In My Shoes

There is an Arabic proverb that goes a little like this: only the sick people see the health halo on the heads of those that are not.

Hesaw the world from the patient’s eye of view. It was a jungle. It was a world consumed by psychogenic seizures where sense made no sense and no sense mattered next to nothing.

He didn’t belong in the psychiatric facility, he thought. He wasn’t a patient, he was just cloaked as one. The outfit was an illusion for a crowd that was far beyond the gates.The doctors, he thought, were concocting another futile potion designed to play dirty tricks on his mind.

For days he lost track of time. Satisfaction seemed like a far-fetched memory, long time forgotten. He could not summon it. But, he was fine with being content. Contentment, he thought, is a swift veil, translucent and tenuous, impossible to wear all the time.

He lied restless in the pit that defied reason and tried with every ounce of energy left at his disposal to dig his way out of it.