A Psych ward in southwest ohio

TW: self-harm, cancer, slurs

I am sitting across the table from two men. One is older and the other is my age, glassy eyed, and smiling. The older one is slumped on the table and holding his head, a position which displays his hours-old cuts that run from the base of his thumb to the knob of his elbow- and bisect tattoos with no regard for their design.

Every fifteen minutes I check off that their behavior is ‘calm’ and ‘cooperative’. Together we work through an exercise to find goals for after their time in the facility. The young man wants to get his license and a girlfriend. The tattooed man wants to be a better dad. 

For the last nine months I've worked as a mental health technician for an inpatient behavioral hospital in Miamisburg, OH. 

You meet a lot of great people in this role. Important people, too.

For example, I’ve met guardians to the gates of hell. 

And a top investor in a Japanese pen company.

I’ve met a man at the center of a massive lawsuit between Google, Apple, and Amazon. 

And people with bright eyes and sensitive constitutions who studied business, or are artists, or have lost the love of their life. People who have only just been resuscitated for many different reasons. I met people who are frightened to tears by the delay of their own cognition and speech. Who can't control their anger. Who only seem to weep. 

During visiting hours, I’ve met their families, too. Who can't control their anger. Who only seem to weep. 

All while doctors and graduate students filter through.

Once, in the bitter winter storms of early February, everything was frozen. I sat with a man in the foyer who was preoccupied with the idea that his body was ravaged with cancer. Despite his condition, he was declared 'at baseline' and discharged for routine hospital taxi service. 

I knew that he was homeless, and that he would be dropped off on the corner he was last seen with his wife. His hair was shaggy and his teeth were cut flat across as though he were meant to graze in pasture. He cried profusely that he had cancer, that he loved his wife, and that he was afraid that she was dead and frozen in the awful weather- that he would freeze and die soon, too. Tears ran down his face, which was knotted by these fears. I sat with him and asked him to describe his wife with a hand on his shoulder. She loved purple. The car comes. She's so beautiful. She loves purple. 

No two days were the same. Between checks, I had the opportunity to talk to the patients I worked with, and when I sat back and listened to what people wanted to tell me, I found that it wasn't always neutral, and often, I learned something about myself. To some, I was their son, and someone to teach fishing and field dressing to. To some I was an exciting new friend and someone in their life who cared. To some I was an intellectual equal who listened to and accepted their ideas. To some I was contemptible, a faggot, or a pawn in the industrial medical complex. To many I was a neutral feature of the chaotic life-arc which brought them there in the first place.

The job was not hard work. It was checking on people, cleaning up spills (or urine, depending), and bringing meals. A part of the job was also to run small groups about coping skills, goals, and acceptance. And although we said that we "explicitly do not provide therapy", stories inevitably spilled out. Some people seemed to vomit the truth, and saying the truth could sometimes seem like vomiting.

And so much, like everything, was mistakes until it was routine. And you begin not to notice that a particular patient has been sleeping all day, or that you're cleaning crayon off the wall, or that the person whose asking you for a fruit cup has a striking pattern of interpersonality that comes off as highly both strung and twitchy, as well as glazed over and dry. 

But it was just a short, interesting, job.

It was yoga, and coloring pages, and a many latex gloves.

It was whistles and salutes should you be seen with the toilet plunger on your way to a patients room. It was small procedures, and checks every 15 minutes.

It was, every once in a while, a guy who would just not stop yelling.

But mostly it was just a lot of people.  

Important people.

April 30th, 2023