Yesterday afternoon Mom sent me a text asking how I was doing. Since leaving Fremont eleven days ago, she has checked in on me nearly every day. Sometimes it has been a simple message, like the one from yesterday, and sometimes her way of checking in is to ask me to look after the dogs once the sun has set, to let them back inside the house if it hasn’t been too hot and they’ve been running the yard all afternoon, or to let them out to pee before lying down for the night. At Fremont, the aides would do safety checks on everybody in the unit every half hour. Often when someone entered my room I would be lying in bed, on my side or supine, staring up at the ceiling. Sometimes I dozed, but mostly I seemed to hover in some vague in-between state. I never had my glasses on during those times, so whenever the door softly clicked open and the light and faint voices in the hall came nearer and there stood the shadowy figure of someone looking in on me, it was always just a presence, a subtle change in the air. Then the light at the doorway would fade, the door would click shut, and I’d be alone again.
Now that I am out I find myself missing those half-hour room checks. I miss the feeling of being looked after, of having to sit with a doctor to discuss my mental health or tweak some part of my therapy, medication or dosage, as if it were all puzzle pieces scattered on a table and we were sliding them around, testing for the best fit. I miss having to get up, both from bed and my ever-deepening spiral, to meet with a counselor face to face, the earnest conversations and challenges to my thinking. The feeling of push back, there being something out there, outside of myself. When I have spoke of these feelings to Mom, or to Dr. Recker, or Dr. K, I’ve often described it as a sense of blowing in the wind. So much of me goes toward maintaining, hanging on each day. When someone asks how I am, when a text from Mom appears, that is all I can say. “I’m fine, I guess.” “Are you sure?” “How can I say anymore? I mean what does that word even mean?”
