Dunkin Donuts

Part I

11/20/17

Do you know the best part of being in the psych hospital?  I do.  It is that you are all alone with others but with a bunch of different versions of yourself, at the same time.  Before it I didn’t know that I could sketch so well, write so deeply, or eat the quantity of food that I did.  I skipped out of that place after eight days- after I ate more than a week of great hospital food and experienced more art therapy groups than a competent human being should ever be able to handle.  The night I was chosen to sleep in the hall on a hospital bed was the night after I barfed on the carpet in my room.  I had a dream that could be classified as something worse than a night terror- it was so simple it could have been mind-numbing, but the feeling it left me with the second I woke up probably would make my grandfather cry.  And my grandfather does not cry.  Except when I tell him stories about really scary dreams I have.

My room was a single bed.  Often staff would sit in my room while I nap and sleep- they would talk about arbitrary things and just sit there to make sure I was ok.  I remember not wanting to get up for anything- but I would still get up to eat and to go to groups and to go to church services in the scary secret area of the ward that reminded me of a purple space ship, although it wasn’t painted purple and stayed put in the ward, while I would sit in the service and fall asleep in my chair, with no one waking me up.  Who knows what they were saying while I was under.  Maybe I was a false God that they worshipped at those services, being the crazy people that they were.  Enter a religious zone in the hospital, and you have the potential for being with monitored patients, as a staff member, and being one with everyone at the same time- because only God is above us all.

I remember I would sleep alone in my room sometimes, my head in the pillow, and I would be partially awake, thinking of random things.  As a young twenty something I thought of all the friends I had in high school, who I lost to the reality of mental illness and the fact that I would never be faced with the situation of the secondary school institution again.  One guy made me wonder the hardest about what happen- my eyes, closed, were filled with orange clouds, and I thought about how he had an identity, to me, as a clown: a rich clown.  Another girl who I remember when I was fifteen, was an Egyptian.  I had a moment when I saw a picture of a baby in a magazine when I was in the hospital and I got sprung thinking that the baby looked like her: partially because I was amazed at the fact that I could still have friends. 

The only time I felt truly alone in the hospital, and still okay, was when I wrote in my composition notebook.  I bought it at a bookstore.  It is actually a “decomposition” book, with a green cover covered in nature illustrations.  I picked it out because I want to be a famous artist one day- the purpose in that being that I show what I think and feel about really beautiful things, such as night time on a cliff of the Grand Canyon, with all of the stars spread out like a really warm quilt, over you; or a quiet moment at five o’clock in the morning waiting for the bus, with water running down the side of the street and slowly falling into the sewer with red, orange and yellow leaves strewn about the sewer; the water falling into someplace where no one knows but the being that created it (but then is God a being, or is he just everything?  Only those waiting for the bus at five o’clock in the morning may know).  I picked the decomposition book at the bookstore, and then two days later I was committed by my scared-to-death parents; as if something in me made me have the comfort of the decomposition book before I was sent to the hospital for an unspecified at the time amount of time.  In the hospital, I would write in it while I would sit in the hall, contemplating whether I should talk to that brown-haired guy, or while I waited for the food cart to be brought to the dining room.  I would sit, and chill out, and just write whatever was on my mind.  It was like a big fluffy pillow that comforted me, like the feeling of almost going under but not quite so that you are able to sense what is going on but not able to react quite as quickly as you’d want.  Something like that.

So, the day after I got out of the hospital I decided to drop my class for the winter quarter.  I emailed my counselor, told her what was going on, and she said it was fine.  I went to the day program for about five weeks and then I had the next three months to look forward to for vacation- but I didn’t look forward to it- maybe because that something in the back of my head wouldn’t let all of what was on my mind rest.  You know, that icky feeling that even a pint of your favorite ice cream won’t fix?  It’s something that I had experienced before- and when you experience it all you want is to get out of the situation but then when you do and the memory of it fades away you want it to come back because it reminds you of times when things where so much simpler.  My mind would hardly sufficiently rest as a teenager, and now it occasionally does, but I wish I could go back to the time before even my restlessness- so that I could figure out what caused my depression. 

The day after I dropped my winter class I went to the Dunkin Donuts by the blue line station that is a couple of blocks from my house.  I brought my decomposition book and sat in the back-right corner of the Dunkin Donuts.  I ordered a medium (not Grande- it was Dunkin Donuts)- decaf coffee with cream and sugar.  I sat and watched the cars pass by- slowly and fast at the same time- it was kind of like a dream, where no real time passed but it all seemed to take forever, and the colors of the cars blended together so much that the image should have just been brown, but it wasn’t- it was like a green-yellow-blue-red car passed, one after another.  I almost got lost in it, but a guy walked up to me, pulled out the other chair from the table I was sitting at, and sat down across from me.  He had black curly hair and deep, deep eyes (where the irises almost melted into the pupil) and a stature that was at least half a foot taller than mine.

“I love your freckles,” he said to me, blinking seemingly five times in two seconds.  “My grandmother used to tell me people with freckles were sent from heaven.”

His conversation starter caught me off guard. 

“I just have them because I’m Irish,” I said.  I didn’t know what to say; the words just fell out of my mouth.

“You just have them because you’re an angel,” he said.  I blushed harder than I ever had in my life.  I felt my cheeks burning until he reached out and traced his fingers over my decomposition book.  My reflex was to take it away, but the red in his eyes made me stop.  I looked deep into his eyes and fell into a trance.  They were as red as blood, as red as hell, and redder than the burgundy sweater he wore. 

“Maybe you have freckles because you react to the light of the sun in some way that is special- just like I imagine all angels do.”  He smiled so that the right side of his mouth was asymmetrical to his left side. 

“Wow- you are intense,” I said, trying not to laugh; but at the same time, I was amazed. 

“Have you ever laid down under the night sky and feel like you aren’t alone?”  he asked.

“Yeah- a couple of times,” I said.  “When I was a teenager and lived at my parents’ house, sometimes on summer nights I would bring my blanket and sleep out under the stars.

“The only thing that isn’t fair in heaven is that some stars shine brighter than others,” he said.  I felt a wave of intrigue pass through me: I almost lost the balance in my neck.

“Wow, deep,” I got the courage to say.  “Do you mind if I write that in my journal?” 

“Sure,” he said.  I noticed he hadn’t stopped looking me in the eyes since he sat down- in such a way that it felt like he was looking into the back of my mind. 

“What do you think heaven is like?” he asked.

“I don’t know- I always thought of it as something that is almost completely different from here.”

“True, but we need a bit of familiarity- or else we would have to start all over again,” he almost whispered.  “Right?”

He pulled a notebook out of his backpack and placed it on the table opposite from mine.  He opened it up, flipped through it, showing me drawings- made with pastels and colored pencils.  He flipped through the notebook until he got to a drawing that caught my attention right away- it was of a beach under a night sky, with stars that beamed like crosses and palm trees that lined the sandy beach.

“My old girlfriend told me she thinks of heaven as the last, ultimate thing,” he said quietly, like he was sharing a secret.  “But I think that our souls just keep on going from one stage to another, so that we never stop growing, you know?”

I started to tap my foot nervously.  Who is this guy, I thought, and why have I never seen eyes like his before? 

“I know what you are thinking,” he said, running his hand through his hair.  “What’s up with the red eyes,” right?”

His honesty was nerve-racking.  I felt like this must have been a dream.  A dream where I was safe with this red-eyed, black-and-curly-haired guy. 

“Do you think I could ever be an angel?”  he asked like he was asking me if I believed in God.

“It’s not that, I don’t think,” I said, “It’s just that your eyes are really- red.”

He laughed and smiled so that his eyes broadened.  “I could never be an angel- like you.  But who knows, maybe one day in the next life I’ll have freckles, and you’ll have red eyes, and then we’ll go from there, huh?”

I knew what I wanted to ask but I wondered if I’d be able to ask it.  I took a deep breath and then let it out, what had been in the back of my mind since we had started talking- “Doesn’t having red eyes usually mean you are-mad?  Like- angry?”

He laughed again and tilted his head back.  “Can angels be angry?  Can demons be content?”

He pulled his cell phone out of his bag and checked it, and all the while I wondered what had just happened.  Before I found the strength to ask his name, he slid back in his chair, stood up and gathered his notebook and phone into his bag.

“Maybe we’ll meet again,” he said, smiling so that his eyes were redder than ever, “someday.”

And he was gone.  And I finished my coffee and wrote in my journal what had happened; although there were no words to adequately portray what happened.