As I’ve noted in the past, many blogs ago, I treat certain things like artifacts, sacred pieces of my life experience that I find valuable.
Some of these things are valuable in the conventional sense and would easily be stolen in a robbery; other items would have the trespasser and thief and say, “Why the Hell did they lock THAT up?”
Everyone understands why the antique family photos might be kept in a fireproof safe, but the value of some heirlooms and personal items defies market economics. People love junk, stupidly, irrationally, beyond reason. They love things that would have no value at a garage sale. Many such items could be replaced easily and cheaply, and often to the improvement of the user.
I have purchased many things, far too many things to be honest, on my own, and I am surrounded by the evidence of this most hours of the day. The costliest of these items is still very much replaceable to me, if I want to pay the right aftermarket price. To me it is just a nice, costly item. There is a story to go with it, but the story is that of another creator and storyteller.
I am interested in objects that become a part of my story. I am interested in the thing that I cannot, under any circumstance, subtract from the narrative.
There was something I’d been looking for here and there. The search for it was intense at first, and then it died down as all fruitless searches do. The object become a memory. I tried to replace it several times, and with versions that looked and felt a lot better. But nothing landed.
What did I lose?
The silliest of things; something that most people wouldn’t think about and might leave behind, lost in the nearly bare walls of Unit 11 at Western Psychiatric Hospital:
A flimsy rubber pop-it fidget toy, colored in rainbow splash and shaped like a t-shirt. Its value is probably a dollar or two. I lost track of it shortly after my discharge. I assumed I would just be able to find it, and it was then I learned that the t-shirt shaped pop-it business is actually a rather booming enterprise, with a seemingly endless supply of product.
I found some stuff that was similar, but not THAT one. The ones I found in the Amazon shopping forrest were fine in their own right, but they weren’t the same. There was no meaning behind them, nothing sacred behind them. They were particles rendered into plastic. They were not part of my story.
I knew that an identical replacement would not be perfect, but close enough.
The original (OG) pop-it toy is integrated into my story, along with its sibling prize, the same article but simply shaped like a soft-serve ice cream cone. I actually tried to find a spare for the ice cream cone, but quickly learned that the flimsy rubber fidget toy rainbow splash ice cream cone business was also doing quite well. I again failed to find on the outside what I had on the inside.
What experiences did I carry with the t-shirt shaped toy? Think on this: the first thing that is apparent to a patient on a psych ward is the spacing. Even though there is plenty of room to stretch, there is also a deep and penetrating claustrophobia.
And for all my fears, I do not consider myself claustrophobic.
This translates to feelings of being trapped and imprisoned, and that is actually true in a sense. Even a voluntary admission must sign a form and then wait a few days to leave. You want to leave and you cannot leave.
This is the way of mental health inpatient, where the program chugs along as the patient has almost no autonomy.
For me this translated to a perfect cocktail of awful: a ton of nervous energy and absolutely nowhere to go. I had books to read, and that can work when I am reasonably calm and not at all overstimulated and wondering just how sick I am and whether or not I am ever going to leave the hospital.
Books were better than no activity at all, but I needed something to get moving, and to get things done. I needed my body and brain to come together, generate motion, and push my mind as far away from Unit 11 as possible.
And Lo, after a game of bingo, which was paired with a build -your-own sundae party, I found myself in possession of two pop-it toys and an adult-level coloring book that was far beyond my pediatric artist abilities. The party ended and dumped me straight into the hallway, where I quickly grabbed a pair of headphones, put the classical station on again, and waltzed with myself down the halls, my fingers pushing into each protruding circle. I did this over, and over, and over.
Who knows how many miles I walked in the unit, in circles around the tables and oversized chairs. It had to be a comfortably in double digits each day. There was simply so little to do. One can only take so much of the same board games and their mismatched, missing pieces. I am not a stationary human.
I have never been a stationary human. I needed to move, and I needed something to do with all moving parts of my body. My hands could not be idle during a walk, I knew that.
And I didn’t have to worry about that any longer. As I played with the toy, which provides an endless loop of popping, popping, and more popping, it become sacred in its own way, pulling from the mood, place, energy, people, and events of the unit.
When I hold the toy I am immediately, in some way, back in the unit, walking like a cloud on a brand new pair of extra cushy crocs. My tummy is suddenly hungry for 2 percent white milk, and lots of it. This makes sense to me, as that was my continuous “snack” on the floor.
When I feel the pop-it, soft and thin, and so thin at points that it looks ready to tear, I see the faces of the unit again, and I think of all the good things I saw behind the eyes of a group so very much in pain, such as random acts of hello, good natured chats about music and metaphysics and mental health, and I can see them all waving as I found myself going through the main double doors of the unit again, and I can still see them now, even though I know that stays on Until 11 are often measured in weeks and not months, which means that they’re all off to something else, who knows what, but I sure hope it involves more therapy than meltdowns, as I don’t think I could tolerate the idea of people leaving the unit and falling, failing, and sinking further into a pit that has no mercy built into it’s devices.
If I think of them that way, the sacred object in my hands will be stripped of its power, and that’s unacceptable.
With each press of each bubble, I hold hope in my heart for all of those beautiful people, and every once in awhile I try to extend said graces for myself.
That’s a little bit harder, but the fidget toy is easy.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
Yours Mentally,
Nathan
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