There were the eyes, brown and wide, like they had just seen a ghost, staring at me again. I was in a meeting room the size of a closet, speaking to a nurse when I noticed the eyes in the window of the door. Lydias round, pale face perfectly framed by the window. I tried to focus on Lukes face, kind blue eyes and reassuring smile, he would make a great Santa Claus at Macys during Christmas. “I used to smoke a pack a day,” he was telling me. “I finally stopped when I focused all my anger and hatred onto the cigarettes themselves. And for some reason putting an object to that anger and hatred allowed me to get it out of me, and also stop smoking,” he shrugged sheepishly. I go through seasons of smoking, the seasons related to how bad my depression has sunk me. Its the ultimate I give up.
Lukes back was turned away from the door so he couldnt see Lydias face, watching us. “I was on the West Side, on Centinela Street, you know where theres all those expensive coffee houses and yoga studios, vegan restaurants,” Luke nodded, he was familiar with the West Sides atmosphere. “I was driving and stopped at a red light, watching all the healthy, tan, carefully sculpted people on the sidewalk- all of them carrying yoga mats or running with their air pods in, buying green juice and eating soy beans,” Luke chuckled. “And I lit up a cigarette,” I glanced at Lydia who was still in the window, staring, unblinking. “It felt like such an act of rebellion. It felt good when I know it shouldnt have.” I was trying to think of why. Being surrounded by people trying to prolong their life, enhance their health, their appearance, their zen mindsets. And then me, inhaling everything that will slowly kill me, knowing that each breath will weaken and damage my cells, turn my lungs black, my teeth yellow. “You have no reason to hate or punish yourself,” Luke told me.
He turned and at the sight of Lydias face in the window, let out a small yelp of surprise. “Has she been there the whole time?” He asked me, laughing at himself. “I’ve come to think of Lydia as the moon, shes always there looking down on me,” I told him. “Lydia, what are you doing, leave them alone,” one of the nurses, Sandy, opened the door and Lydias face vanished. “Jennifer, you have a phone call,” she told me.
Out in the hall I picked up the phone. “It’s Nicole biiiitchhhh!”
I genuinely was shocked.
“You get out today I had to call you!,” she said excitedly. Nicole had become my roommate while I was in the hospital. She looked twenty-eight but was actually twenty-three and although I am thirteen years older than her, we could meet each other on equal ground for some reason. She knew too much to only have been twenty-three. Her short life jam packed with experiences that take others decades to acquire. Shes going to be an unstoppable force by the time shes my age- powerful.
She had been discharged the day before and I had cried when I said goodbye to her. I was really very touched that she called. “Whats going on there? Is Lydia watching you?” she asked. I looked down the hall and saw Lydia standing in the doorway of the day room where everyone was taking a dance therapy class. “Everyone is dancing to “Celebrate Good Times” by Kool & The Gang, I told her and we both snickered like bratty little girls.
“It’s your send off song!” she exclaimed.
I had woken up to discover that someone was sleeping in the bed next to mine. I slowly crept out of the room, so whoever she was could wake up and have some time to herself- thats what I would have wanted. Its very jarring when you are first admitted. Everyone deserving of a moment alone to process. I was writing in my notebook in the day room when she emerged, her long brown hair messy, wearing her gown and socks. She was holding her breakfast tray and exhausted, sat down next to me. “Hi,” she said, exhaling a long breath and then noticing Valerie and Krystal at the table next to us.
Valerie had dug a small hole in a chocolate muffin and was filling it with scrambled eggs and ketchup while Krystal shoveled runny eggs into her mouth, a trail of yolk running down her chin. Nicole looked at me and I pointed to my own tray that sat untouched next to me. “I struggle to eat….here,” I told her. I will never be able to eat Ceaser salad again for the rest of my life after witnessing a cafeteria of women slathering iceberg lettuce with blobs of dressing, licking it off their fingers, chewing with their mouths open.
Nicole had been prescribed crazy sleeping pills that gave her the most wonderful dark and twisty dreams. Every morning she would recap them for me and I felt like I was tripping off acid just listening to it. I gave her a piece of paper from my notebook and a purple crayon. “You have to write this all down so you dont forget.” “Youre right,” she agreed, sitting Indian style on her bed, moving her long hair to one side and furiously writing. “Nicole, visiting hour is starting,” Sandy said peeking in our room.
Nicole had been eagerly waiting to see her mom and sister. As she bounded out the door I took my position at the top of my bed, my arms creating a little nest on the windowsill, cradling my head and looking outside. It was raining and I sat still watching, trying to focus on following just one drop of rain.
My thoughts taking me back to Hawaii, living in a little studio underneath a beautiful house in the middle of open land- a house off the main road, the only way to find it is to travel down a crumbly narrow road with nothing on either side of it, the nothingness allowing everything to exist in it’s own unexplainable beauty. The road seemingly leading you nowhere until you ended up home. I would sit on my tiny porch and bear witness to the lush wild jungle, the life, surrounding me. It would always start to rain once the sun set and Id sit on my porch listening to it, watching it, falling in love with it and feeling like I was pleasing the divine spirits. Im noticing, Im here, now. Im so thankful I could cry. And although I was not in that ideal setting, sitting there looking out the hospital rooms window, the rain was still the rain and I was still so thankful I could cry.
I dont know how much time had passed but Nicole returned with a bag full of clothes. “My mom packed me my work shirt,” she said holding up a black crew neck with the name of a restaurant on it. “Mom, why?” she asked herself quietly.
“Who else had visitors?” I asked her. “Angela’s parents,” Nicole told me. Angelas parents have come every day at visiting hour- they sit huddled together like a family of meerkats, speaking in hushed voices. Angela is the same age as Nicole but they are light years apart. Sheltered and living inside an intense religious pressure cooker, Angela looks all of sixteen years old. Desperate to go out into the world and let stories happen to her, all that freedom and experience blocked, tied up in shame and fear, each moment a loss of something extraordinary the unknown holds.
“It’s time for group!” Sandy was hollering down the hall. Nicole looked at me, “Im praying it is not dance therapy.”
We all filed into the day room where a social worker sat surrounded by coloring books, markers and crayons. “Today, let’s just color,” she told us taking out a speaker. “Are there any songs you would like to hear?” she asked us.
Immediately with no hesitations, “Oh! Secret Lovers!” Krystal exclaimed. “Who sings that? Im not familiar,” the social worker responded, posed to type it into her phone. “Atlantic Star,” Krystal told her.
The song began to play transporting us all to the synth pop era of the eighties. Krystal began to sing, not missing a beat or lyric. When a man started to join the main woman vocalist, Nicole put her marker down, “its a duet!” Krystal nodded but kept singing, even closing her eyes, completely lost in the song. “She knows both parts!” Nicole exclaimed.
“In the middle of makin love we notice the time
We both get nervous cause it’s way after nine
Even though we hate it, we know it’s time that we go
We gotta be careful, so that no one will know
Secret lovers, that’s what we are
Trying so hard to hide the way we feel
‘Cause we both belong to someone else
But we can’t let it go”
Krystal, singing these lyrics with her entire chest while coloring a family of cows in a barn will never not leave my brain. It has been imprinted on my heart and I would want it no other way. “A saxophone!” Nicole observed as the singing paused for a passionate saxophone riff.
Angela politely waited for “Secret Lover” to end before asking, “can you please play ‘Hard Times’ by Paramore?” I had never heard this song either but was happily surprised when an upbeat, catchy pop song came on, all of us coloring together like a kindergarten class.
“All that I want
Is to wake up fine
Tell me that I’m alright
That I ain’t gonna die
All that I want
Is a hole in the ground
You can tell me when it’s alright
For me to come out
“Gonna make you wonder why you even try
Hard times
Gonna take you down and laugh when you cry
These lives
And I still don’t know how I even survive
Hard times, hard times
And I gotta hit rock bottom”
I took my notebook out and scribbled on a page, “Secret Lovers” and “Hard Times.” I watched as Angela sang these kind of dark lyrics laced into an upbeat alternative/indie melody. She was coloring a bluebird posed on top of a mailbox. I hope with all my heart she gets to have her adventures- her stories.
The first song I downloaded when I was discharged was “Hard Times” by Paramore. I listen to it on repeat sometimes remembering them all, hoping they are all ok.
Word Vomit 