Perspective

It is always a useful exercise to imagine your current situation from new perspectives. We all have the tendency to assume that someone else is seeing the same situation in the same way, and it can cause all sorts of problems like extreme road rage, or unwelcome and awkward romantic advances.

Like everyone, I've gone through a few very dark periods in my life and I've learned that even the most despairing situation can seem a little better when you change your perspective, even momentarily.

I won’t go too far into detail here, because the story is rather sad and not as funny as I'd like it to be. However, the experiences I gained from this sad story are as priceless as gold, which is about 1100 dollars an ounce right now, I think. Anyways, I have always struggled with a bit of mental instability, which probably doesn't surprise you considering the spike clowns, bedwetting and teeth grinding. Anyways, there was a very rough period where I couldn't seem to control myself and, long story short; I ended up in an in-patient mental health treatment facility.

If ever you are feeling crazy, or depressed, or have the feeling that you can’t seem to function correctly, I invite you to visit one of these facilities. From the minute that I awoke from my one and a half day, drug induced coma, I realized a few things:

a) I am not at all crazy

b) It is a terrible thing to be crazy

c) Many people caring for crazy people are they themselves, crazy.

The halls were painted various shades of circus-themed colors, which given my history with clowns and my current suicidal state, I didn't enjoy so much. I recently discovered a few pieces of notebook paper that I scrawled on during my stay there, shoved into an old journal. One of the pages contained the following analysis.

"...As if they think the bright colors will make us feel less like killing ourselves and others. Let's hope it works"

Adding to your mental picture of this particular place, each room shared a suite-style bathroom with the adjoining room. Now, perhaps this doesn’t sound too strange. Quite normal. Like college right?!

I had checked in, and was moved to my own room under cover of darkness. When nature called, I made my way to the bathroom and peered in. I instantly shut the door tightly, because the door on the other side of the bathroom was wide open! If you've ever seen Girl Interrupted, or One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, you can imagine why I was (yet again) absolutely terrified of using the bathroom. There could be a full on psychopath sharing my bathroom, who perhaps would have an irrational fear of toilet flushes, or maybe even a violent way of saying hello, the possibilities really were endless, and I wasn't about to reach my hand and the better part of my arm into a crazy person's room to close the door. On top of that none of the doors in this place lock. Cool.

My fear was reinforced by "group therapy" the following day. "Group Therapy" consisted of sitting in a circle while a nurse's assistant asked us three questions.

1) How are you feeling today?

2) Any suicidal thoughts today?

3) Any homicidal thoughts today?

I was pretty zoned out until I heard this combination. "Pretty good; yes; yes." I later saw the same fellow leaving on a weekend pass to visit his family. Hope that went ok!

Anyways, my story now takes you to the common room, in which there was a TV which was never turned off of the MTV Hip Hop station. I found out why shortly. All of the chairs in this place where specialty items specifically designed to prevent their use as weapons, i.e. extremely heavy. Like, I couldn't move them...at all. There was a man/boy who was always in the common room and would spontaneously drop into pushups at the command of some unheard drill sergeant, and also (much to my entertainment) knew all of the dance moves to the most popular rap songs of the day. Since they wouldn't let me continue sleeping my existence away, I was enjoying music videos against my will this day, stopping occasionally to glare at the nurses’ station and imagine their violent deaths.

One of the other patients decided he had had enough of the rap music. A channel change. No big deal right? I mean, sometimes in suburbia this could result in a severe Indian burn or a wedgie or perhaps even a passive aggressive silent treatment, but the mental hospital is a different world. Our spontaneous push-up guy was not in favor of a change, and roared with rage. To my utter disbelief, he effortlessly picked up one of the chairs which had to have been made of lead, and threw it at the other patient. The channel was promptly changed back and our guy happily went back to push-ups. So if you want to be able to throw retardedly heavy objects, do a lot of pushups, I guess.

I made a mental note and continued to stare blankly at the wall until our hip hop loving friend decided he wanted to be my friend. Previous to my stay at this lovely facility, I had spontaneously shaved my head, and currently looked like either a really sad lesbian, or perhaps a political prisoner falsely accused of smuggling heroin in Thailand.

So anyways, my super strong companion sat next to me and struck up a conversation. Important lesson: even men who are completely out of their minds will still try to hit on you. So while my hands sweat profusely, he turns and regards me carefully for a minute and then looks me dead in the face and says quite seriously,

"You ever think about growing out your hair?"

no shit.

That is a refreshing perspective. So perhaps next time you look in the mirror, and whisper all sorts of hateful things to yourself, either because you see every flaw, or every mistake that has brought you to your current physical or mental state, you should stop and imagine how a schizophrenic, super-buff bachelor (or bachelorette), who spends every sad day of his life in a circus themed prison, might see you.