Dear Rose...

The trip here was so quiet. I hardly envisioned that I'd soon be sitting in this gloomy grey room, bars on the windows, hearing loud voices and strange happenings in the halls. 

My mother used to always drag me, kicking and screaming, to her psychiatric appointments. I was eight. She'd abandon me in the waiting room by a wooden seat and a table clustered with issues of The Rolling Stone. I was constantly alone in that desolate room with the two beady eyes of the secretary staring down at me. 

One day I snuck in with her to one of the appointments. She used to always wait until the nurses left the room before she relieved herself with cigarettes that she’d hidden in the pocket of her shirt.

I can't remember how long she has been here at Oregon State Hospital, enough to make even my mind wander from sanity. Funny nobody here refers to this shit hole as a hospital anymore than an asylum.

The patients were allowed out to the lakeside occasionally, but only when supervised. Honestly, compared to the grey, drab walls of the bedlam, the water shined with a tempting glare.

The postcard I’m about to write to my sister is hardly healing, more a hard, stone cold truth. Ironically, it makes me think of the phrase, “it was a dark and stormy night.” Perhaps Rose, will be able to read between the lines and see that, although our mom pretends to be getting better, her thoughts and life are as cloudy as the picture on the postcard.

She will continue to play the game.

She will continue pretend to take her medication. 

She will continue to smile at only the right times.

She will continue to be the perfect patient until the shimmering lake takes her in.

But, until then; I write: Dear Rose…