In Limbo, Part 1

The CPEP, or the psychiatric emergency room, at night in a large hospital in a large city is, as you would imagine, full of interesting people, myself being one of them in my current state of mind.

I remember walking a lot. Around the room. There were about ten beds pushed up against a wall with windows. Across from that were several doors. On one end of the long room there was a plastic couch facing a TVbehind plexiglass that was turned down low. On the other end of the room was a nurses station with 3 or 4 people behind a glass window. I was very confused, and a little scared, though not too bad because I was safe and warm, even though I had no idea what was going on. I had reset mentally again inside this room and now it was all I could remember ever experiencing. No wife before this, no family. Nothing. All I could remember was being in this room with these strange people I didn’t know, yet it somehow seemed like I’d been here forever.

I remember a guy looking at me strangely, saying something like this guy’s really messed up… I was suspicious of him. I didn’t know if he was a patient or staff, but I didn’t like him. He kept looking at me like he knew something, and I didn’t know anything, so I didn’t like him. I remember at one point someone gave me a paper cup of water, and I set it down on a table. The suspicious guy was sitting across from me with his own cup of water. I got up and walked away and came back, and I picked up a glass that I thought was mine… the suspicious guy gave me a look I thought was strange and I panicked for a second, because I thought I took his cup… the moment passed, I set the cup down, and I kept walking.

This could be said to be the origin of what would become my single most passionate pass-time in the hospital for the next month… pacing. And not just pacing, pacing with intent. You’ve all seen movies, where the mental patient nervously paces around like he’s looking for something. That was me for about a month. I didn’t pace before, and I don’t pace now, though for weeks after I came home I found that in my worst moments of panic and despair, pacing helped. I paced so much in the next month that I developed shin-splints in both my calves. I paced so much that it became much more comfortable to do it in my bare feet than in my shoes, which had the laces removed in case I got ideas and tried to kill myself.

I paced a lot that night, but never found what I was looking for. I never found any reason for why I was there, and I seemed to be walking further and further away from who I was. I was leaving myself and the reality of who I was behind, and I was wondering off into a place I’d never be able to fully describe, because it was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. It was like a dream, where I knew very much that the items and people and sensations and memories around me were supposed to make sense, but I had no idea how to make sense of them. It was like my life experience was a puzzle blown apart in a thousand different pieces, and the bits I could see seemed so familiar, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make the pieces fit.

I felt desperate. I felt sad. I felt completely alone.