The Mad Diaries

Sunday, January 8: Symbols of Sickness

Dear Book,

They say I am crazy. Am I? All the symbols around me seem to coincide with that idea. All the symbols seem to shift, bend to create a puzzle that makes sense to the sane eye. To me, I see a disjointed collage of pictures put together by a lush of a child.

The symbols of sickness seem to indicate that I am crazy: plastic sporks, padded and marshmallow-colored cells, straitjackets to tighten my coil when I become undone, quiet words suggesting an unnecessary reverence, the patterns of the caged windows playing on the ceiling, the Plexiglas, the paper cups with clattering pills, and the slung human beings, like sloths, hanging from the furniture in the TV room. Everything is soft and white. A false divinity. Also, the surveilling eye as I write this entry. This eye also seems over interested. She is angelic in her nurse's uniform, but her eye shifts, glimmers, implies with the spirit of the diablo.

Why am I being held here? I am not a violent criminal, but I am being held against my will as if I were. What is my great crime? Even when I am not straitjacketed, I am confined because there are four walls, a floor, and a ceiling all merging to create the six joined sides of a cube. I believe, if I am clear and lucid with the liquid of clear thought, that the people who have kidnapped me and put me in here are against love. Love is what I demonstrate most. I have demonstrated this many times in public. The men climb me like a jungle gym. Celibate monks of Earth wish me not to express my love so freely, sloppily, messily, and from the gutter.

The patients here remind me very much of these street lovers: coming and going, vanishing in a cloud of cigarette smoke, leaving behind their traces of existence like steam - a fog to get lost in. They are like ghosts, hovering over my horizontal body, and their pale, sterile faces, eyes squinched in either confusion or ecstasy. They come across as antiseptic and they always emerge from a vision of a plume, making their grand appearance from the streetlamp or from the doorway. They are plastic persons. They are ethereal. And they appear in life's most inconvenient hour: when I should be sleeping.

Tuesday, January 10: The Former Life

Dear Book,

The Spanish world is not so beautiful, not for a Spaniard living in America. They remind you, frequently, that you are a pilgrim, unwelcome and far from home. But I have a feeling that to offer a grand turkey dinner to me and my fat opponents, we'd all present ourselves at the table, if not out of sincerity for a truce, then just for the taste of good food itself. The appearance of this, of course, would benefit only The Big Cheese on Pennsylvania Avenue and no one else.

My old neighborhood was livable, but the multitudes were not. The buildings slumped in sadness, reflecting the premature sag of my young and upside-down jowls. Underneath my eyes lie shadows moving and swirling like black spotlight circles.

Through the physical act of love, I have attempted to rub off the coffee color of my mocha skin onto the Caucasians. My plan was to dye them with the same religious sentiment of dying an Easter egg: Dip them in, and out they shall emerge a Catholic after the initiation. My lesser-known intention was to make them my double, make them the color of me, hoping they would become a Spaniard as well and be prone to the squint and suspicious glance that discriminates. Otherwise, I am a solitary soul, 25 years old. My name? Maria Immaculada.

My lovers, though, remained untouched by my brownness. They continued to glow white, the light sprouting from behind their thick shoulders, suggesting either a deity or a convenient placement of fireworks to celebrate skid row's fiestas. The pinatas were always of paper horses or mules, busted till a confetti cloud appeared, raining down candy for the youngsters or bad luck for the cursed.

Sometimes colors, hues are more vibrant than they need to be. The outlines of objects are more distinct. I recognize, with these outlines, that these make for partitions. I am clearly an individual, separate from the things and people around me. These extreme and screaming colors, they tell me, are a sign of mania. Beautiful, yes, but The Drop from a mania is as sudden as tripping forward on the sidewalk, concrete racing towards your face.

Wednesday, January 11: The Drop

Dear Book,

Those beautiful, glittering, sparkling manias are so seductive. They promise sleeplessness, creativity, love profusions, devouring men and food and cigarettes and rye, coming up with an epic in the space of two hours. I am tossed into the air, suspended in the universe, limbs writhing and wriggling, the pull of gravity invisible but in existence. The worst holds are that of the unseen kind, fixed by the machinery of either fate, law, or what is deemed acceptable.

But The Drop? The Drop from these highs? It is so disappointing, disillusioning. That is when you find you were not as good as you thought. That's when that dirty concrete flies up at you and wakes you up from your delicious delirium, staining your pure visit to the clouds, and ruining the promise that this was health and not a gigantic, cosmic trick. It raped my grandiosity, and what is wrong with grandiosity if I am, at all other times, referred to as vermin?

Suicide is an exodus. For one. It's an escape door, a walkout from God's little joke. The Drop is so drastic; you find that, again, you are at square one, swallowing your pride and tiny blimps that are stomach-bound. They - the collective "they" - are holding me here. For how long I do not know, but it has been suggested to me, through the noosey grapevine, that they may keep me longer. Possibly. The decision has yet to be made. This is yet another hold that is unseen but perfectly acceptable to the common folk - as long as they themselves can go home at five o'clock, sit snug by the tangerine lamp and read James Joyce while the snow is falling outside their pane of glass.

But from my window, in my private room, my viewpoint is quite different. There's a smeared square of glass - Plexiglas - and a cover of interwoven chain link. I am an ape who can only count the falling snowflakes (187); they, too, are dropping toward the ground. Would anyone but a sane person want to escape these circumstances? To do away with myself to erase my diablos would be like throwing my whole body away because of a mole. To cancel one imperfection would be equal to cancelling everything and folding my fetus back into the petals of my mother.

I am being held against my will. They've stolen me, pirated me from a street-glittering high fantasy. I could look into the slush puddles, melted by the temporary sun, and I'd see one-hundred Madonnas staring back at me. But two white-jacketed men picked me up from my cloud and sent me crashing down to the worst thing I could ever imagine: reality. I was no longer holy, saintlike. I was me. Should they hold me any longer than my current rest, I shall die.

Look, book, libro, this is where I remove the lid of the silver platter, presenting John the Baptist's head (he lost his too). The platinum is grinning in mischief. This is where I write of my suicide manifesto, abbreviated:

I have a right to die. It would be the ultimate act of autonomy, defying God's schedule for me. If I am guilty of the love crimes they accuse me of, multiple times, and with the multitudes, does the State - my current landlord - have the right to spark my brain? No. I shall certainly duck and dodge that eventuality. If I am the refuse that they refer to me as then why does it matter if I dispose of my life? Are they trying to save a life that they already deem as worthless? Keeping me alive is a way of spiting me. No, they cannot spark my mind. Not here. This, I believe, is an asylum, though we have all the rights of heartbeat thieves.

The decision is mine: live or die. A profusion of fireworks blossoming from my gray matter. What a waste! But, if it comes to that, then it comes to that. I no longer determine how I now live; why not determine when and how I die?

Friday, January 13: On the Edge

Dear Book,

It is nighttime. I am writing this by the light of the television. The screen is rippling like the moist muscle of the masculine kind. I've seen this program many, many times before. Reruns in the dead of winter? It's never too late for life to repeat itself. Each day (and night) is a carbon copy of the last. Déjà vu. Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir? No? Why not? This blue-steel winter month, with its bite, is ripe for it.

It's very quiet. All the glittering platinum movie screens that show asylums as screeching nests of mania is an incorrect depiction. Most of us are pretty well "tranked up" as I've learned to refer to us as.

But in this dark hour of mostly silent repose (with the exception of the occasional snorer), I've come to examine that the sex instinct and the death instinct - at least in me - are very closely related. Especially in December I was on the edge in both of these arenas. My sexual appetite grew stronger, as did my yearning to perish. They are linked. The year was almost finished, why not me? I was standing on a precipice, unknowing if I'd fall into the arms of a Casanova or the Grim Reaper.

The sex instinct grew because it was my body's yearning to procreate. It was a natural reaction for my libido to increase because that was my physical being's way of saying that, yes, my life might end soon, and so it's important to become a Matryoshka doll, to unfold a naked, pink little offspring from within me - this would reproduce the life that I was planning on canceling.

Both urges - the urge to die and the urge to make love - are interwoven like Egyptian tapestry because they are both reaching for a great big climactic ending, one that, en route, makes you pant for the ultimate finale, makes you breathless, entices the erratic pitter-pat of the heart racing towards the relief, whether in lust or panic, and then, sleep. You must earn your right to sleep, to rest, to lie down horizontally, if not permanently, then temporarily, the body parallel and open to the sky. Your eyes roll back into your skull, seeing stars, lost in its own euphoric delirium.

Inside all of us is a desire to destroy. I wanted to destroy myself. A masochistic destruction. I wanted either my heart or brain to explode in a profusion of angry scarlet, vessels popped, gray matter professing in its jump toward its death, the little abnormalities no longer knotted in fear but straightened from its shape of a ball and flattened like a line in its destination for the infinite universe, crawling, like an anxious worm to the incognito-ness of a black and cosmic fortress to observe from and claim nonexistence: "I am a refugee, a pilgrim. I am no longer of the planet Earth and am therefore not responsible for the life I just let spill like spoiled milk."

There is beauty in destruction, the yawning, belching flame of the bonfire. The orange and uneven shapes of these mirage-like cauldrons, inviting risk and touch. It invites death. It invites arousal as the center of the suicidal female opens, beckoning for her to die through the route of love, and to love the path you're taking toward permanent repose.

And the television that I am now watching does not ripple anymore: It is clear and lucid, as transparent as a raindrop. The program has changed. I cannot tell what the movie is that they're showing, but it is in black and white. An old war movie where the afflicted - or said to be afflicted - are at the mercy of anonymous men with guns.

Sunday, January 15: Ward

Dear Book,

The kings and princesses who stroll along the white-light hallways, who walk with authority and knowingness, claim that I, in regard to my mental disease, have anosognosia, which is the complete blindness to the fact that I am ill. But they say it wavers: they say I have "alternating states of anosognosia": sometimes I am very aware of the gravity of my condition, and other times I am out in space, suspended, ignorant to the fact of my own self-danger: I may die through the barrel of a gun. I may die through the tainted blood of love. Either way, they say, I am done for by my own recklessness.

The arrogance that they think they know me better than I do never ceases to amaze me. They only see what they want to see. There is bias in their viewpoint, as if they were wearing odd glasses: My nose is big and growing like Pinnochio's if something I say doesn't align with their academia. Or my eyes cast downward, with too much passivity, and getting lost in those dark, undereye circles. Or I am sticking my tongue out in defiance, resisting, insisting that I know more about my body, soul, and heart than they do. To them, it is me who lives in the cloak of ignorance, not the other way around.

In this day and age, most medical staff do not choose to wear only white. But this elite do. They pose as virgin angels, fat little cherubs becoming heavy on marble chocolate. The gentle and pressed white cotton are reminders, grinning reminders, that they are, with a guiding hand, in charge and to act on their command, otherwise, si, I found out that they can shock your brain here, only in a very legal way. Those little sparklers that burst. The message is: Defiance equals retaliation.

The main shrink - The Big Cheese on this here Skid Row of the Crazies - walks with unnecessary self-assuredness. His full name is, coincidentally, Ward Crown. Dr. Crown. He is supposedly God on Ward 53-00. He does not look like God. He has balding on the top of his head with which some mad egotist undoubtedly borrowed to check his reflection. He is often snacking on animal crackers, no doubt an appropriate edible during an 8-12 shift in this zoo.

Time stands still. The decisions of your life are no longer in your hands; they crumble through your spread fingers like sand or water. And you are always, always waiting for something. A test result. An appointment. An examination. The rare visitor. The exit.

There are no clocks or calendars here. It's a time capsule that will never be investigated. I have no concept of time, except within these pages: I know what day it is, but the year is negotiable: This everyday travesty could've happened anytime within history, past, present, or future. Something tells me I will not be rescued because I am hidden away, my kidnapping unknown, my disappearance within the natural order of the cosmos.

Time is controlled by Dr. Crown. He is The Decider, The Fate, and The Time. He decides if you get applesauce or pudding with your lunch. He decides whether you should be on Lithium or Valium. He decides if you are to be hooked up to electrodes, destroying, without consent, the snapping, electrical connections of your synapses. And He also decides where you live: Are you well enough to attempt autonomy again? Or are you destined to be under the pad of their thumb, ad infinitum? If you're lucky enough, he will stamp determinedly in your chart "DISCHARGED" in big red letters, sign his name, finish the remaining hour of his shift, proudly stretch out his shoulders when erect (another case, solved), and meet his mistress for an alleyway rendezvous. And He is the man making decisions on my life. They tell me He is a healer, but that lab coat of His grins satanically like the Glasgow smile.

There is news around here, crawling like vines: They may want to hold me involuntarily, for how long, I do not know. I am a spectator, a passenger in my own life, witnessed by downward glances by both these plastic healers and lost-eyed patients alike. The staff around here collects bodies like undertakers, and tomorrow - tomorrow! - is the day I will find out whether I stay or whether I go. I shall go into court and meet the judge who will decide my remaining days.

Wednesday, January 18: Judgment Day

Dear Book,

So Monday was Judgment Day, as I call it. It was surreal, almost like a dream. I was shrouded in white, as were the nurses who accompanied me, each one holding an angle of my elbow. I was to see Judge Dios. But, ironically enough, I remember him least of all compared to the rest of the day.

That morning I was escorted by the duet of nurses. I was scooted down the hallway with protesting feet and arms akimbo; I did not detest where we were going. I detested that I was wrapped, like a mummy, in one grande bandage of white, unable to flail if need be.

Everything was white or else dressed in the false and bright light of the glaring sun, staring at me, boldly, flat-faced, deadpan, and expressionless through the glass. I'm sure, in a comic book extravaganza, us three women would've looked like a struggling, wriggling trio, posed as black silhouettes against a pale light with air bubbles popping from our mouths, speaking in words schoolchildren should not hear (or read). That white glow spilling in between and outside of our bodies shrunk my pupils, nearly blinding me.

As I was led down the hallway, I saw Dr. Crown, Him, in his open-doored office. He looked up at me from his paperwork, sitting on his plush backside at his desk. His office shrunk from view as I went along, and, as it did, I heard the giant stamp! of the awesome rubber instrument that deemed a patient released from their manmade snare. "DISCHARGED" it read for one of the fortunate elites, in big, demanding red letters.

I was bound for the courtroom. The proposed suggestion to keep me here was to be reviewed and either accepted or rejected. I was hoping for the latter so that I could kiss, again, my autonomy.

It was so ethereal, this death march to a wooden, glimmering, just-dusted courtroom where Judge Dios, who I had never met before, was awaiting to sentence me to either continued confinement or complete liberation.

En route to the judge, the walls surrounding were doused in antiseptic white. The place was sterile or seemingly so. Glittering in were the spilling rays of the morning sun. Everything slowed down. My physical actions - as well as the nurses - seemed to move liquidly, like mercury in an ebb of struggle and an even stronger, flowing tide of restraint. I was lost. I was lost to someone else's decision-making. The lightbulbs overhead, which appeared every several steps, highlighted my dark hair with a virginal halo upon my head.

But I looked at each of the nurses on either side of me. It was as if their faces were powdered in the cocaine dust of winter. They had snowy faces and even more Icelandic grins that curled beneath their pointed noses. They were false angels, plastic, who wore white garb, and tipped caps. I looked at the woman on my right - who was particularly forceful in her aggression - the blooming white roses in this nurse's eyes spun deviously like wheels. I looked to my left and saw a replica of the same image. I did not trust their intentions; the blue irises of their eyes were fragmented by the sprinkled pieces of sunshine. This reminded me of a pretty revolver, gleaming, inviting, its chamber going in circles with its belly full of ammo. Sooner or later, these spokes fly off like that of an overused and wooden wheel, splintered into the anonymity of space, those six bullets attempting to become astronauts.

The End.