What transpires takes place in March 2010. It was during this period that I was first diagnosed with being manic depressive.
The time-frame of this memoir piece is sixteen days – the last two days before my commitment and the two weeks I spent in a closed psychiatric ward at St. Lukes’ Roosevelt, New York.
It’s nine in the morning. I am beautiful, but I haven’t slept all night. My cheeks are stained with tears and I can feel my nightgown embrace my skin.
I get out of bed and into the bathroom. Sitting on the toilet seat, I imagine myself sucking the cock of one of my male classmates. Radim comes to my mind, angular and possessed only of sardonic inflection. I imagine myself as his wife, enthroned in his unkempt lair of books and research papers, his domestic angel. I come. I am a woman.
Down the hill from the Arbor and onto 231st and Broadway. Over to Dunkin Donuts for my daily medium iced coffee with mocha. Sad Sheila is concerned when she sees me and there are tears in my eyes when I exit. The lone Hispanic worker calls after me.
But I am upbeat again as I return to the Arbor. I stop at the base of the hill to smoke a cigarette. There is a black man weeping on the bench next to mine. I go over to him and shake his hand, feeling the bullet of mucus on his hand against my skin. “It will be okay,” I tell him. He gapes at me.
I run up the hill and towards the Arbor entrance. I stop to greet the wonderful driver from Prague, a former employee at Microsoft. His face shines with energy, as does mine. “I get it now,” I tell him buoyantly, “The only way to be a good man is to not try at all.” “That’s good, buddy,” he says, “But try and get some rest now, okay?”
I cross two girls on the way to the door. They stop. “What’s that smell?” They ask each other.
Another medium iced coffee, a train journey, and I am at Columbia. I head over to Butler and light a cigarette. Aabir comes up, podgily. “What’s up, bro?” he asks and I tell him I am sorry I won’t be hanging out with him anymore. I am preparing to leave campus, I tell him, feeling tall and strong. There are things I need to work out with my parents. Aabir looks stunned.
I sit on the bench and smoke cigarette after cigarette. Mustafa joins me and I tell him of my plans to leave campus. Gentle and balding, he advocates caution. But my mind is made up.
Somehow I make it to Knox Hall in time for class, even though I haven’t been looking at my watch. My mind has shut down, but my instinctual, primordial self has come into action. The guard at the front desk smiles at my confusion. She is a mother like me.
There is an Indian boy on the sofa. He is counseling his sister on the phone. I wait for him to finish and congratulate him on his empathy, on his ability to reach out to his sister and to others like her. He is pleased and awed. I tower over him and feel energy shoot through my body as I smile at him. He is enveloped in my aura. I turn to see my classmates gaping at me in consternation. I am forty minutes late for class and I am NEVER late for class. I turn back to see two beautiful blonde girls on either side of the Indian kid, hanging upon his every word. My aura has brought him out.
My classmates postpone dealing with me until class is over. They drag me to a little café on 125th Street and eye me beadily. I tell them that I know now that people all over the world are the same and that I can make friends wherever I go. It is time for me to leave the safety net of Columbia. Catherine looks terrified. Tolga frowns and accuses me of philosophy.
We shift to another café. As we walk, Radim slips to my side and tells me that he agrees when I say it is possible to make friends across unfamiliar cultures. I have made him feel home at Columbia.
But I don’t feel at home in the café. The people I thought were my friends are badgering me. I know that I am more articulate now than ever before, but they can’t make a word of what I am saying. They say I am confused, that I make no sense at all. In addition, I am feeling immensely guilty.
I have been an emotional slut. For all of the first semester, I stuck firmly by Tolga’s side. I’d have done anything for him. But in the second semester, I’d transferred my affections to mercurial and happy-go-lucky Raul. Raul seemed so alive in comparison to Tolga’s stodginess. I knew Tolga felt my defection deeply and now he admitted as much. He wouldn’t have thought that “slut” was an entirely appropriate term for me, though.
I tearfully admit to my friends that I am a virgin. It is my virginity that is fucking me up. They look at each other for a moment and then nod emphatically. Virginity makes people do strange things.
Because I am a virgin, it is imperative that I eat. They order me a cheeseburger. But I want them to leave. I summon all the power in me into my voice and tell them that I am sick of them. I want to be alone. They leave me on the condition that I finish my meal. But I can’t eat. I cram in a few tasteless fries and then leave the restaurant. Outside, I light a cigarette and feel instantly better.
This is the way to medicate myself, I realize. Water, cigarettes and running. A shot of any of these and I will be happy again. I finish my cigarette and ran through the traffic. Back at the library, flushed and triumphant, I find myself facing Tolga. I stride into his alarmed face and shake his hand, hard. We’re cool, I tell him, even though I’m mad at you. I’m mad at you too, he says, with the beginnings of a smile.
Inside, I find Radim and Catherine. Radim tells Catherine thoughtfully that they have a great friend in me. Catherine looks vaguely teary as she agrees.
Back at the Arbor and down for one of our innumerable smoke breaks. Marouane glowers in a corner, Raul runs up and down and Rebecca frantically discusses the novel in her head. I stand aloof, tall and powerful. Rebecca keeps coming too close to me, but I tell her to stay away from me. My aura is supposed to attract men, not women. I don’t know why it is malfunctioning. The others, especially Raul, are very keen for me demonstrate just how an aura works and how far is its radius of influence.
I don’t sleep that night either. The next morning, my phone is ringing. My friends are reaching out to me. But I can’t see my phone. I just can’t see it.
I go out for a cigarette. Two of the Arbor workers are servicing the lift. “What’s gotten into him?” one of them wonders to the other. “He’s an Asian, dude,” says this gentleman, “They are messed up because they have no girlfriends.” I go back and hesitantly wish them both a nice day.
I see Dragos, the bald and powerful-looking building superintendent and decide to go and ask him for help. I ask Dragos how is it possible to get a girl to like you without trying to make her like you. Something in my manner annoys him and his eyes gleam fire. I falter and decide to look away, repeating my question in my best little-girl voice. Dragos softens, leading me to his office and I learn yet another valuable lesson: there is a lot of power in the eye; eyes can admit aggression or respect.
Dragos sits me in a chair and tells me gently that the best way to get a girl to like me is to simply be in her environment and be ready to offer a helping hand or a listening year. I get the impression that he and his merry band of men are only around the building when they are ready to be emotionally useful. They disappear when they are sad or depressed. I look upon Dragos with new respect.
Getting up, I feel weak and helpless. Dragos opens the door for me and I thank him wordlessly. A shower later, I come down again, a list of questions in my hand. I am convinced that Dragos is the key to formulating my Grand Theory of Social Behavior.
Dragos, immersed in lofty tasks, receives me kindly, but is confused by my questions. He finds them too theoretical and confused. I realize it’s best to work from analogies. He tells me that his attempt to be a good man is an effort to emulate his mother. He loves his mother very much and hopes to bring her over to the United States one day soon. Tearing up, I tell him that I can no longer see any point to all my studying when all I want to do, too, is to be a good man. Strangely, Dragos’ eyes are moist when he promises to get me a position in his crew.
Now, I prepare myself for leaving Columbia. My composition notebooks go into my school bag and my nightgowns into my tote. I am ready to set up home anywhere, in anyone’s heart. Leaving the Arbor for what is to be the final time, I come upon Dragos talking on the phone. I stride forward, tall and powerful, and shake his hand. His grasp gives me strength.
Walking down to the station, I notice a tear-stained man walking erratically in front of me. He is weaving to-and-fro in the path of my aura, unable to bear being reminded of his mother by me. I offer to help a woman with her shopping bags. She refuses, with flustered gratitude. I tell her that my mother would always want me to help all mothers laden down with heavy shopping bags. “Oh my,” she breathes, as I continue my sunny way downhill.
With a Dunkin Donuts cup of coffee in my hand, I am on the 1 train once again, clasping my worldly possessions. I need them to do good in the world. A child in the seat opposite mine directs his yelling at me. His mother smiles knowingly at me. We are both good parents.
Without thinking about it, I get down at 125th Street station. I walk to Knox Hall and stride into class half-an-hour late. There is a hush as I slam myself into my seat and then the angry murmuring resumes. The class is incensed over some silly issue and because they are all quantitative sociologists, they cannot see that there are more sensible and humane approaches to the problem.
I smile to myself and begin writing in my notebook. The words on my sheet materialize from my classmates’ mouths. There is peace. One of them tearfully and angrily admits that it’s not always necessary to be analytical. Another wonders, “How does he do that?” I bask silently.
Downstairs, my friends cluster around me. I smile shyly at them as I light a cigarette. Catherine is missing. Agustino slams into me and lifts me off the air as he hugs me really hard. He laughs into my gaping face and rushes off.
Now, dear Tolga has his hand upon my shoulder and his gentle eyes look into mine as he and Radim lead me towards the library. Cigarettes keep appearing in my hand. They want to know more about my Grand Theory of Social Behavior, but I am unable to explain it to them. I am speaking from my instinct, I am speaking from my heart, but all I say seems confused to them. They seem unable to receive my signals.
In the darkening, at the 116th gate, stand Raul and Ritam, like executioners. Raul’s face is devoid of color and emotion, partially obscured by ferns. “You’re sick, he tells me, accusingly. “No, you’re sick,” I yell back, suddenly angry. But Raul has disappeared once again.
And now Tolga, Ritam and Radim are hurrying me to a bench. Tolga sits down next to me and puts his arm around me and looks into my eyes as I explain that friends are connected by invisible strings that keep them from moving too far away from each other.
Everyone walks away from me. But then Tolga runs back. They need me, he says. Raul needs me. Raul is sick.
That makes perfect sense to me. Because we are so connected, Raul sees his sickness as mine. I must go to him.
We walk. We walk and turn into a bright room where a pale Raul faces me. There are tough-looking cops and an unsmiling nurse who tells me to sit down. “But he’s sick,” I say, puzzled, yet courteous, pointing to Raul. “Sit your fucking ass down!” yells one of the cops and I plump myself down gracefully on a stool. Ritam takes away my nightgown bag, saying he’ll hold it for me.
The nurse tightens a blood pressure cuff around my wrist. I begin to exhale mightily. I realize I have been living under a great deal of stress lately. “What are you doing?” asks the nurse in cold puzzlement.
A slightly more cheerful nurse leads me into the next room and tells me to change. She hands me a hospital gown. All I can retain is my watch, not even the phone that helps me feel connected to my friends. Wait, I can’t find my phone, in any case, even though it’s ringing. “Let us take care of you now,” she says, and my heart warms towards her. She recognizes that I am like the social workers and the cops outside. I care for other people. I want to do the right thing. All I need is some rest.
But I am beginning to detach from my friends and I am worried that they will be in a lot of pain without my silent presence in their lives. Already, I can hear some of them crying outside in terrible agony. I begin to stroke one of my hands gently with the other. This way, I can reach out to them. They can feel that I am with them.
Even so, I am slipping from the world. The air is electric. Police sirens are going off in a continuous wail and the tireless workers at St. Lukes’ are being reminded by my presence of the countless sacrifices they have made in the pursuit of their duty. “Whoever he is,” one of them says, “he must be a saint.”
I am given an injection I do not feel. My friends cluster mournfully around my bed and Tolga places his cool hand upon my forehead. I begin to cry.
The room is dark. The windows have gotten smaller and have taken on a frosted quality. A spirit alights upon my chest a flutter of wings. It is my mother. She asks me why I am so sad. I tell her that I am confused. I do not feel very manly, but I want to be a good man. My mother laughs. You are so silly, she chides me, your father is a good man isn’t he? Don’t you want to be like him? I can feel despair leave me as she flies away. My stomach shrinks and the room suddenly comes into sharp and brilliant focus. I can see without my glasses. “Fuck,” I cry in wonder and ecstasy. And when Ritam pops in to ask my parents’ contact details in the native language I do not know how to speak, I answer him fluently.
I sleep a little and wake up to find the ceiling creasing itself into little bumps. Another bump appears and then I hear Catherine’s censorious voice, “So the little slut’s been keeping notes on all of us?” I’d taken to recording all my conversations for possible sociological insight. “I still think he’s cool, dude,” said Agustino, “He helped me and shit.”
I want to reach out to my friends. But there are restraints on either side of me. I scoot to the end of the bed. “I am not helping you get back up,” says a terrible voice and I get off the bed to face a tiny and ferocious-looking nurse ensconced in a plastic chair. The chair stands between my darkened room and a painfully yellow-lit corridor.
I creep into the corridor and look into each empty room for the conversation I can still hear. I don’t see anybody. Perhaps I am under Butler Library and my friends are in the café.
When I return to the room, the nurse and the chair are no longer there. I wriggle myself back to my pillow and fall asleep.
When I wake next, my head is next to the window and the room is much smaller. It is snowing outside and there are white curlicues against the frosted glass pane. There is a knock and I look through the window to see an elephant in a red cap dancing. It sees me looking and points at me and back at something in its hand. I can’t make out what this is. I gape at it and then turn away, somewhat confused. It knocks again and resumes its lonely dance. I fall asleep, dreaming of elephants in red caps and the soft snow-like power I feel at the center of my heart.
I wake up in a much bigger room, equipped with two beds, a pained and silent roommate meandering up and down the carpet, a plastic cigarette in his hand and a cupboard which I cannot open (but which contains all my worldly goods). I am in a closed psychiatric ward at St. Lukes’ Roosevelt and the billboard facing my window informs me that the world-at-large loves Opie (I take Opie to be me).
And the elephant outside my window (in fact, the window of the ambulance taking me to the hospital) was Aabir. He had wanted to give me letters from some of my friends.
My first few days on the ward are a blur. On my desk, I discover a book on how to talk to your parents and I assume that the ever-watchful staff has left it there for me. I peruse the books in the little library and find that all the books speak to me, echoing what I am thinking. My roommate drifts in and out, moaning. After he leaves a car racing magazine on my desk, I assume he is secretly my hospital mentor, there to ease me into the way of life on the ward.
At some point of time, I turn over the hospital menu to discover where I am: in a psychiatric ward. A cancelled out application form similarly reveals itself to be a letter from Damian. Things are not what they seem: one must look into both sides of a matter.
Early on, Gordon adopts me. Gordon is enamored of shirts spattered with ketchup and crayon and wobbles rather than walks. His way of addressing me is an admonitory “Sen” boomed from afar. It’s Gordon who gives me my first quarters: one needs quarters to make a phone call, but can only get them from relatives. This leads a rather romantic and lucrative ward black market in stolen and extra quarters. I treasure Gordon’s quarters for years.
Gordon doesn’t like my attempts to socialize with the other patients. “You belong to him now,” says Estella, a Hispanic woman who wears a lot of rouge and whose face is almost always blackened by her tears.
Time clicks back into fashion one day when Dr. Meckler calls me to her office. My parents are there miraculously, smiling at me in their usual rueful fashion. “You came to me,” I cry to my mother. She smiles enigmatically.
At one of the meals, I snap off my hospital bracelet. There is a hush as I do so. I had been very fond of the wristband, hoping to keep it for perpetuity. Later, a rather harried-looking nurse asks me why I had snapped if off. I tell her I refuse to accept the identity of a patient.
I am still disoriented. I am convinced I was voluntarily committed – I have strange memories of a brisk lady in pink asking me to sign a document – and go around asking to be released. With the composition notebook left to me and the regulation short yellow pencil, I go around noting the restroom and legal signs, hoping they’ll give me some clarity.
My social worker is a drop-dead hunk of a man. He looks like Mark Wahlberg and makes me dizzy whenever I go near him. He is inordinately proud of my tiny achievements – learning to master the ward’s labyrinthine laundry system, showering in the hospital bathrooms and shaving. One day, I refuse both my nicotine patch and the alternative of a plastic cigarette. A moment later, muttering, he rips off his own nicotine patch. I come a little.
Before Gordon leaves the hospital in tow with a dressed-to-the-nines woman I assume to be his wife, he writes something for me in our creative writing class in flamboyant red felt. “I hope to see you as you really are and take you out on a date.”
With Gordon gone, I eat my meals with Hector and my roommate. Hector grows fond of my silence and tells me of his past with the US military corps and his rugrat years on Columbia’s campus, listening in on lectures. Later, I discover Hector is one of the janitors at the Engineering building. Hector eats his butter in little pats, informing me that each pat gives him six hours of sprinting energy. His Walkman directly relays him instructions from the Central Army command.
Hector is enamored of a Chinese woman and this translates to his shouting racial insults across the table to her in an effort to be charming. Occasionally, she returns his affections.
One of my ward mates is a silent Taiwanese girl called Paula who only speaks in an agonized scream to her parents in Taiwan in the evenings. Paula has attempted suicide before being committed and resembles, in her mute beauty, a curiously frantic fern. Her roommate, a Hispanic former dancer in her fifties with still slender ankles and a face like a disapproving chicken, is fiercely protective of her.
One of the things my classmates have left for me is a teddy bear. I am in the habit of lugging it around since it seems the done thing to do. Paula sees it during one of our writing classes and wants it with an instant childlikeness. I give it to her.
Just an hour later, a nurse comes to my room with the teddy bear. Pressing my hands gently, she tells me that patients are not supposed to give each other gifts. Paula turns away sadly the next time she sees me. Her roommate gives me a basilisk stare. “Humph,” she snorts, every time she crosses my path, “Humph.” At one of the visitor sessions, she wanders over to where my parents and I are sitting to play with my mother’s hair, glaring at me all the while.
This breach is not healed till later. Noticing Paula look at my composition notebook wistfully, I obtain one for her through Catherine, adjuring Paula not to tell anyone where she got it from. She nods in solemn confusion. Later, walking down the corridor, I feel myself bathed in a warm glow of approval. I turn to see Gloria and Paula, with Gloria positively beaming at me. Paula runs towards me, but I gesture nobly towards Gloria. Gloria’s beam grows wider.
Before my commitment, I used to often cross paths with this crazily handsome black man. He would make my day by shaking my hand and booming about the weather with that sexy, beautiful smile of his. I am convinced that he is one of the patients at the hospital, secretly studying the rest of us. He is missing his shine, though. He seems shorter, too.
The first time I see him at the hospital, I walk up to him and offered my hand. “Yo,” I say, gamely. “Don’t do that,” he yells, “Jesus!” Patients aren’t supposed to touch each other.
It is after I had brought him M&Ms to offset his daily intake of McDonalds via his large circle of visiting relatives that I begin to realize he is actually an entirely different person whose name is Robert. He is still cool, though. One day, noticing that my lips are parched, he brings me a tube of lip balm. I tremble as he applies it gently to my lips.
They needn’t have worried with the no-touch rule. None of us are any sex, just disembodied agonies walking along the long corridors or curling up into the sofas and staring mindlessly at the wall. There is a television turned to a Spanish channel, but no one watches it.
I notice that I retained my aura at the hospital and that it seems to have a strange effect on the other patients. Sometimes, it makes them uneasy and once, they shut me out, occupying all the tables in the cafeteria and glaring at me when I enter.
Now, I learn to tone down my aura and to use it for the good of the other patients. I let it envelop Hector as he eats and inspire a song-writing session during therapy. With my aura, I can even keep time during the exercise sessions. Sometimes, coming into contact with my aura, some of the other patients cry. To keep my aura healthy, I begin to eat healthy and do sit-ups in my room.
Occasionally, I make mistakes. Once, when I ditch Hector in favor of my roommate, he begins to mutter to himself and then to throw his food around, grumbling darkly about the government. Trying to conciliate him, I ask him for his discarded bun. He does not blame me for what had happened. Later, my favorite therapist, a slender Chinese-American woman who could have been any age between 20 and 40 reiterates that I was not to blame.
But I am beginning to feel claustrophobic. I am liked at the hospital, pampered even, by the staff and the other patients. But I am constantly afraid of hurting someone, of giving offence, of my paradise turning into a nightmarish forever.
One of the last people I meet at the ward is an oval-shaped boy called Alonso who resembles nothing so much as a clean shaven boulder. Alonso knows he is a messiah and is disappointed that so few women throng to be a part of his flock. He is convinced that I am powerful in my own right and is frustrated that I won’t tell him the secret behind my empathetic abilities. Trying to bring him peace, I put my hand over his and we look deeply into each other’s eyes.
Leaving the hospital and for long thereafter, I regret my departure deeply. I had loved being at St. Luke’s and it will always remain one of the most magical experiences in my life. But I am no longer convinced it was my beauty that won me so much affection behind those closed doors. Perhaps it was my quietness. Perhaps it was my inability to see the class, race and sex boundaries the other, less blind, patients saw. Perhaps I was just enough of an interesting anomaly to be agreeable to everyone.
A month after leaving St. Luke’s, I stop feeling beautiful. And the depression begins.
Adreyo Sen is based in Kolkata. He is pursuing his MFA from SUNY, Southampton.