“They found me on the 5 freeway,”€ Erica said. “I was trying to get semi trucks to hit me.”€Oh shit, I thought. I was sitting across from her, waiting for group to start and chit chatting about the things you do inside of a psychiatric ward. How did you try to kill yourself?
Its the first question you get asked by intake nurses, and each of us had our own unique way, but Ericas was by far the most outrageous. Erica cant be more than five feet tall, maybe even just shy five feet tall. Her gown devoured her and when she walked around she looked like a green ghost but with a head. I was amazed a truck didnt hit her, she was so tiny. I was imagining her zig zagging across all the freeway lanes screaming. “Please hit me! Please hit me!”€ I didnt know what she looked like outside of her gown so in my imagination thats what she was wearing while running, the truck drivers squinting- what in the hell is that thing?
“When the cops came, I ran from them,”€she told us with pride. “Damn,”€ Francis said. “I told my intake nurse I was going to jump off a bridge,”€ said Nicole, who had become my roommate. “And do you know what she said?”€ Francis was slobbering all over herself in anticipation, “what? Tell us.”€ “She told me that a lot of the time when people jump off bridges they survive, only they are paralyzed for life. Can you imagine jumping off a bridge only to survive and then be stuck in a wheelchair? So cross that one off your list.”€The thought made me laugh, but thats because Im deranged. “If that happened to me, I would wheel myself off the bridge again,”€Nicole said as we all nodded in agreement. “Oh for sure,”€Francis said, scoffing.
“Are you going to eat that?” Valerie asked Erica, eyeing an unopened cup of jello in front of her. They bring us snacks before group but no one really eats them, except for Valerie, who will eat all of them. I once watched her devour nine bananas, one right after the other. She says she is pregnant, but when she asked if I wanted to feel her belly, which I didnt really, but is it impolite to say no? When I was pregnant no one felt my belly because we were in lockdown, but I also dont think, had I been free, Id be one of those women asking others to rub my pregnant belly. I touched Valeries belly and to my surprise it squished. It wasnt hard like a pregnant belly. “Is this your first?” I asked her. “No, Ive had five babies, but they are all dead now.”€ “Oh my god, Im so sorry,” I said. “I dont mind,”€she replied through giggles. I was highly disturbed at this point and I had to remind myself that I was in a psyc ward. We are all a bunch of loonies, no tea, no shade.
“Here, you can have my jello,”€I said, pushing it over to her. Erica was inspecting her jello on the white plastic spoon. “I wouldnt even feed this to my Lola,” she said, putting it down and murmuring, “the disrespect.”€ I felt something behind me, an entity, if you will. Ah, yes there she was. Lydia lurking in the doorway staring. Behind her, a cheerful social worker appeared. “Lydia are you going to join us for group today?”€Lydia turned to her, staring at her in silence for a few beats. “No,”€she said and then paused, for a great amount of time, before adding, “..bitch.”€ With that, she shuffled away. The social worker looked at all of us. “Alright! What about the rest of you?”
Erica stood up and left, Valerie close behind her and then Francis announced, “Nah,”€and left as well. The social worker sat down with the rest of us and smiled. She motioned to the wall of art, “I love to see what you all are creating,” she told us. “They took my art down,”€said Krystal. “Oh, well…they must rotate it….um, ok let’s get started!” The social worker said clapping her hands.€Krystal looked down at her lap. Krystal is a sweetheart, there is nothing bad to say about this good to the core human. She will enter the day room if people are in there and ask, “who would like to read today’s daily devotion?”™”Ill read it to you,”€offers Kiara, and she begins to read until Francis tells her to shut up and someone else will pop off on Francis and the day room gets closed down and we all have to go to our rooms.
I have realized group therapy, and therapy in general, is helpful because you can speak your truth without the fear of hurting people you love or others passing judgment. I can tell someone “Im depressed,”€and not feel like Im wounding my parents, or be laughed off and low-key insulted by my shallow dumbass of a boss. “But Jenn, youre always laughing! Seriously! Is it a nervous tic or do you really find everything funny?”€
The first thing a therapist told me after listening to me speak freely was, “it sounds like youre a very skilled actress.”€ “Maybe,”€I said. “But also, theres not a lot of¦empathetic people in the world. A lot of people claim they are, but I feel like thats become a buzzword. Its hard to really talk to people, and people usually love to just talk about themselves. Very rarely am I in a conversation where someone is asking me questions. Im always the interviewer. But maybe I do that so I dont have to talk about myself, I dont know.”€
“Do you have a lot of friends?”€my therapist asked. “Not really,”€I said honestly, “but also, I dont really feel lonely on my own. I like to be alone. Not because its easier, but because I need to process everything Im thinking all the time.”€I was imagining me, alone in my little studio that Ive created to be a cozy den by pilfering free things rich people are giving away off Facebook Marketplace- a perfectly good and super comfy reclining chair, a long white desk Ive adorned with art supplies, books, glasses of paintbrushes and pens, scissors, a measuring tape. Canvas lamps that cast a cozy glow at night. Framed art. The Edward Hopper painting of a window looking out onto the endless ocean. Two vintage Italian art deco chairs. A Japanese style lantern. I thought of how Noah and I will go around the neighborhood picking flowers and then putting them in vases all over the studio. All my books, they are everywhere-overflowing on a bookshelf, stacked under the bed, piled on top of the fridge. My huge Monstera plant. Candles. Unique little trinkets that all have a story attached to them. Noahs toy chest his Pops made him. All of his GMoo’s doodles she creates and sends to him. Noahs stuffed elephant. I love inviting people into my space, I do, certain people can share my secret space. Ive curated it to be what I wish was a reflection of me. An interesting, creative, warm person lives here is what I want the burglars to think.
“It can be hard to have a lot of thoughts,”€my therapist said. I shrugged. “We had a group session the other day where the prompt was is ignorance bliss?”€ “What do you think?”€he asked, seemingly not annoyed that I had changed the subject. “My boss asks me all sorts of questions regarding anything thats not related to hotel sales. And it’s crazy to me that he is clueless to all of these things, but also that hes completely fine with that. He has a business card with Director on it and a Porsche. Thats…enough I think for him to be satisfied with himself and I only say that because he has said it himself. He doesnt look, so he never sees. If he buys his team lunch, he goes home that day thinking I am a great leader, forgetting, or ignoring, or not even being aware somehow, of the fact that he is constantly making our event manager cry and people quit on him constantly. His team has been a revolving door of people who try, get fed up, and then leave- is he living in bliss?” “What sort of questions does he ask you?” my therapist looked very intrigued by all of this. “Like, who is Anne Frank? What is an empanada? What is Brexit? Tapatio! Whats that?! Or even pop culture references. I told him to “bless up”€once and then I had to explain. He thinks him not knowing is charming and funny, you can tell. But if you dont know something he acts like youre the biggest idiot hes ever met.” “DJ Khaled,”€my therapist offered, foe-humbly, like when people slip into conversation that they graduated from Harvard.
I smiled at him. “Hes just in his bubble of what he wants to know to be true and rejects any opposition,”€I carried on. “And I use him as an example, but a lot of people are like that. They create their worlds with their set of rules and guidelines and forget that they are part of a bigger world, one that we all occupy together.”€
“You think it’s wrong to do that? Create your own little world?”
“I dont think it’s doing anyone any favors. It stunts us as human beings. It means there is a higher chance of us hating someone else out of fear or ignorance. A higher chance of us not understanding how to be empathetic towards someone different than you. A higher chance of us thinking we are better or worse than someone else.”€I paused, embarrassed suddenly. Jenn shut up youre talking so much. My therapist was looking at me, waiting. My instinct was to walk back into my comfort zone of asking him a question, then building off that question and genuinely enjoying getting to know him, shine my light on him, so that he walks away from the interaction feeling happy and good about himself. Ugh, this is not a date Jenn, hes a doctor trying to figure out why youre so fucked up.€”Should I..keep talking?”€I asked him. “Please,”€he nodded.
“When I was admitted to the ER, I was placed on a bed that was in the hallway. Right in front of the nurses station, a front row seat to all the action.”€
“Tony we got a hot one!”€A little action figure of a man, short, sturdy and square like he was a Lego dressed in doctors scrubs, came bursting through the doors. Behind the nurses station, a good looking, athletic, older man perked up from behind a computer. “A tweaker?”€he asked. “The cops who brought him in said he smoked eighty dollars of meth.”€ A tall woman with curly hair stood up with her clipboard, I saw her access badge said social worker. “Ahh man,” she said, “he spent eighty dollars?”€The doors opened again and a nurse was leading a girl with six inch long purple nails into a room. “I want to talk to the cops, I was being poisoned, someone is trying to poison me,”€ she was telling the nurse. They disappeared behind the door next to me.
Suddenly, cops and hospital security marched into the ER, in the middle of their procession, a thin man, cuffed, screaming bloody murder and squirming, trying to get away. “Fuck you!” he was screaming. Tony was telling a nurse to get the restraints. As she ran off, Tony politely introduced himself to this gentleman. “Hello, Im Tony, we are going to take care of you. Are you seeing hallucinations or in any pain?” he asked.€”Fuck you, let me go!”€ As everyone gathered into a room, I was just noticing that in psychiatric ERs, each room has no door, just a floor to ceiling glass window so you can see inside. “Who is watching 52?”€”Did someone record 48s vitals?”€ Each nurse is assigned to keep watch on a patients room. I looked behind me and a huge 44-H plaque just above my head let me know that was me, 44-hallway. Inside 52, the meth man was trying to escape and then started spitting on everyone as they restrained him to his bed.
“I have to take a shit! Im going to SOIL MYSELF ASSHOLES,”€he was screaming. My eyes instantly filled up with tears. The loss of all dignity in that moment. “It’s ok, we will clean you up, we just have to restrain you to calm you down, get these drugs out of your system. It’s ok,”€Tony was calmly telling him, wiping the mans spit off his arm with a paper towel. Tony gave this man his dignity back. He wasnt being condescending, or aggressive, or defensive. He was going to take care of this man that had just spit on him. That made me cry too. “How is 44-H?”€ “Shes fine, calm, keeping to herself while crying.”€
In the corporate world, theres lots of talks about “optics.”€ Things have to look a certain way, even if its fabricated. The office floors are made of eggshells and no matter how lightly you tread, you will insult someones fragile ego- and everyone has them. I dont know one for profit corporate business person who would ignore getting spit on by someone and then with respect, change, clean them up, and then ask if they would like a warm blanket.
It could be used as a metaphor of small and big worlds. Corporate life creates a small bubble where all perspective is lost, there is no big picture because there doesnt need to be. Everyone is out for themselves, so they will play the players and the game the way they need to in order to get what they want. At the root of every interaction or movement is selfish desire. It breeds ignorance because you are the center of your world and everyone is just revolving around you.
A hospital welcomes in whoever needs them, regardless of how they are treated or how much their paycheck is. The perspective becomes huge because the unpredictable outside world is coming in and you never know what you are going to get on a given day- so youre constantly learning and being tested. Each patient is different and unique. And the empathy grows because youre connecting with all sorts of people. Thats a big world. It’s tough, and it’s scary and it’s beautiful. And it’s not about you. Thats how you fight ignorance and find bliss.
In that ER, empathy wasnt mentioned at all. It wasnt your HR woman sitting across from you attacking every single thing about you and then tying it up with an ugly bow, “I care about you. Im here for you.”€In that hospital I was watching empathy being treated as a verb. It was being lived out, in real time. And it brought me to tears. More tears. Ive spent a lot of time crying recently.
Suddenly Tony was sitting next to me on my cot. He handed me a box of tissues. “Sorry we had to stick you in the hallway,”€he said. “No! No. This is like watching a TV show,”€I told him with a small smile. He laughed. “You have to have humor in this job,”€he told me, “you have to be able to laugh.” I thought about my French boss, always shouting at me “JENNEFURZ ZTOP LAUGHINGZ.” “Also, apologies if you overhear some dark humor from all of us,” he said motioning to the flurry of people running around. I thought about how Bryant and I have had almost hour long conversations about what hexes we would cast on different people. “Dark humor doesnt bother me,”€I told him reassuringly. “Youre a very pretty little girl,”€he told me. “Youll be ok.”€ “Oh, Im actually middle aged and on the precipice of losing any appeal I ever had”€ I was about to tell him, but Lego Doctor was back. “Tony, another hot one! This guy keeps making psychosexual statements. Youll have a blast with this one!”€Tony was gone. On to the next.
I exhaled and stopped talking. I was a balloon filled with hot air that had all been released. My therapist looked deep in thought before asking me, “so, to answer the original question, is ignorance bliss, what you are saying is..”€
I looked at him sadly and said, “ignorance is evil. In the end, ignorance will only steal our bliss.”
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