November 7, 2002 UTMB Emergency Room - Another day, another 400 pounds of pride swallowed in the name of the frikken chemical imbalance thing. University of Texas Medical Branch Galveston. I admit myself into the Emergency Room with the same sense of shame and absurdity, the same sense of "faking it" with which every kid walks into the school nurse's office at least once in their grade school "career." I feel like a faker because my disease is invisible. It would seem this disease of sadness only becomes visible on gravestones and in morgues. I cite two such examples visited recently: the flat, modest plaque stone marking the last resting place of my suicide aunt, and more recently, the refrigerator-sized block of granite and marble upon which poet Anne's final proof is carved in letters two inches tall. It's a sunny day outside in Galveston. From my seat here in Emergency I can see the white masts of sailing vessels painted gold tin the late afternoon light. There is a helicopter pad, a smattering of palm trees, and a beautiful blue slice of the bay. I came over today on the ferry after a lovely morning spent editing things written over the past few gloomy days. I took time out to stand and praise the water and the sky, to thank God, nature, the pelicans, egrets, the jumping fish, all of it. But I guess I dallied too long. For true to form I arrived at the SS Office in Galveston just as they closed their doors for the day. How the hell does Social Security get away with closing an hour earlier than the post office? Shit. Damn. And as I walked back to the Chevy de los Muertos shaking my head and trying to appreciate the humor in it all, I also had to acknowledge that this was just the sort of behavior for which I am applying to the government for help: dallying. Dillying. Star-bellied sneechying. The simple, scatterbrain dysfunctional behavior that is part and parcel of deep-seated depression. Just now while answering the admitting nurses questions, it was with great difficulty that I said yes, I am having "symptoms." Admitting nurse. Now there's a plum ripe for double meaning. "You vill admit to zee admitting nurz all za nasty behavior und zymptoms you've been haffing, Herr McKinney!" Believe me, I know the drill by now. "No, I am not having thoughts of killing myself" to which I add silently to myself (so as not to be guilty of fibbing outright in the face of GOD!) .. not every day, no. Not today, for instance. And I'm always quick to announce, in the strongest terms, that no, I am not having thoughts of harming anyone else. This is the God-honest truth, and always has been. Thank God, thus, for small favors. It's hard enough dealing with bad body chemistry-induced delusions of the grandeur of self-dispatch. I pity anyone whose bad brain tells them to go out and harm others. So, back to pride and this bar code bracelet on my wrist. If it isn't 400 pounds, it's certainly half that, my body weight at least, that I eat in forklift-loads of self-esteem each time I have to walk into a place like this and say, "Im broke.. I'm outa my psych meds.. I need help...'' Oh! Being called in. Be back soon... (later) Great. Got me a doctor with Empathy Factor Zero. One Dr. Miryala.. looks and demeanor of M. Night Shamalayan, that "I see dead people" director. Instead of offering help, this young cock doc is more of a mind to sit back and say, "Well what do you want from me?" Key clue to his warm fuzzy bedside manner: when I answer his suicidal ideation questions with a no-but-im-3-days-from-being-dead-outa-meds, so a week from now, yes very likely I will be suicidal, he replies, "Well, will you seek help then?" Duh?! You get an F in Psych 101, buddy. The point of my current visit is to PREVENT myself from getting to that point. Because once there, one never knows, does one? I know this much: I don't wanna die just yet. But without the meds, strange changes take place in my head. I think strange thoughts. I see dead people...but in the case of my movie, Doctor Miryalalalalalala Shamalamadingdong, the dead people are all.. me. Special thanks to the admitting nurse who went the extra mile to try and get me help, to that cute little on-call-psych doc who popped her head in for two seconds to smile at me and lend reassurances (though what the significance of her visit was I do not recall), and mostly to one Miss Lewis, the social worker out front who gave me the meal voucher to the hospital cafeteria and the addresses of several other agencies that might help me. Back in line to board the ferry, I have to laugh at the words of a sign unique to this ferry-line-up stretch of road: "$500 fine for cutting in line for the ferry." K would have loved that. She hated my tendency to "avail myself" of any opening in a queue, any loophole in a rule. Then I remember how I used to have health insurance, a house, pets, a woman, a city I called home full of friends, and how all of that went bye-bye in a flash because that same rule-abiding person couldn't handle the lines I'd cut in my own arms and told me so in the most sodden and caustic slurred angry words enough times that I finally abided. Naturally, she had to pull my insurance, in keeping with the rules and regulations, therefore, forthwith and.. oh, fuck it. I crack open a Dos XX beer as the tires of the Chevy de Los Muertos cross the gangplank of the ferry with a clankity-clank. I pull up to the front, kill the engine, crank the stereo and toast one lonely toast to the rule-makers, the rule-breakers, and the imaginative outlaws like me that exist on bread crumbs and fine wines in a indescribably beautiful world where there are no lines, only vistas, infinite, irreverent. We're moving now, floating. The sensation is subtle, the music loud. I close my eyes and drive blind, adrift. And the singer sings "I'm six feet from the edge and I'm thinkin, maybe six feet ain't so far down..." -His Lordship RSM the Duke of Parabolas     Take me back to the Home Page, my Brother Enjoy this? Click HERE for more dailies! Write Me! ©2003 Rick McKinney ALL RIGHTS RESERVED