prescriptions, and I picked them up at my local pharmacy. This was in March 2020, and CVS was selling masks and gloves, hand sanitizer and hazmat items. I laughed. So funny that a problem China was having could ever affect me, in the United States, in my own little untouchable world.

I walked home, and I considered the last two months. How they had left a hole in my psyche, in my very being. I reached up and touched a branch of a tree. It's probably infected with that virus they're talking about, I thought.

I laughed, and walked on. The hole in my heart was the size of China, the United States, the whole world. It was a sink hole, and I chose to fill it with prose.

I sat on my back deck and wrote. I wrote until the gin wore off, the sun set, the whole world was as silent as death. I wrote and my roommate laughed as I cooked eggs and poured the champagne I had been saving for a party that never was.

I had started writing, and the hole would soon be filled.

The hole would soon erase itself, as steadily as the backspace key, the bitterness evaporating and the vaccine helping everyone, the hospital a mere blight of sickness in the past, in my little untouchable world.