Snow was falling when I arrived, on an ambulance stretcher, to the psychiatric hospital.

A large tree loomed above my bewildered mind & inflamed body. I would experience emotional

breakthroughs during my forty-eight hours stay. Upon entering, I saw bodies, wrapped in

blankets and coats, spread across the wide floor. At this moment, the EMT told me that the

building doubled as a shelter for the homeless of Detroit.

 

My intake therapy session centered on the surfacing of my unique imperfections. For

once, I was made the living subject matter.

 

My ex-fiancé dropped me off at the emergency room a few miles from the home she’d

soon evict me from; in my car, which was soon to be repossessed. During my forty-eight hours

stay, I experienced uncharted depths of insight and self-realization.

 

A few months before, my ex wrote a letter saying that she was “holding me back” from

being a “great man.” I experienced degrees of homelessness from the ages of seven and sixteen. I

was a victim of chronic neglect and psychological discord.

 

The therapy session was conducted by two women of color, who asked probing and

unexpected questions. They began with queries pertaining to my inadequacies as a potential

husband.

 

***

 

The tree, washed in fluorescent light, continues to occupy swaths of my mind. Other parts

of my memory are occupied by the screams and crashes I heard bellowing from the first floor in

the early morning hours.

 

 Unexpected changes occurred in me during my time in this psyche ward. It had been

fourteen years since I’d been admitted to in-patient psychiatric care.

 

Upon being discharged my ex considered these changes disturbing, but I’d not felt such

focused serenity in my life. She was convinced that I was in the throes of a mental breakdown

and when I asserted that I was not, she’d shut down completely. Seeing her immovability, I

relented and underwent two psychological evaluations, conducted by separate doctors, at a

different hospital. Both residents questioned me at length and agreed that I was of sound mind,

refusing to admit me to another psychiatric hospital.

 

I came to understand that my ex still harbors unresolved animosity towards me for

absurd reasons and that she was the one in need of a psychological care because of our split. She

has the habit of projecting her insecurities and fears onto me, which lead to the dissolvement of

our engagement

 

***

 

The bare tree stands at the center of my mind. An EMT member said it looked

“beautiful” in the summer time. Now, it was only a stoic monolith against the winter sky. I’ve

yet to live in a place I can call my own. Wisdom is an ideal that is worth pursuing at any

cost and I wrestle with these parameters, day and night.

 

Early one morning, in the psyche ward, I woke up and sat in the day area to read the

Book of Job. There was a great cacophony in the first-floor shelter area. I’d liken the sounds to a

medieval torture chamber.

 

Before my realizations, my mind felt like an immense wheel within a wheel, submerged

in a great body of water. There began a slow movement in the inner and outer wheels and they

began to lift themselves out of the water. I learned to pursue understanding and confront myself

during each of my life’s transitions.

 

***

 

So much confusion and pain had gone unacknowledged within the sky of my mind.

However, at this time, I felt understood for the first time in years. When the subject of my ailing

mother, who I recently reconnected with, came up, I nearly burst into sobs. Tears welled in my

eyes and I didn’t try to fight them. My therapist told me that crying is only a sign that I’m a

human being.