It gets bouncy around here. (Patreon)

(from Edward Albee's play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?)

Reality and fantasy. For so long I've believed in a place where you could go and be safe. Just safe. A quiet room, with people who care. Who come and talk to you. Who try to understand the confusing things that are happening to you and inside you. Who want to keep you safe and warm while they help.

I'm no starry eyed dreamer. I know what the real world can be like, even with the best intentions. I have a tattoo on my back, of the floor plan of New Jersey State Lunatic Asylum at Trenton, New Jersey. The first psychiatric hospital built to the very optimistic Kirkbride plan. An ordered space leads to an ordered mind. A hospital built on optimism, put into the hands of an arrogant, ruthless doctor named Henry Cotton. A monster. Fantasy and reality.

The psychiatric ward I stayed in was no Trenton, of course, and our indifferent doctor wasn't sending screaming patients off to have their teeth pulled out. (the seat of madness being untreated infections in the teeth, according to Dr. Henry Cotton). But it was not safe or warm. There is no rest when you don't know what is happening. No calm when you are surrounded by other people each having their own crisis. When everyone looks right through you until it is time for your meds. You are so alone, there. All of you together.

Well, I decided, if they wouldn't make me feel safe, I would have to protect myself. So I made a friend. A sweet man who, with some convincing, agreed to join my gang. The rats. We had only one mission. One raison d'être. To bite anyone who interfered with our business. And to bite a cop if we got the chance. And to share puddings, if the supply was low. The rats. We were the toughest gang in the whole psychiatric ward, and none of them had any idea.  

Like George, I want to rest so badly. It gets bouncy around here. It does. But there's nowhere just waiting to save me. There is no system with a heart. No matter how much we hope. We have to make our own safety. We have to keep our teeth sharp and ready.

Joey