10. Together Again
An essay on reconnecting with Maura after her extended hospital stay and a podcast with my story about The Dogist for paid subscribers
I have found better footing this week. Then again, I also didn’t sort anywhere near as many tupperwares of old clothes and memory boxes so I am sure that played a part in my nervous system settling down.
This week, I got to write about the joy of reconnecting with my best friend Maura and both of us leaving the psych ward behind, at least for the time being.
I also have my first solo podcast episode for paid subscribers. In it, I share my story about what happened at the end of my time at The Dogist. It’s my lived experience of the events and I am not sharing it in anger or for the sake of more publicity. I am sharing it for me. I deserve closure. I deserve a world where that story lives beyond the bounds of my tireless ruminations and coffee-stained journals. And more than anything, I deserve the beauty of existence that is fostered when we honor our community by showing up in our whole truth.
The episode is intentionally paywalled. This is not a story for public consumption and if you choose to listen, I ask that you not share it and keep your opinions of what happened to yourself. This podcast is about leaving The Dogist behind, at least for me. It is about finally turning the page or maybe even beginning an entirely new book.
No matter what, whether you choose to listen or not, I hope you know that you also deserve the peace of existence that comes from being one’s whole self. And today, as we head into summer, I wish you that kind of peace and all it has the power to be and become in the days ahead.
With snugs from the girls and a dork dance.
Kindly,
Kate
10. Together Again
I practically screamed into the phone that night telling Maura about Bob Drake’s lecture. I couldn’t contain my excitement and as she heard me chatter on about the woman who used to cut herself but now works in a research lab and the man who talks to his hallucinations that is now successfully employed on a loud job site, she met my glee by celebrating every win of these humans as her own. In truth, they were her wins. They were our wins. Every human who lived with serious mental illness was part of our tribe, and anyone that had re-entered society felt like a true victory to us. Their lives were living proof that we could be both seen and celebrated for who we truly were. And because of that, their success was our success and their joy was our joy.
After I finally slowed down to catch my breath amidst my ecstatic story-sharing, Maura jumped in with her own good news – the news that she was getting out of the ward the very next day. My undeniable lack of volume control returned as I celebrated in whoops and shrieks. After our hollering died down, we found ourselves in fits of giggles – both so relieved and joyful, it was all the self-expression had left.
I barely slept that night but it didn’t matter. The excitement of seeing Maura and of beginning our chapter of freedom together offered more than enough energy to get me to the hospital to pick her up the next day. Pulling my Tacoma into the same lot I had done just a few weeks earlier, I was met with a wave of flashbacks – nights I’d arrived there covered in my excrement, afternoons where my parents had escorted me into the emergency department. That hospital contained a wealth of memories that held nothing but shame. In mere moments, the recollection of their existence began to shrink me – to swallow the joy and enthusiasm that had been pulsing within me mere moments earlier. I wanted to run – just as I had done before Bob Drake’s lecture. I wanted to disappear but I realized the only thing I wanted more than that, was to do so with Maura. So I opened the door of the truck and walked into the hospital.
Our greeting passed in a frenetic blur of hugs, hollers, and the nurses trying, to no avail, to referee our absolute freakout. It felt like coming home to Sophie, my beloved dog, after a long time away and there was nothing better than that feeling, for it was the feeling of unconditional love. The nurses kept berating us to practice volume control and contain our zest but no amount of scolding could make us tone it down. We were back together and as we danced our way through the most colorful discharge the ward had likely ever seen, I lived, in every fiber of my being, for the first time in that hollow, whitewashed space, the truth that hope was possible in that place because together, we created it.
Finally wisening up to the fact that playing by the nurse’s and hospital’s rules might actually expedite our exit, I convinced Maura to quiet herself long enough to talk my way through the paperwork, discharge plan, and the schedule Maura had laid out for the next few days. I knew how to play the ward’s game practically better than they did and I answered each question as if I was my mom or dad when they picked me up — acknowledging risks, emphasizing the importance of structure, and repeating over and over again how critical it was that structure and sleep hygiene were practiced each and every day to mitigate a relapse. After Maura signed the final page of her discharge paperwork, it was time. Arm and arm with wide gleaming smiles on both our faces, we walked out finally back together once again as the locked door closed behind us.
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