Tap Water Coffee
Many years ago, I was haunted by a major mental illness that left me with no place to go, so I ended up in Elgin Mental Health Center. Three different times I was forced to live there for months at a time. In order for me to leave each time, I needed the discharge statement of the psychiatrist and his team. I also needed to have a place to live. Many of us ended up in a shabby residential hotel where many of us lived for a while once we had the funding.
I was originally placed in the acute ward and eventually moved to the chronic ward where everybody paced the floor like zombies; picking up half smoked cigarette butts and misbehaved so they could get a thorazine (tranquilizer) shot and sleep.
Nevertheless, I did make friend with Coleman and Gary who were also residents several times while I was there. It seemed like every time I returned they would still be there. We used to go the commissary together, when we earned enough money at the workshop where we earned piece work and we were also given passes for appropriate behavior. We’d go to the commissary and buy jars of coffee. We then would return to our unit and drink hot tap water coffee in the bathroom often chugging spoonful’s from a plastic cup. Then the three of us would talk together. Coleman and Gary often discussed that “people were after them” and how the milk was laced with LSD. I believed I was a prophet and the fifth Beatle so needless to say our conversations were often pretty weird.
The commissary itself had residents there who communicated with the TV, ate coffee right out of the jar with their hands and bolted down whole boxes of donuts. One time I was there I noticed a woman who danced by the jukebox. She was shabbily dressed in donated clothes, and she had coffee stains on her lips and teeth probably from eating coffee. In her hand was a fly swatter which she used to swat imaginary flies while she whirled around the room. I believe at one time she was probably pretty and mentally normal.
It turned out I was right. The next time I was in the institution I saw the same woman at the commissary. It had been probably eight months later. She was lucid, dressed very neatly and talked with others. She looked like she was on the road to recovery. I could hardly believe the transformation.
Then about a year later, on my third time to this institution, I saw the same woman again. She was very obviously pregnant and her mental condition had returned to when I first saw her with stained teeth tattered clothes and dancing around the jukebox with a fly swatter. I was astonished to see her again.
If I remember correctly, a security guard told me that a number of months before, this woman was taken from the institution and given drinks at a local bar. The culprit or culprits were never found. Regardless of what happened I personally witnessed her condition all three times, and I even wrote a song about her called “The Dancer” which I have included at the end of this newsletter.
Now I don’t know what finally happened to her. I, like many others are not the same people that we were back then. Many of our lives are so much better, and we have dreams like everyone else. With medications, help from others and a great deal of self-effort, we live lives that are unrecognizable from what they were. Maybe hers is too.
However, before I meditate and write in the morning I still chug two cups of tap water coffee. I used to chug many more than this but these days my doctor has limited me to just two cups a day. Still, each day I can’t help but remember my friends who chugged coffee with me many years ago, and I wonder how they’re doing. I also wrote a poem called “Farewell My Companions” that was once published in a professional counseling journal.
I’d like to close today with both “The Dancer” and “Farewell My Companions.” Have a great day and thanks for reading my newsletters. See you next week!
The Dancer
Years ago in a bricked in town,
Where sorrow reigns and pain abounds.
There lived a girl of golden hair.
She lost her way no one much cared.
They brought her there to treat her ills,
With talk and walk and different pills.
Hey ho let the girl go, she has to be somebody’s daughter.
Hey ho let the girl go, she danced but nobody caught her.
At first she didn’t do too well.
She danced around lost in hell.
Coffee grounds stained her teeth and lips.
She stayed aboard her silent ship.
Never gave the world the time of day.
Never made friends had nothing to say.
Hey ho let the girl go, she has to be somebody’s daughter.
Hey ho let the girl go, she danced but nobody caught her.
But then as the winter melted to spring,
She came alive she’d often sing.
She made friends and talked by the trees.
Planned for the future outside by degrees.
I smiled to myself to see her succeed,
To get back into life, to start to believe.
Hey ho let the girl go, she has to be somebody’s daughter.
Hey ho let the girl go, she danced but nobody caught her.
Then one day some out of town men,
Took her to dinner out past ten.
She got drunk and got into trouble.
Her dreams disappeared life turned to rubble.
Pregnant she was life turned to sorrow.
Her mind knew despair, illness then followed.
Hey ho let the girl go, she has to be somebody’s daughter.
Hey ho let the girl go, she danced but nobody caught her.
The men were not punished they couldn’t be found.
The dancer returned and flailed all around.
In one hand her coffee the other a swatter.
She swatted the flies, she’s nobody’s daughter.
And sometimes at night alone in my room,
I think of the dancer, the child in her womb.
And wonder how people could be so damn cruel.
Hey ho let the girl go, she has to be somebody’s daughter.
Hey ho let the girl go, she danced but nobody caught her.
Farewell My Companions
When horses stampeded within my sick mind,
You held my hand tightly and helped me unwind.
When demons possessed me and anger took hold,
You knew how I felt without being told.
When life was oppressive with dark thoughts of death,
You asked me to linger and helped me find rest.
When experts gave up and left me alone,
You shouldered my burden and made it your own.
My words can’t express my feelings inside;
Without your affection I might well have died.
Although I have left you, I still hear you call.
Farewell my comparisons, goodbye to you all.
Remember I love you and feel you within,
Farewell my companions. My new life begins.
(Please remember these are my own ideas, and I’m not attempting to persuade anyone to change theirs.)
Quotes:
“Calling it lunacy makes it easier to explain away the things we don’t understand.” Meghan Chance
“They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them; they outvoted me.” Nathaniel Lee
“No one would ever tell a cancer patient to ‘just get over it.’ Why people think they can tell those with a mental illness as much is baffling.” Sara Ella Coral
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