All about nothing I haven't heard before

The witness gave her account, the reality as she had lived it, with all the focus and detail she could afford without compromising the accuracy of the events. Some of her memory failed to express itself properly; it was an entirely impromptu interrogation, and she had not prepared to fulfill her role as informant.

It was fortunate for her that professionals in the science of understanding and evaluating the legitimacy and function of other minds so often admire their own voice only so much less much than the voice of reason in which they are indisputably fluent.

He listened with visible endurance, she became flustered not only from the increasingly fragmented nature of her narrative, but from his patent effort to refrain from making an interruption.

She could sense the advent of a divination, the investigator was mentally sequencing the fragments and discarding the nonessentials of her storyline until they rendered an identifiable form. It was an elaborate yet instant process of classifaction, and the verdict was delivered with unquestionable certainty.

The proposed amendment on her psychological constitution was explained, but not defended; there would be no argument where this was concerned, she did not have the authority of science to refute his decision. It was forthwith determined a professional, comprehensive psychological evaluation would take place, arranged and admistered by the institution in which he was employed. From the outset, he could see she was a "very depressed person," and "possibly Asperger's Syndrome." New medication was prescribed, and audience with the young lady was requested at his earliest convenience.

A SHORT HISTORY OF MY DIAGNOSES (in revision):

You have clinical depression. Try Remeron (no thank you), Lexapro (see why teenagers should not take antidepressants), Celexa (Works lovely in multiple doses, take with spirits. Delicious shivers and good feelings all around.)
You have an eating disorder. Therapy with Mother Earth. Awwwwn.
You have Asperger's Syndrome. Take therapy with disgruntled Ivy League-reject. Check out some Abilify, Risperdal while you're at it, too.
Overdose Part 1! Emergency room visit...
You have Bipolar Disorder. Take Trileptal, Lamictal.
Pompous ass still creeping you out? Drop him. And the Pills. Then spend the whole summer waiting to get raped. (Never happens).
ESL psych with crazy hand gestures. Works surprisingly well, but the forces of evil will not be thwarted.....
Really shitty pathetic Overdose Part 2! Psych Ward take 1. Sleeping Pills (I really miss those) Cymbalta (80/57 blood pressure) Lithium Bicarbonate (Och, headache, nausea, am I pregnant?) Lithium Citrate (could you be the one?)
Act a complete ass in front of the Dean of Students and the Director of New Students.
Act a complete ass in front of Composition teacher.
Fifth psychotherapist.
Repeating, fifth psychotherapist.
I have no opinion of them anymore.
Second Psychiatrist.
You are ADD. Take some Adderall.
Here we go again......

Seven Days

The momentum ceased,
The pace of her life slackened,
Rising sun and setting sun melded into an indistinguishable continuum,
There was a morning, and hours of drifting inbetween,
with evening coming just as she had decided what exactly she was
going to do that day.
There was a bewildering absence of direction in herself,
Time was not of the essence, it was approaching near non-existence.
She contemplated her lack of being,
blissfully but not without reservations,
inwardly as always they remained,
ambition is one dogged creature,
bliss could never tame.

The Idiot

It is unabashedly naive.
Idiotically simplistic. Laughably immature.
And yet, for years I have faltered, not knowing, not seeing it.

Why a person, of such limited abilities, with significant obstacles
to functioning as a normal human being, should be allowed to
persist, useless.

She is acutely aware of her mediocre intelligence,
and it shames her deeply, deeply.

I need a discrete, definable purpose to my life.
I cannot allow myself to live with the pretence of having a purpose
when I have not.

A little more disorder

She flinched, a quick spasm of disgust, although inwardly overcome by the obscenity of her circumstances, the anxiety never surfaced. Instead, the restiveness stewed in the underground, spilling over in little places, where flickers of memory exposed themselves in clenching hands. The hands would clench so tightly, hoarding blood in the palms, then, then, then, exhaling in release, the hand would fully extend itself, sending the fingertips, profuse with blood, dithering with ecstasy. Everything seemed tremendously tenuous inside of her, it was an impossible balancing act, this holding of breath, all day long she would look for a place to let it go, if only for a minute, some room to unleash a part of the animal beating against the cage of her chest, chanting cruel, cynical anthems to taunt her yearning for self-control. Many times she thought of the little prisoner banging his cold steel drum in her brain, and how what methods she might pursue to bring about his swift and total demise. The thought frightened her that it would not be possible to destroy him without destroying a part of herself. What part would that wicked boy take with him, she wondered.

A lesser mind

How could she find herself within length of grasping,
so close to touching she knew, the landmarks, the faces, the words,
the avante-garde nook on historic boulevard upon famous general's river under the shadow of......some gothic cathedral,
she knew nothing.
she knew an assortment of pixels,
freshly pressed ink, placidly immobile in her lap.
Sometimes they danced across the canvas of a dull unthinking screen,
flailing in agony, writhing in fury, beaming in fully varnished glory,
drinking in pleasure,
But the people did not speak to her.
They spoke to the man with the camera, to some rather-be-screwing-my-mistress doer of great things, and, in the habit of regretful and helpless misfortunates,
often enough they spoke to themselves.
Everything she knew of their worlds was filtered, typesetted, formatted, pre-arranged,
the good accentuated, the bad and the ugly obscured or left out entirely.
Therefore it was of great concern to her,
that the cities and countries of her education,
upon encounter,
would materialize themselves in entirely unexpected, unpredictable ways.
She would not speak the right words,
with accuracy identify each place, know of each person.
For all of her protestations at great lengths of a limited existence,
discovery and the unknown were the least she desired when meeting the world.

Ashley

Day unknown in the Psychiatric ward.
Drifting through stages of sleeping, and walking, and standing, and trying to care.

The pariah of the Psychiatric ward:
a shrunken girl with wide, blank eyes
nods more than she speaks, softly, like a child.
At meal time,
another patient helps her fix her plate,
she lifts a fork, pauses forever,
and discovers moments later,
something plastic in her hand.

They whisper disapprovingly,
they have nothing else to do,
everything is done for them.

a little man knocks on each door,
meal time,
a nurse strolls down the hallway,
Time to take your meds,
a therapist yells,
group time, gym time,
smoke break, snack break,
What time is it?
We've all lost time.

I pass her in the hallway, she stares into me, motionless, wordless, pushes a hand forward.
Crumpled inside a small palm, a note. For me? She nods.
It is the first time she has responded to words today.
The note was a suicide letter,
someone had hurt her,
she was afraid to tell anyone,
but me.
The note was not a suicide letter.
It was a memo from a Tow Service.
Please pay this amount in check,
no cash please, or credit cards,
We do not take Visa,
send to this address
and please call this number
or this one
or this one over here
and pick your car up.

Wait one minute, Ashley.

I knock on the door of a dementia patient,
your husband is on the phone,
she asks me where she is,
when is breakfast,
you're in the Psychiatric Ward,
breakfast is at seven,
(it is evening)
she follows me, half dazed,
I contemplate how frightening it must be,
to lose yourself.

Ashley, did you want me to read this?

She is sitting in the hallway,
her back sinking into the wall,
a black notebook opened on her lap,
Gently I approach her,
she looks at me with a dead, unsettling stare,
and points for me to read,
I watch her write the numbers,
my eyes caught several words,
scrawled across the page:

Nice ass
Hot tits

Jack
Rack
Race
Rape

She caught me reading,
I, flustered, muttered something,
let her alone, knees to her chest,
chin to the ceiling,
mouth gaping open.

Moments after,
I hear a manic scream,
and rush to the hallway where,
a harmless fool has wandered shirtless outside his room,
and she is frantic with thought.

A man knocks on my door,
have I had any thoughts of suicide today,
I tell him about Ashley,
he shrugs,
she is probably delusional,
they are, usually, just delusions.

They move her, (and the delusions),
to the intensive care unit,
she smiles at me uneasily,
across the passageway,
and it haunts me,
wondering, how many times,
Jack has raped her today.

The Girl Returns

She has burned all of her journals. All previous records of hesitation, frustration, the bleakest emotions or the brightest moments have been cast into the fire. It was never the right time to write for her. Only when asked to, because she thought, a middle class girl with no chance to see the world, no opportunity to live outside of a closet full of musty words and yesterday's ideas, she thought of her mind as the needle of a machine, perforating points along one seam, the same half inch stitch, with the precision of a drone. School was a conundrum for her, the formulas that worked effortlessly for all of her classmates-the classes, the halls, the noise, they did not have a fear of the marketplace. They savored the competition, crying mutiny at the misallocated percent or droopy B blotching the placid completion of a crystal white GPA. I was a failure, in my standards, and in theirs. I shrunk from the rat race, never raised a hand, never asked for help, always afraid, afraid of the guffaws, of the better than thou looks. Genius was coveted, to not know, was unspeakably shameful. The classroom was my battlefront, the eyes of my teachers, my classmates, enemies. They must have been a great deal more understanding than my imagining, but my imagining was not so. To me they were steel magistrates of some higher, indesputable judgment. I withered underneath their gaze, and yet it was not a gaze; they probably never thought of glancing. How different my education might have been had I been a part of their gilded league. And now, eighteen years old, too old to be so stupid. Learning all the things my peers learned one year, two years ago. And still the same frustrations, still the incompetency, still the fear of the marketplace. Why does noise frighten me? Why do crowds confuse me? Why can a professor, a sound speaker, lecture to a crowd of my peers and all of them comprehend with such depth and precision, and I sit there in ignominy trying to distinguish the matter, and, having not, fall farther behind? It would be too predictable to follow with this for some length mentioning my follies with psychiatrists and psychologists, the useless indulgence, the selfish attempt to propt up my confidence with professional applause: You're actually a very smart girl, we've even got a title for all of your problems, a real diagnosis, and here, here, take this shitty book with all these famous people that have been posthumously diagnosed with your problem as well. Wow, ma, Thomas Jefferson had Asperger's? That must make me pretty special! A precious waste of copays. Twenty twenty dollar copays. Every prescription. Every combination. My poor, poor parents. They wanted very much to cure the leper. So I played alive and well and living on more than one occasion. I've not known parents as loving as they are, with a child so frustrating and impossible. They deserve a happy ending. Its a very American thing to do, an American invention, if I'm not mistaken. The happy ending with a ship sailing off into the horizon, and we do not question what happens beyond the horizon but treasure how unique our sunset is this evening in our little city in the little state in the little country in the little hemisphere in the little world.

Rain

Sky sagging, heaving sighs,

throat swollen in clenching,

Flooded gutters,

seeping outwards to the street,

a seeping wound,

choking up the broken limbs

and leaves of trees,

death looming in the boughs,

a silent death,

broken boughs, quickly fallen,

giving way to the wailing wind,

no resistance,

drifting downstream,

forgetten until the waters,

of another rain,

force the wreckage up from under,

over and over again.