Lenny needs a good home.

I pulled a lady Godiva on my ‘hood.

The cops were pretty quick to arrive and beat very loudly on the door. Already a scared animal, I screamed obscenities at the door and told them to go away. I called them ‘Pigs’. Thank Goddess Christian intervened and arranged for me to speak with them on the front lawn. I decided to make a terrible impression, so I announced that I wanted to speak to Rocky Andersen. They thought it would be news to me that he is no longer Mayor. Civics geek that I am, I am fond of the current SLC Mayor as well, but you see, I had just ‘friended’ Ross ‘Rocky’ Andersen on Facebook. And in my psychotic mind; that meant something.

I mentioned several things throughout my ordeal that would clearly indicate to anyone observing that I was psychotic. And, indeed, I was; as indicated on my chart. I used evil eyes on too many unwitting observers/ hospital personnel. It really wasn’t fair. But as they shot me up with tranquilizers, I thought they might be putting me to sleep (you know; out of my ‘misery’). So if that helps people understand mental illness, I’m glad I could help.

Because I didn’t know who to trust just then. I picture a world in pain. Looking for dignity. I see a dearth of trust.

I trust no one had a camera on me that day. Then again; I was asking for it.

My mother gave me some respectable clothes from her own wardrobe. I left her hospice looking noticeably slimmer in her smaller repertoire. The clothes, in particular the lycra-grip vacuum-sealed shirt, supported my body. My sensibly stylish dark khaki flat-front abdomen warmly defied the dull, sinuous menstrual pulsars inside, striding valiantly to lunch. And onward to understanding what makes me slouch.

I realized the other day I slouch to reduce social tension. I get threatened stances from people seemingly opposed to my self esteem when I stand up straight. I wasn’t aware of that just yet. No, I just knew I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t the only psycho-sloucher. But it was true that this whole mental illness business was doing wonders for my figure.

I know what caused it all. I do. I have a picture of what causes my anxiety. It looks a lot like a poorly-designed cityscape. It feels like the heat of too much concrete. It smells like exhaust and oil. It sounds like combustion.

So it was nice to find a place preparing fresher food for lunch. Thanks to my parents, I could now temporarily afford it.

I was looking for my Dad, but all I saw was a suited man waddling in gorilla-gait opposite my trajectory. The new facility had, after an emergency intervention to relieve me of my psychoses, provided me with sensory gestalt to add new (now systematically demonstrable) hyperlinked abstractions to my paranoid mental collage;  this particular hospital was utterly devoid of the number of sick individuals I had imagined. It was new and bright, and in multi-media-like mental compositions, (what I can only call) my consciousness became aware of a human landscape so terrible, I couldn’t talk about it. Not yet.

I had checked out, and hunched in shame for fetching my father after putting him through what I did overnight, not canceling out the shame already felt for my offensive sensory presence (read: B.O.; a common side-effect of psychosis). So when I found him, and humbly gestured that we were leaving, and walked ahead of him, I delicately balanced my shame posture with my adrenaline-fueled dignity-preservation-effort already in progress. I must have wobbled. I was a cat out of a bag.

I told what I now know are tall tales. My reality wasn’t synching up with that of most anyone I encountered that night. Except, oddly, for that crisis counselor. I think he was a Buddhist, and looking back I’m not sure if it was a form of goading I mistook for empathy, or something in-between. But his assessment was Generalized Anxiety Disorder, with possible bipolar. We never could figure out his hesitancy to accept a bipolar diagnosis. My attempt to follow up on my psychiatric needs has been confusing and unnecessarily drawn-out and damaging, mentally and interpersonally.

It started with my interest in the idea of anxiety. It’s presence in the wild assumes shorter encounters with it; in times of dangers requiring us to fight or flee. Knowing these punctuated reactions occur naturally, our quick-paced culture would only serve to lengthen our exposure to the effects of the fight or flight reaction. My first psych cried Major Depression! But he has since lost his license.

The bright white passageway back to the lobby and out to a very strange outside world took us past a room garnished with baby balloons, and containing the man from the beginning of my intra-hospital paternal search lap. Proud, broad, bowed.

I remained in the vehicle. And that’s saying a lot for Post-Unification-Bavaria. Most of the women I was with that day used their bicycles to traverse the suburb of Munich known as Germering. I was brand-new on the scene, and still entitled to a few bouts of social anxiety. The lunching ladies here were gathering a quiet social ecstasy, culminating in what I came to know as the traditional Bavarian coffee break, and I was still unaware how rare a thing this automobile travel was for my new German friends.

Don’t be fooled: I didn’t really know Bavaria at all; as Munich is more of an island INSIDE Bavaria. Knowing Bavaria was like knowing Texas; it’s cities the trees of the greater forest.

The women returned to the car and we continued to the home of another of their freinds, where coffee would be had. These were two of my Host Mothers; Marianne and Sieglinde. I lived with 4 separate Host Families during my exchange year. I was apparently on traveling-display. I can tell you now this was dead-serious stuff; considering, again, the rarity of automobile travel through these neighborhoods. It was clearly important that people knew there would be a (mostly) harmless American girl living among them for a while.

Having thoroughly informed Germering, we finally enjoyed our coffee and blackberry torte Accompaniment, unter Weißblauem Himmel. I was in love with a place again.

I had come to know the Pre-9-11 corridors of airports, on account of the welcoming/bon-voyaging of several friendly exchange students over the years, and because it is was also customary to see Missionary well-wishers at the Pre-9-11 gate, this time, I was seeing my sister off. She was heading to Ecuador to give some people some hope. All I could think about was my coursework. I was now persuing graphic design; after being shot down by German and Women’s Studies. But school now involved things which genuinely intimidated me; things like french curves and gouache.

My hands were always rattling. I was now diving headlong into anxiety; fueled by a career and lifestyle™ that would accept nothing less than perfection. You can see how this might pose a problem for people wielding Design tools of deadly accuracy. I’m still not sure how I made it. Neither is Christian.

As my rattled hands punctuated my farewell to my sister, I remember having the distinct feeling that I had already boarded some metaphorical airplane to nowhere. I knew what I WANTED to do with my degree, but I knew only in my bones what the crushing reality of my decision would be. Seeing Jodie go was tough just then, and escaping the airport’s long, Pre-9-11 terminal prolonged the agoraphobic sadness I seemed to now swim in daily.

Post-9-11 has been hard on me for bigger reasons that I haven’t ever been able to explain; involving air travel, too, mostly. I came to avoid it by not being able to afford it. Luckily, medicated; I can fly, if necessary.

Some crazy fucker
carved a sculpture
out of butter
and propped it up
in the middle of
the Bonanza! Breakfast Bar™.
And I’m stuffing
toast and sausage
into my pockets
under a sign that says
“GRAND OPENING”
while my dog is waiting in the car.

I wake up
I check out
I fill the tank
and wash the windshield clean
and then I’m back out
on the highway
and
BANG ThatsWhenIRemembermy .dreeeammm

We were standing in the garden
and I had a machine that made silence.
It just SUCKED UP the whole opiiinionated din.

And there were no people on the payroll.
And there were NO monkeys on our backs and
and I said, “Baby, show me what you look like
without skin.”

Science
chases money™
and money chases its tail

and the best minds of my generation
CAN’T MAKE BAIL.

The bacteria
are coming
to take us down, that’s my prediction

It’s the answer
to this culture
of the
quick
fix
prescriptionnn.

But in the garden of simple
where ALL of us are nameless
you were never anything but beautiful to me.

And, you know, they never really owned you.
You just carried them around you,
and then one day you but them down and found your hands were FREE.

So now it’s early
in the morning
at the longitude of Memphis
and the sun is setting sweetly on Hong Kong.

The big plan:
is just to keep spinning!
cuz the Big Bang is only
just beginning
and sometimes it’s all that we can do just to hang on…

…and what I mean to say is: “Muah!”
which means that I’m thinking of you.
Which means I’ve been thinking
of you
all
along.

—Ani Difranco