Member-only story
Tidings: Christmas on a Psych Unit
Sometimes you stumble upon grace in the oddest places
There are times when our lives are simultaneously blessed and cursed. But we can’t see one for the other. And that’s too bad. Because it is in their synchrony that we learn more about who we are and how we are meant to live our lives.
A journey
I spent several months on an inpatient psychiatric unit ten years ago. Stalked by relentless, dangerous depression and agitation, I left my husband and daughter and traveled 500 miles in search of a cure.
I had been accepted into a research protocol focused on a new form of electroconvulsive therapy, a procedure that had helped me before. It was early November, with flakes dusting the frozen ground. It was a sight that always brought me pleasure, but now landed on the long list of things depression had stolen from me.
My new home
If you’ve been on one psych unit, you’ve been on most. I’m convinced that there is a special psychiatric catalogue that provides supplies exclusively for the mentally ill.
There is a specific green that is universal. I call it “puke green.” The furniture is colored with primary tones, modular, and constructed against patients harming themselves. Plastic or burlap covers…
