9:33 a.m. - 2005-06-23
Ward I Rant
I got what I thought to be an interim job in recreation therapy on the psychiatric unit of a local county hospital. I learned to play Spades like a criminal and to make tile ashtrays and plastic suncatchers with cheery messages. I learned to play the first riff in Yes' "Roundabout". Mostly I learned that there is no one more trustworthy and honest than someone so broken as to land on Ward I. I was the wounded healer. They recoginized me immediately and it was collective love at first sight. It was a locked ward and yet I felt more locked out on weekends than I ever felt locked in Monday through Friday. As status can't compare to happiness, I was the aide with the Master's Degree and the ear to ear grin. I looked forward to every blessed work day, disdaining weekends when I was sequestered from my pals. I used to imagine them sitting in the fenced yard playing charades while I sat in Codepency Meetings trying to understand the emptiness that relentlessly stalked me. It seemed to subside when I was there in the day room with those who's masks had long been discarded for a diagnosis and some pastel pills, those who found the need to impress others with financial portfolios and social niceties a cumbersome farce. Those who colored outside the lines and didn't worry about 401K's. Those for whom I was not invisible. Those who spoke without subtext. Those who's "yes" meant yes and "no" meant no. Those who did not call good evil and evil good. It was a parallel universe of sorts. A strange reversal. I found reality highly overrated. The currency in this new world seemed to be a great capacity for empathy and uncompromised truth.
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