Member-only story
Three Hundred and Sixty-Five
Exactly one year ago today, I was discharged from McLean Psychiatric Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts. After one hundred and ten of the most wretched days imaginable, I was free. More surprisingly, I was alive.
I know I am supposed — perhaps even obligated — to write here about an amazing comeback, a perfect recovery, and a godly gratefulness for life and its joys.
It hasn’t felt like that, though, and it still doesn’t feel like that today. Can it ever really feel that way for anyone other than the most hard-headed and foolhardy?
For while walking the long road home, I have never found a signpost for the birdsong on the wind, the whisper of the trees, or the playful eddies of the streams. I have never found a camp for the fully healed and I have never found a camp for the not-so-healed either. What I have found is a heavy backpack, wobbly legs, and a rolling dark fog that I must outrun. Instead, I have slowly eked out an existence over the past year that becomes slightly more resilient and durable with every day that passes. It is that of which I am most proud — building something so strong out of something so fragile, and the considerable courage it has taken me to get there.
Considering where I have been, what I have lost, and the price I have paid, the last three-hundred-and-sixty-five days have been an endless…
