Occasional Confession III

I'm partially hospitalized these past few days, during the days - an outpatient thing for some of us with more acute episodes of mental illness not requiring full lock-down, straps-on, suicide-watch fun. More a series of group therapy sessions that actually seem to be doing me some good. It's good not to be hiding in the apartment for 8-10 days at a time, harvesting more and more obscure porn for less and less pleasurable and understandable reasons.

So these groups are mixed in a few ways. It's not all unipolar depressives. Some borderline personality disorder types, one mildly psychotic guy, a few classic bipolar type I folks. The group is for you could call high-functioning mental defectives (he said in jest): in my particular cohort of about 11, there's a med student from a top 10 med school who had a nervous breakdown, an executive from a tech company, a person who won a prestigious writing fellowship, a teacher at a well-known prep school, an accomplished attorney with a government agency, etc. Me, I was a Ph.D. student in a very prestigious program at an even more prestigious university at one point, but never finished my Ph.D., about which I feel a considerable amount of shame and unresolved...guilt? Anger? I don't know.

Anyway, it's also variable in age - my cohort ranges in age from 21 to about 54, and we're coed. So naturally I've developed a crush on someone, right? I mean, of course. I just became single - I'd have to immediately attempt some pointless, hopeless object choice, something guaranteed to leave me feeling worse than before.

But this takes the cake. Really.

Very cute, very sexy, busty late-20s woman with some depression. Always with the tight jeans and tight tops.

Oh. And paranoiac delusions. Thinks people can read her mind, unless she's drunk, and feels that most people she runs into are out to get her. So far, she hasn't been able to tell what's been on my mind, fortunately.

But here's the even more pathetic part: I truly care about her and how she does, to the extent that it's possible to care about the well-being of a near-stranger (sound familiar? vide infra re Angela Devi). She had to be hospitalized today after a bad bout of paranoia during group yesterday and I was really concerned. More concerned than I "should" have been? Probably, yeah. I was concerned last week when our young psychotic guy "went inpatient" (as they put it), but then, I don't occasionally have fantasies about tonguing him while we're having morning check-in.

But of course I recognize the madness (le mot juste!) in this. Nobody is in any position for a relationship. Christ, nobody is in any position for a meaningless fling. She's sick. I'm sick. We need to heal. She needs a friend, she needs medication, same as me. But the thoughts are there (this is the confession part).

So the concern: it's real, but it's not 'pure'. But how much concern is ever 'pure' like that? Maybe for pets, I suppose. Do I see us together? Um, I'm not the psychotic one. Mostly it's just fun to look at this attractive woman and think dirty thoughts, and then fantasize about maybe (and this is the dangerous part) being a guy (the guy?) she could trust, the one she'd realize wasn't reading her mind...

Right. Perhaps my reality attachment needs a bit of work while I'm at the Happy House.