When I was in the hospital for the first time at 17, I couldn't believe how horrible it was. I didn't think it would be the way that it was; I didn't think I'd have no say about what happened to me. I thought it would help, and it didn't; it made everything worse. Within a week, I was overwhelmed with dread about what the rest of my life would be like; that dread turned out to be entirely justified. I have spent every day of my life, since the second those doors clanged shut behind me, vulnerable to anyone who wants to do anything to me and say that it never happened, pushed around by anyone and everyone, told that reality is something other than what I know it is, lied to, lied about, demonized, ridiculed, hated, feared, condescended to, the list of the mistreatments of people who have psychiatric histories is endless.
For some reason, my physical health couldn't be sturdier. I have never broken a bone. The only surgery I have ever had to have was a tonsillectomy. I've been in a few car accidents and walked away from all of them without a scratch, including a car accident in the middle of an intersection and a car accident on an icy road at night that sent the car over the side of the road so that its wheels were against the embankment and I was dangling by my seatbelt.
I don't know why happy people who feel that they have everything to live for are stricken by illness, accident, murder. I would trade them my cursed knack for physical survival if I could.
Every horrible thing that happens to me is worse than the horrible thing that happened before it. I have spent most of my adult life living in continual, unbelieving horror. If I don't always look as if that's how I feel, it's because I know how to subsist in that type of horror.
Having had many years during which to observe life's vicissitudes, I have grown frequently impatient with the pace at which life metes kindnesses versus the pace at which it inflicts unnecessary pain. Why can't DACA be replaced by citizenship? When was the last time that 800,000 people were given authentic happiness overnight?
Why can't the government give them that happiness? Does Congress have to spend the next 6 months arguing about it, pinning down every last difficulty, determining who can have what and for how many months and if this not that and what if this, ad nauseum? Why can't freedom be free sometimes?
Copyright L. Kochman
