The Assessment

First there was the questionnaire. Double-sided page after page of details, admissions, memories, self-ratings on cheap paper. If I wasn’t despondent before the survey, I certainly was afterward. Recording all the terrible things that happened in my life; like my broken family.

Were you ever abused as a child? Bullied? Did you have trouble in school? On a scale of one to five, do you feel you can trust other people? Are you trustworthy? And the one that gave the longest pause: how would you describe your character?

I was crushed by the weight of relating all the historical miseries, all the yeses I had to tick. Things I worked at to forget, leave behind, escape. And my memory was very helpful in avoidance and denial.

Then there was the wait, before having to discuss the things I just wrote down, with a doctor trained to seek insight into unhappiness, real or imagined.

The wait was bad. Time to reflect, locked in the prison of my own existence. The discussion was worse, having to go beyond the admissions on paper, with the doctor looking for deeper truths, reasons to hospitalize me.

Initially, I wanted to be hospitalized, to fix whatever is wrong with me. Then, after hearing of the possibilities of restricted movement, even isolation in a room alone, I changed my mind. It made perfect sense to me, but frustrated everyone there to “help” me.

I avoided the psychiatric ward, but may end up in the addiction program. Can’t fix the first thing without fixing the other. There would be no end, no improvement. A dog chasing its own tail.