Of Emancipated Monks and Obscenities

Posted on August 19, 2005 in Psych Wards

The people in the hallway were either going somewhere or nowhere at all. A few bodies lounged on the chairs and couches in the glass-walled television room. A lone schizophrenic, his mouth agape, stood there in a hospital gown, his arms hanging at his side, his bare feet making a slow circle of small steps. A short, stout woman stormed up and down the hall, screaming obscenities. A long red t-shirt hung from her torso, one shoulder bared. When she came to my end of the corridor, she stopped her blasphemies for just a second, smirked at my smile, and turned around for another pass.

I was here to visit a friend — the same friend who I had visited in another hospital a few weeks ago. My friend introduced me to a young, slender schizophrenic who took to the shirt I’d bought at St. Andrew’s Abbey.

“What does your shirt say?” she asked. I pulled out the wrinkles to show it to her. “That’s a monastery. I think I’ve been to that monastery. It’s in Great Britain.”

“No,” I said. “It’s here in California. On the other side of the San Gabriels.”

“Oh. Are you a monk?”

I laughed. “I can’t be a monk. I’m married.”

“They don’t have married monks,” she stated factually. “You can’t be a monk if you’re married. Why don’t you be a monk. An American monk. An emancipated American monk.”

She began stringing the words together and repeating them: “emancipatedamericanmonkoftheabbey”.

“Let’s get out of here. It’s too noisy,” my friend grumped.

I left with my friend’s sister about half an hour later when the loudspeakers filled with the command for everyone who was not a patient to leave. As we left, I said “excuse me” to the schizophrenic hovering at the door. He looked up for just an instant as if to say “You saw me?” The girl came by, went around him, bounced as she waved bye-bye and went into the television room.

Is it any wonder that some patients like their illness? Unlike alcohol or street drugs, they don’t take on their disease willfully. The symptoms just come. When you are in mania or a schizophrenic blur, you see and feel a vivid reality. You may hear wondrous words, see angels, or just feel that your soul has expanded to hold the entire universe under your tongue. Normality seems distant, strange, and dull. This world of dragons and princesses in long flowing robes flows away when you start taking your medications. And yet you must let it go so you can live among the normals and bring to them the stories you have gathered.

I hope the girl does not give up poetry. She seems to have the zeal for it.