I walked into the hospital room, expecting anything but not really sure.

My friend intro’d: “Natalie is here because she’s been in a similar situation before.” 

I looked at her son. He sat in the hospital bed with the blanket over him. That struck me first. He was here because he is mentally sick, but his body is wrapped in blankets like he has the flu. The blankets were a pale, mucusy yellow. I always find hospital color choices particularly awkward. 

He offered candy, he said he couldn’t give us cookies because he’d given it to the hospital staff already. 

I sat in the visitor chair, tried to come off as “cool, relatable, not too intense, healthy.” You know, like ya do. 

I wore a green, flowy top and black leggings, skechers. We brought a black coffee with honey and cinnamon, but his mom carried it in so by the looks of it, I came empty-handed. 

This person looked pale. He had a tray of food recently delivered. It sat on the tray that extends over the bed. 

He played a song on his ukulele. One of the first things I ever hear out of this kid’s mouth is a song.

It sounds like his soul is clawing through gravel to get the notes out, but in the most beautiful sort of suffering. This kid could fuck with the greats of vocal consternation, the singers who can carry their strife through a melody and bring you with them to salvation. 

I googled it later, it was the theme song from “Bloodline.” 

The young man goes out looking for the diamond in the sea
the old man rows his boat to shore and falls with twisted knees
And you’ll drown before the water lets you in
Yeah, you drown before the water lets you in
The feeling that I feel the most is the one that follows me
all across the starry coast from sea to diamond sea
Says you’ll drown before the water lets you in
Yeah, you drown before the water lets you in
I think the thing I wanted most was just never meant to be
a thousand waves, a thousand ghosts their sorrows follow me
And you’ll drown before the water lets you in
Yeah, you drown before the water lets you in

The lyrics were perfectly apt. He was found on the beach after disappearing without his phone or word of his location. His family suffered, the whole town knew as he was listed as a missing person. I don’t know if he was drunk, having delusions, on other drugs or just gone, out. 

I saw the tears in his mother’s eyes instantly when he sang the first note, birthed from his lips like a painful wailing of a saw. Have you listened to a saw being played? It sounds funky, sweet and sad. It’s a passive instrument. I think it’s because it’s meant as an instrument to break down lumber not to serenade. 

His parents walked out to chat about something, I stayed.

Eventually we’re alone. He asks for his mom to leave the door open but she shuts it on accident. 

I get up to open it, but he says “it may be locked from the inside” and instantly I remember where I am: reality check. Of course they would lock it from the inside. But it wasn’t locked.

I open it. I sit back down. 

So, here we are. Silence. 

He seems pretty calm, steady, occupied. We don’t actually know each other: I know his family, he’s heard about me, but we’ve hardly ever talked.I know depression, he knows depression. We know music. We know desperation. And that’s where the two of us meet. 

He tries to strum through other songs on the ukulele. Holding music for strangers, until we can find common ground and meet one another in conversation. He hastily handed me one of his music books. “I can play most of the songs in this book” 

I flip through and make casual conversation but none of the songs stand out. 

My feeling is he needs to play what he wants. 

Also, it feels too sensitive to pick a song in this setting.

Let’s see: “Ain’t No Sunshine” that’s depressing. “Somewhere over the Rainbow” reassuring but also implies that things won’t be better on this side of eternity, “I Get a Kick Out of You” when he just went through a break-up. Simon & Garfunkel is out, Bob Dylan, is there 80s Pop? 

Each song was like a distraction when I flipped through, each a jolt pulling me in directions other than what was happening in the room. “A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Medicine Go Down”? I give the book back and say I can’t pick one, sorry. 

And then I think he strums on a few cords. What is there to talk about or say? 

I’ve got an encyclopedia of experience, possible terms I could pull from the lexicon of depression to share with him. But when you visit someone in a hospital, under a pee-colored blanket, maybe they don’t need your encyclopedia. 

Most people want to be listened to, right? That’s why the podcast Beautiful/Anonymous is so popular, at least one of the reasons. 

But most people want to be listened to by someone they know.

When you’re a foreigner, they don’t know who their trading facts with. They don’t know how you value their words, in what currency you accept the spoils of their internal war and what you will do with them. It changes the face of the interaction. 

His mom comes back in.

Somehow I began to tell a story about a friend of a friend meeting Jack Nicholson and he said “Wait can you hold that thought? I want to record this” and he pulled out a small, outdated recorder he found at the thrift store. 

“Yeah, I found this at Rendezvous [our town thrift store] and heard some interview between one of the psychiatrists in town and his patient. I can’t make out who the patient was, it was a woman, but I recognized Dr. Brown [I don’t remember his actual name].” 

I said “Whatttt, HIPAA violation!” and he said “Yeah I could have shut this whole town down” and we guffawed in amazement at that random find. 

Anyway, I decide to explain why I’m there. I tell him about my time in depression recovery. I tell him about my mid-20s crisis.

But before that, I tell him: I don’t want to trigger his anxieties by talking about myself. When I was sick, so many people would tell me about their depression. It’s the last thing a depressed person needs to hear. Somehow your own struggle magnetizes theirs. And suddenly you’re the one comforting them? And you’re the one who’s sick. So I wanted to avoid that.

But this guy is different. He didn’t seem at all disquieted by sitting, listening. Maybe it was a break from the hamster wheel in his brain. I’m not even sure. 

He said: “Most people don’t make me angry. Like, it takes a lot to bother me. If I get in a fight with a guy, it’s because I’m drunk or the guy is an idiot.” Sounds like a good rule of thumb to me. In retrospect, I think he was trying to convince me that he wasn’t volatile, that he was just 

He listened as he drew on a paper bag with a black ballpoint pen. There was some ornate design he was working on. For him it was doodling, but I thought it was beautiful. 

I told him: “I could imagine that you would want to get out of this town.”

But what I remember was his eyes. They were somnambulistic, while his chest was quaking and his smile was weak but still genuine.

 It hurt to see someone ripped open like that. The reason doesn’t so much matter, the result is visceral and hard to swallow.

 I still feel like the last person who could offer hope: “Hang in there, champ. Good things are around the corner.” But the thing is, that is actually what I want to say. But I also want to say there’s a lot of shit to wade through, climb over and discard before you get to that fateful corner. BUT after you wade through all the piles, you will still have to deal with hardship, but it won’t be piled high like it is right now. Just break things down one cardboard box at a time. You will get through it.”

And I do think that. I think that about everyone. I think that everyone will “get through it.” I just think that they might really hate the process. Or suffer. But they will survive. And they will learn.
I know I did. In the meantime, if I can offer a teensy spot of hope in someone’s suffering, I will try. 

I’m grateful that it’s possible to recover.