River of Doubt

(Censored) County Jail, B-Unit – Summer 2013 – Day 62

I thought I would last longer than this, but here I am – thinking about asking the jail’s psychiatrist for the only form of treatment they do actually provide: medication. Just an antidepressant, and just until I get back to prison, where I will have access to proper dosages of my preferred medication: sunlight and exercise.

I am reluctant, but by the end of the day I have gotten the floor cop to bring me a medical request slip. It now sits on the desk.

(Censored) County Jail, B-Unit – Summer 2013 – Day 63 – River of Doubt

I fill out the form and send it in. I have high confidence that the jail’s psychiatrist will eventually call me in to an appointment, or come by my cellfront, and that the psych will be willing to prescribe me any antidepressant under the sun, and that I will then be delivered said medication on a fairly regular basis, and that all of this will happen at an unacceptably glacial pace.

Fortunately, one of the stray mental health staff who occasionally zip through the unit, making brief stops at select doors before disappearing again, happens to come strolling by my door today.

“Are you a psychiatrist?” I ask loudly as he passes by my cell.

He turns abruptly and looks at me with some suspicion.

“What do you want?” he demands. “I’m in a hurry.”

“I want to see a psychiatrist.”

“I AM A PSYCHIATRIST. WHAT DO YOU WANT?”

“You could have said that to begin with.”

“Just tell me what you want.”

“I’m depressed. Can you schedule me an appointment?”

“An appointment? I don’t do appointments.”

“Then what the hell DO you do?”

“I do competency hearings. If you’re really feeling bad just put in a request for services.”

“I already put in a request slip, but I feel like shit right now – TODAY. I don’t want to wait for a fucking week, or who knows how long, for something as simple as an antidepressant. Can’t you ask someone to come see me today? Please?”

“Sorry. I can’t do that. But you’ll be seen in a timely manner. It won’t take weeks.” With that, he strides quickly away.

(Censored) County Jail, B-Unit – Summer 2013 – Day 64 – River of Doubt

I hate everything.

Depression is complex, it’s not a destination. Depression is like water, or snow, or weather; a landscape conquering the distance in a startling variance of texture and color; a world of destinations. Mild depression can creep up on you, and highjack your decisions without you ever knowing it’s in control. Physical depression can sling you to the mat, leaving you in bed, exhausted and unmotivated, but not markedly emotional. Emotional depression can render a physically fit and energized person vacant and immobile like a brand new computer that refuses to unfreeze and be of use. Depression can bloom suddenly, like one of those ‘meat’ magnolias that emits the aroma of rotting flesh to draw hornets and flies, or it can build up in the same way poison sometimes starts to appear mysteriously in the bloodstream of an abusive husband… which is to say, gradually, over the course of months, or years, milligram by milligram, drop by drop, day by endless day, corrupting the victim’s strength of spirit before, finally, the body is found somewhere, cold, pale, petrified – despairing, even in death.

(Censored) County Jail, B-Unit – Summer 2013 – Day 65 – River of Doubt

I feel like I’ve been crying. Which is different from the feeling of needing to cry. Sometimes when I’m depressed I get this sensation out of the blue, without having shed a tear. My chest and face feel so much like I’ve been crying that I absentmindedly wipe my eyes – my hand shocked when it finds my face is dry.

I’m emoting, but it’s not really cognitively driven. I can think of something sad and break down crying, but it doesn’t even need to be something sad. Example: The memory of films as un-dramatic as The Princess Bride can make me break down completely. Or I can clear my mind, think the most unemotional thoughts, and still feel like I have just finished a good sob.

I think it’s low serotonin from the lack of sunlight, but who the fuck knows…

I do some pushups and squats, in an attempt to alter whatever this physiological state is, but it has no effect on the phantom tears. I still catch myself reaching to wipe them away.

(Censored) County Jail, B-Unit – Summer 2013 – Day 75 – River of Doubt

(Over ten days since requesting services.) I sometimes allow myself to believe that writing this book gives my life purpose – the notion of meaning and importance that can be so hard to find behind bars. But it is just that – a notion. A notion that comes and goes, and becomes less and less convincing, until you learn to despise it, and grow disgusted with yourself for ever having been so foolish as to believe in such nonsense – or ever having felt the need to fool yourself.

(Censored) County Jail, B-Unit – Summer 2013 – Day 76 – River of Doubt

I find myself lying awake at some late hour, the ward’s silence gently muffled by the air streaming through the vent. I roll over, stubbornly clutching at sleep, and notice the small, unmistakable silhouette of June leaning against my door.

Mildly startled, I get up, flick on my light, and nearly tease her, affectionately, for being such a late night stalker, but her eyes are heavy and when they meet mine they do something I have never seen them do. She looks at me wistfully. Her slender frame leans against my door as though she is tired. But it seems her heart is what’s dragging her down. I abandon humor.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to wake you.” Her eyes drift and she appears momentarily self-conscious about lurking at my cellfront in the dead of night.

“It’s fine. I couldn’t sleep anyway.”

For a minute she says nothing. She just bores into me with those exquisite eyes, as though pleading for help she knows I can’t give.

I’m momentarily overpowered by this ocean of a girl. Her sadness streams into me and my mind blanks.

“Talk to me,” she says.

“Why are you so sad?”

“Lots of reasons.”

“I’ve been worried about you. You haven’t been coming out lately.”

“That’s kind of you… to worry about…” She trails off, gazes at the floor, continues to mouth words silently.

Once again I’m at a loss.

Then she looks up at me again. “Nobody wants a crazy woman for a wife. You know that?”

I don’t really know what to say, so I make a clumsy attempt at defusing her pessimism. “A lot of men think all women are crazy.”

“But you fuck us anyway,” she winces at her own words. “I’m sorry. FUCK… I’m so sorry. I should go.”

“You’re welcome to stay.”

“I’m sorry I woke you up,” she says, and walks away.

I turn my light off, and fail to sleep.

(Censored) County Jail, B-Unit – Summer 2013 – Day 77 – River of Doubt

New day.

This morning I went to June’s cell. She was draped on her cot like a wilted flower. When she saw me she closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep.

“I know you’re awake.”

“No you don’t,” she protests un-playfully as she delicately rolls into a defensive blanket-ball, facing the wall. A puff of hair and a bit of dainty, alluring leg stick out at either end of June’s blanket-ball. I am about to say something, but then, as though sensing my intent, her leg slinks into hiding and a hand reaches out and pulls the corner of the blanket over her head like the hatch on a submarine closing in preparation for a deep dive. Out of respect for this wordless eloquence I pull myself away from her door and go visit Crash.

Crash is snoring tumultuously.

I go to the patio and try to talk to Cherub, but he zips his mouth shut with an imaginary key and throws it away, shrugging apologetically.

I try to work out, but have no heart for it.

I return to my cell and surrender the day.

At night I get a rush and start working out, then get stuck awake and fall asleep just before breakfast is served. I sleep through my breakfast, OCA, and whatever visits I may have received.

(Censored) County Jail, B-Unit – Summer 2013 – Day 78 – River of Doubt

A book cart has materialized in the dayroom. Metal, banged up some, with grey paint chipping and scratched, books in no better condition, but a much better selection and variety than the usual jailhouse archive. Where most jail ‘libraries’ consist of an uncared for heap of pulp fiction, spiced lightly with the most ordinary religious materials this side of the Mississippi, this cart appears to be under management of some kind. Not only is it a cart, and not a heap, the books on it have been arranged alphabetically, shelved neatly, and exceed all jailhouse norms when it comes to quality of content. The fare consists of some western and suspense pulp and other miscellaneous crud, but met in equal parts with a spectrum of classics: Moby Dick; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (original 1818 text); The Old Man and the Sea; plenty of Steinbeck; and a number of nonfiction finds including an original first edition copy of the celebrated Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered by E F Schumacher; and something titled Shabono.

Shabono claims to be a true, firsthand account of an anthropologist’s journey into the heart of the Amazon, where she was accepted by an un-contacted tribe; stopped wearing clothes; witnessed infanticide; started participating in cannibalism, drug induced trances, shamanic sex (and non-shamanic sex); was recognized as the second coming of a legendary warrior goddess; got date-raped for days on end by an ambitious shaman who wanted to steal her animal spirits (an experience she claims she didn’t mind going through at all); after which she returned to civilization a changed woman, tragically out of place, forever dreaming of the jungle.

Books in psych-units are often defaced, or short a few pages that someone felt the need to rip out and keep – for what fucking reason? Maybe they held the key to enlightenment, or intergalactic space travel, or telekinetic bubblegum? So I leaf through a few specimens to see if they are intact. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read ten chapters only to find a critical five pages have been removed… or an entire book, only to find the last page has been removed. It’s such a common occurrence that I believe the removal of the last page of a book must be a prank that readily manifests in the minds of psychotics everywhere.

As I’m checking Frankenstein for missing pages I notice that someone has underlined but one single passage, in full:

I feel pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind, and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self. But, in drawing the picture of my early days, I must not omit to record those events which led, by insensible steps to my after tale of misery: for when I would account to myself for the birth of that passion, which afterwards ruled my destiny, I find it arose, like a mountain river, from ignoble and almost forgotten sources, but, swelling as it proceeded, it became the torrent which, in its course, has swept away all my hopes and joys.

(Censored) County Jail, B-Unit – Summer 2013 – Day 80 – River of Doubt

I have noticed Jason only gets 15-minutes of OCA per day, and is released by himself.

Still no sign of the psychiatrist.

(Censored) County Jail, B-Unit – Summer 2013 – Day 82 – River of Doubt

Imagine everything that has ever made you feel stupid, weak, shallow, shady, pompous, disloyal, undeserving, guilty, ashamed, gluttonous, cowardly, craven, defeated, invisible, unloved, despised, disgusting, rejected, or otherwise humiliated. Now imagine each and every one of these heart-singeing memories welling up from whatever moldy pit in your subconscious they’re usually relegated to, one after another, crisp and visceral, insidiously seeping into your mind’s foreground, darkening your mental skies, persistent as a pop song stuck in your head. Except, in this case, the song is the screeching, rusty hinges of your childhood shame as it’s unlocked over and over, squealing, squalling, sniveling, mumbling, moping, shuffling, shy – wrenched, wriggling, into the light – shivering, shocked and bewildered, naked and cornered, soiling the self with needless hate.

As a hail storm pelts to death an unsheltered victim with thousands of petty assaults, the regrets that assail the victim of anxious, racing thoughts are often minor, but unforgivingly persistent and plentiful.

(Censored) County Jail, B-Unit – Summer 2013 – Day 83 – River of Doubt

(More than two weeks since requesting services.)

Gloom persists. My workout routine is in shambles. I hate the very thought of sitting up in bed, much less assembling myself with pen and paper at this desolate desk. Lifting this pen to the page is like quarrying stone. And that’s a clumsy, lame simile. Fucking quarrying stone? But I lack the energy to go back and fix it.

But I find myself nostalgic, and this gives me some animus. The memory of old friends presents like a floating log amid the ocean of depression, something to cling to with great effort, in hopes of keeping one’s head above the waterline. I miss not just the free world, hometown, and old friends, but also the prison I have called home for the last five years now, and more specifically, the people I have met in that wretched place. Maybe it’s less painful to miss prison than to miss the free world, but I don’t think so. The bonds you form with those you meet in prison are often as strong as any you will ever form. Although, maybe, they aren’t stronger, just different.

I have heard that soldiers who grow close to one another during war sometimes return home to find they miss the war. Not really because they miss the war, but because they miss the camaraderie and brotherhood – the deep community forged under such pressure, the honesty of character is laid bare in moments of adversity. They say it’s unlike anything you can find in peacetime society, but I would argue prison and homelessness stand out as exceptions to that rule. It’s an uncomfortable comparison some soldiers might scoff at, considering the disparity in honor society bestows on these social positions – the brave, the lawless, and the destitute – and maybe there are some differences in the hardships faced by soldiers, prisoners, and homeless folks. Nonetheless, the battlefield has no monopoly on crushing mental stress, the daily struggle for basic survival, and dependence on a close-knit group of people – this being the formula for the sense of community that can be so hard to find in better times… and which soldiers find themselves pining for.

It really makes no sense to miss these horrible survival experiences, but somehow you find yourself nostalgic for them. I have walked out of some dirty, violent jailhouses happy as a lark just to be alive, to say nothing of regaining my freedom, only to find myself, soon after, reminiscing warmly about people I had the honor of meeting and serving time with in one of those clamorous hellholes.

Anyway…

In these long hours of solitude, I find myself dwelling on memories of friends like Daryl and Earl. In truth, most of these memories are sad, but not all of them, and they seem to sustain me, somehow. And so I drift inward, toward the memory of friends, away from what spars community I have here.

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