Sitting in the Wreckage

I woke up.  I woke up wondering where I was and how I got here.  Same questions I had about 4 hours previously went through my head.  I had to fill myself in on the details – kind of like they do on TV when they have a double episode.  The salient scenes of the previous episode are shown to give the viewer a sense of where the story left off.  In my case the story left off at me in a psychiatric hospital.  I had to list out the events using my fingers like I was counting.  See if you can count along with me:

I stick out my thumb; “going to bed with the kids,”

Then index finger; “woke up,”

On to the middle finger;  “wife not at home,”

Ring finger;  “wife out drunk,”

Now the pinky; “I got pissed,”

Next hand stick out thumb; “threatened suicide,”

then the other index finger; “cops showed up,”

On to the middle finger; “took me to the hospital,”

And finally I stick out my ring finger; “ambulance ride to psychiatric hospital.”

The light in my head begins to dimly glow orangeish red.  “I am in a psychiatric hospital held against my will.  Hmmm, interesting.”   I felt the need to scream.  This can’t be.  Holy shit, this really is reality!  I am in a fucking psychiatric hospital!  Yeah, I’ll put an exclamation mark on that last one.

A brief google search was fruitless on the matter but judging from the 1937 video on youtube it took the Hindenburg maybe 45 seconds to go down.  In 45 seconds the ship goes from a buoyant sound structure to a heap of metal on the ground.  In a similar fashion and maybe just as spectacular so did my life.  That morning my life was a mangled skeletal smoking frame amidst burning puddles of diesel fuel.

Everything goes hazy here.  Bits and pieces come through but the exact details are not quite clear.  I made more attempts to call my wife from the phone in the common area – all to no avail.  In total I am guessing that I tried to call my wife maybe 125 times.  She answered twice.  Her only words, “I am protecting me and the kids.”

So, I probably had breakfast.  There were classes.  I really don’t remember what the classes were about but I signed up for most of them.  Just like in “One Flew Over the Coo Coos Nest”, I do remember a lady handing out meds at the center counter of the “Pod.”  Yes, I was in a Pod for severely mentally stressed people – the kind of people that you had no idea what they were going to do next.  You know the unpredictable ones.  I was one of the unpredictable ones.

I was considered crazy.