stuck clouds/stale air.
Spending two hours in the new year, performing literal triage.
I’ve never been diagnosed as a basket case. Truth be told, I like all the misnomers that mental illness attracts: bat-shit, salivating nut-job, and raving lunatic are some of my favorites. That is, until, I’m checking myself into adult outpatient programs. Or that one time I checked myself into a psych ward after four days of having only nine hours of sleep and even less amounts of whole foods or meals.
It became all too real when I hopped off the bus at the hospital clinic. Having no idea where to go or who to ask for directions. But at least my gold-star for punctuality was shining bright, at having arrived and plopped down at the wrong place a half hour prior to check-in time.
After a kind soul asked me where I needed to be, I was directed in a VERY confusing way through hallways towards elevator banks with stars and colors designating the Psych floor. I still got turned around.
After signing documents that attested to my knowledge of allowing multiple doctors, nurses, and OTs to ask me the same questions in three different rooms for two hours, I was literally shaking from excitement and an overall dull anxiety. My stomach growled loudly over their questionnaires and interrupted me often. But that’s a post for another time…
I questioned myself: should I REALLY be bussing to the library branch on the other side of town? To decompress and do the self-research I’ve put upon myself? No. no no. I should go home. And force myself to keep busy in whatever form that took: chores, rearranging furniture, copying for the tarot book the cards I pulled for my year of twenty twenty-four. Then I see the bus turn the corner. And I ready my QR code for pass activation.
And then I nearly get squished to death exiting the back door of the bus and the obvious wrong time. If I stayed seated, I would’ve looped back towards downtown.
Sometimes a squishing is all thats needed to aggrivate the mind and body enough to say “this is what you’re doing. So suck it up. And just do it.” Here I sit, at my usual corner spot along the wall of computers. Tip-tap-tapping my thoughts down. They’re mostly of no importance. What seemed important 4 minutes ago has shifted. Here I sit, regardless.
