Twenty
Back in the 1980s when I was just a teen, I had a lot of mental health issues before I even knew what they were. They were my normal – being agitated, or having unexplainable bouts of melancholy, or feeling a disconnect from everybody else. It wasn’t until they exploded into panic attacks that the public hospital psychiatrist was able to give me some muddy clarity. But the worst of those mental health issues, the meltdowns, came at important times developmentally – when I should’ve been making my way out into the world, I was dealing with anxiety, cluster panic attacks, and OCD; when friends were marrying and working steadily,…
The Other Me
‘The Good Doctor’ ii. I got to the hospital, checked in, and took a seat. It was just me and a nurse in the waiting-room. The amount of people always varied in this waiting room. Being crazy must’ve been a seasonal thing. Then the nurse left, and I was alone. I sat back. Ran my finger down the contour of the plastic chair to the right of me. Wondered how long I’d have to wait. And then felt like I was shoved, only I was still sitting in the same spot. What had been shunted from me – shunted as it’d been pounded out of me by a speeding train…