Medicate

The Circle

"How are you today, Emily?"

"I'm alive." A few members of the group laughed and she smiled slightly. They were all nice people, she'd just prefer not to be there. She stared at the carpet. It was an ugly, green and blue, tightly knit thin sheet just covering the concrete of the fourth floor of the hospital. Every now and then they would do deep breathing exercises while laying on it and it always smelled like rocks and made her tailbone hurt.

"Did you have a good weekend?" the counselor prompted.

Emily shrugged. "I've had better and I've had worse. We visited Nick's mom."

"And how was that?"

"It was pretty good. She's nice."

"Do you have anything you'd like to talk about today?"

Emily hesitated. She knew she should talk about last night. She'd told Nick she would, but she couldn't bring herself to. She'd just done the same thing not too long ago and it would just be like beating a dead horse. They'd tell her to use grounding exercises the next time she dissociated and to try practicing distress tolerance, like usual. She'd been to enough therapy to be able to accurately predict answers. "Not really. I was feeling a little depressed last night but that's it." It was an understatement but it wasn't a lie.

"Do you know why?"

"Not really. It was just one of those nights, you know? Where you just feel down."

"How did you handle that? Depression can be hard to cope with."

"I leaned on my husband for support and went to sleep."

"That's a very healthy coping mechanism. I'm glad you have such a supportive spouse."

"Me too."

The counselor took the hint and moved onto the next person in the circle. Emily always hated listening to him talk because it bummed her out. He was only nineteen and his mental illness was destroying his life. She supposed her life was taken over by it too, but he was so young. He was young and paranoid and scared with no ability to get a handle on his emotions. He'd only been there for a couple of weeks after a stint in inpatient so he hadn't had the chance to learn any skills yet, but it still broke her heart. His hair had been buzzed short because it had become so matted from his being unable to care for it and there were permanent red lines along his neck and jawline because he would scratch himself there when he was feeling overwhelmed. He hadn't talked about that in group yet, but she'd watched him do it in a corner one time with morbid fascination before the behavioral staff brought him into a calm room.

"How are you today, Calvin?"

He shrugged. "I'm fine." He wasn't fine. Emily could tell by the way he tugged on the ends of his sleeves that he'd hurt himself over the weekend. It was over eighty degrees every day. He wasn't cold and she wasn't dumb.

"Do you have anything you want to talk about today?" he prompted.

They all knew what his answer was going to be. "Nope." Every day it was the same nope in the same voice. Emily couldn't help but wonder if he spoke in his individual sessions. If he didn't insurance would drop him. She wondered if he knew that. She also wondered if he cared. He didn't seem like somebody who was there by choice and usually those were the kind of people who were praying insurance would drop them.

She remembered her first time getting dropped from a treatment center. It was when Nick was still having her attempt residentials before realizing she wouldn't get any better there because of how mad she was. She'd been praying for them to drop her since day two, but when insurance finally called the center three weeks in and told them she needed to be out that day or they wouldn't pay it killed a part of her she didn't know existed anymore. She remembered how her heart sank. Not only because Nick would be upset, but because it felt like even the insurance company didn't want to waste their time with a hopeless case. She realized after getting booted from two more programs that it wasn't personal, it was just that they were stingy and she wasn't getting better in what they deemed to be quickly enough.

The rest of the day went horrifyingly slowly. The margins of her journal were so full of doodles she'd had to flip to an empty page to fill the time. They talked about the same skills she'd heard a thousand times before and did mindfulness exercises like usual. She was a little impressed, though. They introduced a new mindfulness activity she'd never done before. It was boring, like all of them, but it was nice trying something new.

"I want you guys to flip to a fresh page in your notebook and start drawing a circle. It should be relatively large," the counselor, Nadine, explained. "And just keep drawing over and over the circle. Try to keep as close to the original line as possible and remain focused. If your mind wanders to something about the circle I want you to keep a tally inside of the circle. If your mind wanders to something else I want you to keep a tally outside of the circle. If you catch yourself staring off don't judge yourself, just bring yourself back to the circle and think only about the circle."

These exercises were always hard for Emily. Her mind wandered everywhere besides what she was supposed to be focusing on. Her therapist was always trying to work with her on focusing on the present so she wasn't as anxious all the time, but it was hard. It would probably be easier at home if she could just be more mindful, but it was hard when you felt like you were drowning all the time. Focus on the circle.

Then there was Nick. Yeah, they could pay the bills just fine, but she missed going to work. She missed feeling like she was contributing to her life instead of just going to therapy or treatment centers or day programs. She missed feeling like a normal human. Focus on the circle. Focus on the circle.

What would she even do if she went back to work? Would she reapply for her old job? Would she find a different job? Would she find a different career entirely? She enjoyed marketing, but maybe she could become an accountant. It was a calm job. It was very stable with not a lot of surprises, which would be good for her. Shit. Focus on the circle.

Her lines were squiggly. She tried keeping them as close to the original line as possible, but she couldn't even do that. That was fucking dumb. She couldn't even draw a circle again and again. It was ridiculous and embarrassing. If she looked around she would probably see a lot of nearly perfect circles with almost no tallies in them. Oh, my God, focus on the goddamn circle.