Conversations with my psychiatrist

I stopped by the coffee shop on my way to work this morning and searched the menu for the most caffeinated drink, knowing all along that I wasn’t just tired. I was tired of the quiet, tired of the alone, tired of being tired, and no amount of coffee could ever wake me up from that. I inhaled the smell of freshly ground beans, and thought I caught a hint of pastries. Maybe brownies.

I made brownies with Jane once. Actually, she did all the baking, but I stood there in the kitchen and wrapped my arms around her as she stirred the mix, kissed her on the ear from behind. I was pretty useless in the kitchen, but Jane insisted that baking was a romantic activity, so I played along. I remember dipping my finger into the batter when she was done.

“Hey! Stop it!” She swatted my hand away from the bowl, half-angry eyes flashing at me from behind the strands of hair that had come out of her ponytail during the bustle of baking and now fell around her pretty face.

“Don’t be mad,” I teased, holding my chocolate covered finger temptingly in front of her. Suddenly smiling, she arched her eyebrows devilishly and promptly licked the brownie batter right off my finger.

 “How long does this have to be in the oven for?” I asked.

“Twenty minutes,” she said.

“Well that’s plenty of time…”

I remember how I swept her right up and carried her up the steps in her pink floral dress and how she laughed up at me as we ran to the bedroom. I remember how the laughter subsided and we suddenly became very quiet as I lowered her down onto the bed… how easily her dress slipped off…

***

I'm sorry, a thousand times over

When I was in second grade, I broke the most sacred of promises – a pinky promise.

Some people don’t find love until they are well into their twenties, or maybe even their thirties. Some people never find love at all. But as an eight year old girl with all my bright-eyed wisdom and innocent insight, I believed with every atom in my tiny, beating heart that I had found it already.

---

His name was Jacob. Everyone else called him Jake, but somehow, the nickname felt awkward on my lips. I think I was embarrassed to say his name in a way that suggested we were close at all, afraid that my feelings would be betrayed by the lack of formality.

“Wanna play Spit?” he asked me during recess one day, referring to the card game that had recently become popular.

I looked at him with a doubtful frown. “I don’t know how.”

“It’s okay, I’ll teach you!”

A few minutes later, I was fully immersed in the fast-paced game when Jamie Simmons, a brown-haired, freckled girl from class, skipped over with a mischievous grin on her face.

“Faith and Jacob, sitting in a tree! K-I-S-S-I-N-G!” she squealed. I remember turning as red as a ripe tomato. “First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage!”

---

Against all odds – and by that, I mean against the belief at the time that boys and girls had cooties and could not associate with each other – we became best friends. That year, I went to a Yankees game for my big brother’s birthday. Bernie Williams was the only one to hit a home run during the game.

“Bernie is my favorite,” I confided in Jacob, as if by watching a single game of baseball I had become an expert on the Yankees roster.

The next day, Jacob brought in a Bernie Williams baseball card from his collection at home and said it was for me. It was protected by a scratched up plastic sleeve. I didn’t know it at the time, but that baseball card would later become the one thing I remembered him by.

One of our favorite things to do was jump off the swings. I was scared to do it the first time, but he kept jumping off again and again, until finally, I couldn’t resist trying it too. It was an exhilarating feeling being suspended in the air, and when I fell – I fell for him too.

---

Jacob was the smartest kid in our class. Our teacher used to end every day with a game of “Around of the World.” Two students sitting next to each other would stand up at a time and Miss Clarkson would give an easy multiplication problem. The student who called out the answer first would move on to the next person in the class while the student who lost would sit back down. Jacob won every game – except for one.

“Nine times eight!” Miss Clarkson called out.

Jacob and I were up. “You wanna win?” he whispered. I giggled sheepishly and shook my head, but he just stood there in silence until I remembered the answer.

“Seventy two!” I said, after a pause. Everyone congratulated me that day for finally defeating the king of the game. I earnestly tried to tell them that he had let me win, but Jacob convinced them otherwise.

---

At the end of the year, we all had to write and illustrate our own little books and were to share them with the rest of the class and everyone’s parents at an end-of-the-year celebration.

“If you dedicate your book to me, I’ll dedicate mine to you,” Jacob said to me.

“Okay.”

“Pinky promise?”

“Yeah, I promise,” I smiled, as our pinkies intertwined.

I had every intention of printing Jacob’s name on the blank that we were supposed to fill in on the dedication page, but I changed my mind at the last minute. I don’t know why, nor do I remember what name ended up taking the place of his, but the word regret will never sufficiently describe my feelings towards that single decision.

---

Half a year later, it was Christmas Eve and Jacob’s family was driving to church. I was told that the window was shattered, that the shards cut his seat belt, and that Jacob was thrown out of the car, head crashing straight into the curb.

“Faith, I’d like to speak to you outside,” Mrs. Allen said, as she walked me into the hallway. She explained with carefully chosen words why my friend would not be coming to school anymore. I think my lack of emotional response – my dry cheeks, my impassive eyes – frightened her.

She didn’t know that I simply refused to believe what she was telling me. She didn’t know that Jacob never forgave me for backing out on my promise. She didn’t know that it was impossible for me to comprehend that he could have died before I could make it up to him.

---

Fourteen years later, I wish I could say that I am still trying to redeem myself, that I’ve kept every promise I’ve made since then, that I learned my lesson. But I’m sorry, Jake  – I just can’t do it. I can’t be perfect like you.

When love isn't enough

He slid his hands beneath the soft cotton of her shirt, fingertips barely brushing her skin. Reveling in the anticipation of feeling more of her, touching more of her, he let his hands linger for a moment at her waist. Can I? he inquired, a trace of worry in his voice, as he searched her eyes for an answer. Golden hair fell across her small face as she nodded her head – Oui.

His lips traced her clavicle, her hands found his thighs. They explored each other’s bodies, so foreign and so familiar, sharing the one language they could both understand. Articles of clothing found their way to the ground – a red blouse, yellow skirt, white t-shirt, blue jeans, falling to the floor like splashes of paint, ornamenting the room like an impressionist painting. The early afternoon sun trickled in through the windows, casting soft crescents beneath the curves of her breasts, and darker shadows around the edges of his jaw. They moved in unison, breathed in unison, marveled at each other as if each exquisite beings. Every touch was a word, each kiss a sentence, and for this moment in time they understood each other perfectly.

Don’t go, he said, as she tied up her hair, combing through the blonde strands with careful, slender fingers. His right hand reached out and his eyes begged her to stay. Adieu, she responded, misinterpreting his words, gathering her things to leave. Glancing down at his outstretched hand, she wondered for a moment if he was asking her to stay, but then she turned swiftly and walked away.

Diary of a misunderstood patient

"Your call has been forwarded to an automated voice messaging system." Sometimes when I can't stand being alone I try to pick up words in the whirring of the ceiling fan, the only other thing in this white, empty room that appears to be alive. I am startled by the way my shadow falls on the wall, towering above my own self. I form a little cave with my bed covers and sit in them silently, listening. Unfamiliar sounds startle me and strange lights make me uneasy. I grow very still when I hear voices: I am fascinated by the conversation, but terrified of the people. I imagine myself unzipping my skin and stepping out of who I am. Tomorrow will be better, I think, or worse.

I have been reading Bukowski lately, and some Dickinson, Poe, Hemingway. I admire how their words make tragedy beautiful. My tragedies remain tragedies. Sometimes I picture your death, pretend I was standing right there, memorizing the details of an event that I sometimes still refuse to believe ever happened. There was this one day when I looked out the window and saw a single, lonely cloud floating by itself in the blue, blue sky. I looked away, for the briefest of moments, but when my gaze returned out the window, my lovely little cloud had already vanished from sight. I don't wear seatbelts anymore because yours never saved you anyways.

I don't have visitors very often, but today I had a visitor from the past. What is the worst thing you've ever done? I keep asking myself this question, as if it will define me. I keep asking others this question, hoping their sins are worse than mine. My feet cannot touch the floor, I am flailing, and my eyes are blurred by the waves of the ocean, or maybe they are just my tears. I cannot eloquently communicate what I want to say, so I will just memorize your words, each one, with impeccable accuracy, until someday my vocabulary can describe this blood-red tangle of synapses and neurons that the doctors will probably deem "crazy."


*This is a mostly fictional piece, written from the point of view of an institutionalized patient. I don't claim to know what it would be like it all; I was just thinking about it idly and started writing, and this is what came out.

I make up stories about people I pass on the streets

Two police officers walk into a Dunkin Donuts. Their uniforms fit just right, and have the effect of making their somewhat plain characteristics mysteriously appear more handsome. The girl behind the counter was hired just a few days ago. She has long, glossy hair the color of dark coffee beans, pulled up in a pony tail, with long bangs framing a pixie-like face.

It is cold outside and the first police officer is rubbing his chapped hands for warmth. He is looking for coffee on the menu, oblivious to the fact that the chilly weather will cause him to come to this particular Dunkin Donuts many more times in the upcoming weeks, and that he and the lovely girl behind the counter will begin to engage in flirtacious banter as he becomes a regular, and that within a matter of months they will have fallen deeply, deeply in love with each other.

The second police officer waits in the corner. He would sit down, but he doesn't want to look like he's slacking. The pair was supposed to be on duty, but he had convinced his partner to take a quick coffee break because he knew about the new girl who worked at Dunkin Donuts and was hoping to catch a glimpse of her. He will be bitter when she ends up with the wrong police man, and his jealousy will be harmless at first, but then he will decide that they were meant to be and that their love will annul the sin of stealing her away.

She resists being stolen because she has a clear conscience and knows the difference between right and wrong just as surely as she can distinguish white from black and day from night. At least this is what she tells herself. Her encounter with temptation had been awfully close, though, and as unknown feelings begin to betray her, she suddenly finds that what she has is no longer satisfying, and she grows more and more unhappy.

Years later, on one particularly cold winter evening, the two police officers will walk into the Dunkin Donuts once again. There will be another newly hired girl with pretty eyes and luscious hair serving their coffee from behind the counter, but neither of them will flirt with her. They will sip in silence, each regretting that they allowed the thief of their hearts to run away with no arrest.

If you're sad and you know it, clap your hands

You probably think we had no business changing what was written. It’s not our fault though, honest – we were abandoned. What were we supposed to do, scattered across this blank page, a chaotic array of floating words? Some of us were crooked, some illegible, some even violently slaughtered by angry slashes of graphite. We were scribbled across a flimsy sheet of paper, given a look of immense dissatisfaction, then cast aside amongst the piles of a messy desk. There was silence, at first, in this quiet world of black and white, but then we looked at each other – and the clamor began.

When I was alone,

I just needed some hope.

But now I know

giving up was easier.

I used to think

things have a way of working themselves out,

but soon I realized

my dream was just a dream.

I didn’t want to believe that

we don’t always get what we want,

but I know

everything fell apart

in the end.

It was written in bolded letters, etched with such force that we ripped the paper. There was fatigue and weariness amongst us all – we weren’t meant to carry the burden of such heavy misery. We are meant to inspire. Perhaps we could rearrange ourselves on this blank canvas, hold hands so that we form sentences, come together to rewrite the story that we didn’t want to be responsible for telling.

In the end,

everything fell apart.

But I know

we don’t always get what we want.

I didn’t want to believe that

my dream was just a dream,

but soon I realized

things have a way of working themselves out.

I used to think

giving up was easier,

but now I know

I just needed some hope

when I was alone.

The change was minor, but the effect was great. Maybe when our writer discovers us on her desk, she’ll realize that looking at life from a different angle is really all it takes to be happy.


(This is an old piece of writing, but I rediscovered it on my laptop today and wanted to share.)