December 29, 2003

Silence and Lunacy

ATLANTA – She told her friend everything in one of those “like-you-know” accents one aisle away. I couldn’t help but hear because while a book store is nothing more than a place where one goes to buy a hawker’s wares, it’s viewed in some circles as a pseudo-library.

We were all quiet, except her and her friend.

But what made my ears perk up wasn’t that she was speaking at jet-engine volume as compared to those around her, but that she mentioned the lack of this particular bookstore brand where she lived. Two sentences later she confirmed with the phrase “back to Columbia.”

I was camouflaged amongst the other browsers sitting on the floor with my nose deep into Sebastião Salgado’s Migrations. It’s a big enough book, and has no more than the equivalent of 2,000 words per each pair of facing pages; the perfect book to eavesdrop from.

The talk was about her psych professors and classmates. “I have to get out of there,” I remember her saying. Ironically enough, she alluded that no one in the whole program was sane.

It’s a psych program, no one is supposed to be.

On and on and on she talked about the lunacy of these people. At one point she mentioned – and for some reason I remember this – everyone’s belief in her curriculum that schizophrenics do not need to be medicated. It seemed an alien notion to her, and completely out of the box for someone to even entertain that thought, let alone voice it. Though merely a student, she asserted that her professors had to be wrong.

(Author’s note: This is the point in the essay where I proclaim not to be a psychology or psychiatry professor or practitioner. Neither do I agree with nor support the supposed subject’s, nor her alleged professor’s, views, assuming either party is a living, breathing person.)

I just wanted her to shut up or walk away. Far away.

Her buzzing mobile interrupted the conversation.

“Hello?” she answered, knowing the caller’s identity already. Her volume increased. After all, the caller was so much farther away.

“Happy birthday!” proclaimed the voice on the other end of the line.

Did I mention that the bookstore was quiet enough to hear the whir of the air conditioner and a mouse fart simultaneously?

Our prayers were briefly answered as she walked off to have her call. Silence is golden, but it wouldn’t last long.

She walked back to another aisle of books within earshot.

“I think I’m driving back to Columbia tomorrow,” she told her still, seemingly silent friend. “But I’ll be back in Atlanta by the end of the week for therapy.”

- Rich