Madness and Women
Stories
Poetry
the ocean's edge
one therapist required everyone in her group to write a positive phrase and always keep it with them.
it might help them avoid a panic attack or worse.
______
his first roommate at this place died in his sleep from an overdose.
he calculated he slept in the same room with a dead body for five hours and thirty-seven minutes.
the therapist met with him and asked if he was alright.
he said yes and left her office.
outside he remembered something and went back to see her.
he saw her sitting at her desk through the glass window pane of her office door.
she stared at a folder with his roommate’s name on it.
he knocked and entered and showed her the piece of paper with the phrase he had written.
she read it to herself.
his sentence was “i won’t sail off the edge of my ocean.”
_____
that’s when the executive psychiatric director of the sanitarium and the director of the dual diagnosis therapists entered with two nurses.
the directors came around her desk and helped her stand up.
one assured her they "found a place that will take her."
as she passed by him she clutched his arm and asked “what’s the point if you’re all going to kill yourselves?”
in the corridor she screamed “why don’t you all just kill yourselves and get it over with.”
he stood in her office by himself and figured she must have sailed off her edge.