I went to see where I left off and there was no where I left off. As I typed my previous post, I would see in the left side bar from time to time “saving.” I believe I even hit publish but all the stuff that I had typed the other night was fucking gone. So word-fucking-press, I don’t trust you anymore. I need to save what I write on my computer as well. I will try to recreate it. I guess.
The head line read, “Hi, my name is still Floyd”.
Anyway my fucking name is still Floyd. A lot of people say this at meetings when they share for a second time or any subsequent times they share after their first. I don’t quite get it. I mean did I miss something? I mean have there been instances where a person suddenly changes their name right in the middle of a meeting? Judging by the number of people that say, “My name is still so and so”, mid-meeting name changing must have been common. I say “must have” past tense because in the thirteen years I have been going to meetings I have yet to hear someone say at a meeting my name is Joe and then when they share again they say,”People, I have changed my name. I am no longer Joe, Now, I am Bob.” I could go on about this but won’t.
Let’s see, as I last recall I was in the back of a police car picnicking. Wait, no, panicking. Yes, that’s what I was doing. I was panicking. I am not a good enough wordsmith to put together the right set of words to adequately describe what was going on in my head. I think all I can come up with is feeling like a caged animal, like a fish on a hook or wild bear in a cage. Some people say, “You know, we think we are free but it’s just an illusion. Really we’re not free; we are enslaved by “the system.”” I am pretty sure these people have never found themselves suddenly in the back of a police car. I think I have a pretty good idea of what “not free” is. I am pretty sure the people that think they are not free have no more idea of what “not free” is than a person blind from birth knows what the color “blue” looks like. For me, it was a tremendously horrible feeling.
Sitting in the back of the car with my hands zip tied together in a compartment not much larger than my body blew my mind. I was having a feeling that I had never had before. I can say, “trapped” but that doesn’t quite cut it. The closest I can get to that feeling was the first time I went to a native american sweat with my late wife when we were dating. This was four years after the incident that I am writing about.
A safely run sweat is held in a canvas covered tent. This is called a sweat lodge. It is completely dark and in the center are very hot rocks anywhere from the size of grape fruit to bowling balls. The rocks are so hot that they faintly glow red. After the tent flap is shut and it goes completely dark, the leader pours ladles of water onto the rocks. The ensuing steam immediately consumes the tent and in seconds my nostrils and then the back of my throat begin to burn . My face feels like it is going to burn off or melt away. It is intense enough that some people, and in later sweats I would be one of them, put rags over their heads to soften the onslaught of heat. At that second I want to get out but I can’t. There are two many people and it is too dark. The population density inside the sweat lodge approximates that of a Toyota Camry loaded with ten people. The panic and the need to get up and go are intense. I even start to do it just out of instinct but just as quick as the steam assaults my face it leaves. In the squad car the steam did not leave for an hour and there was no way out. It was when the two cops got in the car that I began to calm down a little and start to get a grasp of the overall situation. The steam seemed to dissipate.
As the cop turned the car around at the end of the culdesac I could see that in that hour two other cruisers and a fire truck had joined the party. I could also see all the neighbors standing around looking at the house and at me in the car as we drove by on our way out of the culdesac. I remember the scene of the red and blue lights painting the houses as the neighborhood faded away in to a fog.
As we drove down the street one of the cops gave me the choice of going to jail or the hospital. For a second I thought of “Let’s Make a Deal.” like I was a contestant and this was the choice Monty was giving me. “Is he going to take the all expense paid trip to jail or will it be rest and relaxation at the hospital?” he might say to the audience to peak their curiosity. “All expenses will be paid, of course, by our contestant.” Just an aside here, there was no door number three. Millennials will have to google or look up on wikipedia “Let’s Make a Deal”. By the way, I chose the hospital.
As they pulled me out of the car at the hospital one of the cops, I think it was Monty, said “You better stay away from your house, your wife, and your kids. I wouldn’t be surprised if she puts a restraining order on you.”
We walked into the hospital and it kinda reminded me of the scene in Alien as they are zooming in on the crew of the Nostromo eating dinner. In the movie after all the excitement on the planet, the place where they were eating seemed so clean and cool and sterile. It was nice and peaceful. This of course, is the scene where the partially incubated alien/alien infant pops out of Cains chest. A nurse I think rather quickly came to get me and take me to a room. This wasn’t like the ER where you wait for at least four hours before the guy at the desk will talk to you. I was laying on the examination table within minutes after arriving. As I was laying on the table I saw my phone along with all the other stuff I had in my pockets laying on a counter. I got up and dialed her number and was met with about fifteen rings followed by, “The person you are trying to reach is not answering. Please leave a message. . .” So I dialed again and again and again. I kept dialing and finally she did pick up. I forget what I said but I remember what she said. The exchange probably went something like this:
Me: You gotta get me out of here. I am so sorry. Please. I fucked up. I know it.
Her: I am protecting me and the kids
Me: You don’t have to. I’m alright. I just messed up. It was the alcohol.
Her: I am protecting me and the kids
Me: Okay! But I’m telling you . I promise this will not happen again.
Her: I am protecting me and the kids
Me: I promise. Please. I won’t. . .
Her: Click
Me: Fuck! Fuuuuck! Oh Fuck!
A doctor came in and examined me. He or she I totally forget the gender asked me about my medical history. Then asked what happened. I tried to convince the non-gender specific medical person (NGSMP) that I was just trying to get her attention, that I had no intention of harming myself. The NGSMP probably said something like, “You’ve already proven to us that you can and will take action to harm yourself and are not thinking about the consequences to others (your children) when you do this. You need to be seen at the local psychiatric hospital.”
The psychiatric hospital actually was local. So was the hospital I was in. In fact our children were born in the hospital I was in. The hospital was across the highway from our neighborhood. At the end of the hospital drive way was the psychiatric hospital. We passed it on the way into the hospital. I actually didn’t know it was a psych hospital until then. I drove by the facility on my way to and from work probably a couple hundred times when I was working up there. All I knew about it was, was that there was something that looked like it might have been a “confidence course” behind the ten foot high fence that surrounded the place. This was confirmed when I woke up the next morning and got to look out the lunch room window.
They got an ambulance – one of the big square box truck type ambulances. They put me on a gurney and rolled me right out into the truck, closed up the truck, and drove the fifteen hundred feet to the end of the hospital driveway. That is one of the most expensive trips I have ever taken. It cost one dollar for every foot. The “all expenses paid” thing, yeah. The contestant foots the tab and insurance doesn’t. It turns out that my insurance plan, although it was pretty good, did not cover mental health issues resulting in self harm like attempted suicide.
I remember the intake guy being pretty cool. He kind of calmed me down. At intake I was wearing a Led Zeppelin t-shirt with one of their album covers printed on it. The album was their first album – the one with the zeppelin burning at the mooring tower in Lakehurst New Jersey. The guy was a Led Zeppelin fan and started a conversation about how he liked them and so started talking about them. As he was talking his voice faded out as I was thinking, “Here I am. My life is in flames and plummeting to the ground like the Hindenburg and this guy is talking so nonchalantly about Led Zeppelin as if we are passengers on a cross town bus.
I was also wearing khaki pants, socks, shoes, a belt. I had my keys, some change, and my cell phone, and wallet in my pockets. After intake, I had no keys, no change, cell phone, and no wallet. I was wearing socks, shoes without shoe laces, and khaki pants without a belt, and my Led Zeppelin shirt that was depicting exactly what was happening to my life at that instance.
The guy then led me back into the room in which I would be staying. It was dark and there were multiple sources of snoring. We ambled through the room bumping into the cots yet not waking their occupants. We found mine and I laid down in it. It felt like very thick felt and was concave and just as wide as my body. My body just naturally slid down into the middle of the thick concave felt. I pulled up the cover and laid there listening to the hum of a fan and the movement of air through air ducts.
My breathing became more quick and more shallow as I started to panic. Here would be the first step I would take on my ascent. This step was to convince myself I am alright and nothing bad is happening to me at this moment.
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