your father used to carry. It was a gift from my parents when I got my PhD.
Today, I am here to see Ashley. She’s been my patient for over a year now, and in that time, she’s wasted away to almost nothing, attempted suicide twice. If you ask me, her life is like a daily suicide attempt—as she slowly starves herself. Though since she’s been here, she’s been better. Some color has returned to her cheeks. Last week I made her smile.
This is not what you think of when you think of a psychiatric hospital, not the kind of place where we house people like Kreskey—there are no gray corridors lit by fluorescent lights, no metal doors with tray slots and glass run through with wire. Here at Fieldcrest there are gardens, well-appointed rooms, a chef who grows his own produce and herbs on the property, there’s a library, art therapy room, a meditation space. It’s more like a spa, a retreat from a world that is cruel and unfeeling. Ashley’s here for clinical depression, though like most of my patients she has no simple, one-word diagnosis. People always want a name, a pill, a cure. But the human psyche doesn’t always fit in a tidy little box, as we both know.
Her trauma was the accidental death of her father, one she witnessed as she was a passenger on the back of his motorcycle at the time. After her last suicide attempt, wrists slashed in a hot tub, I thought it might be time to take her out of her home environment. The cuts were shallow, but her mother was away (though I’d suggested it was best that Ashley not be alone). If not for Ashley’s boyfriend, we might have lost her.
I wondered how she’d fare away from her mother; it’s part of the reason I recommended a stay here. True to my suspicions, she’s gained weight, opened up more in session, has started painting. Her mother is grieving differently—which is to say drinking, staying out at night, sleeping around, sleeping all day.
Today I see Ashley in the dayroom, a sun-drenched space filled with cozy couches, fresh flowers, shelves lined with books. There’s no television here, no Wi-Fi. Here we shut out all the crazy-making chatter of our day-to-day world. It’s so hard for the strongest among us to stay sane, isn’t it, under the conditions we have come to think of as normal?
Ashley reminds me of you in some ways. The sweetness of her smile, an innocent twinkle that belies the sharp wit, the dark thoughts. Like you, she’s authentically both—light and shadow. Maybe like all of us.
“I’ve been thinking today that maybe I don’t want to die after all,” she says when I sit down. Since she’s been here, she’s stopped pulling her hair back into the painfully tight ponytail she usually wears. She’s ceased gnawing at her fingernails.
“That’s good news,” I say easily. “What has led you to this change of heart?”
“In meditation class, the teacher asked us to dwell in a place of gratitude. I asked her, ‘What the hell do I have to be grateful for? I’m in a mental hospital.’”
“Good question.”
“She said, ‘Today, someone who was clinging to life lost the battle against a grave illness. That person would have given anything for one more day, one more hour, one more breath. You might start by being grateful that you can draw air into your lungs. It’s okay to just start there.’”
“And that resonated with you?”
“I never thought about it that way.”
I am not sure if she’s being a smart-ass or not. She’s capable of great snark. But I think I see a change in her, something softened, something more relaxed.
“My dad,” she says, looking down at her hands. “He wouldn’t have wanted this for me. He’d be mad that I tried to throw away my life, when he would have done anything, I think, to hold on to his.”
I don’t say anything right away, just nod. The less you say in session sometimes the better, otherwise it can become about you. She’s quiet a moment, then wipes at a tear.
“It was, you know, like an aha moment.”
I had a moment like that once.
When I woke up in Eugene Kreskey’s basement, I thought I was dreaming. I was lying on concrete and there was nothing around me that I recognized. Odd shapes in a shadowy space, some light leaking in from a high window. He hadn’t even bothered to tie me up. The pain