Hello again. Welcome to my fourth installment of “Oz in the Nuthouse.” If you haven’t been following along Click Here to go back to the beginning. Otherwise you will be lost.

With that, here we go.

The second morning, and beginning of the third day, in the mental ward was the first I felt normal. As in awake. The effects of my overdose had finally begun to dissipate. My thoughts, though still on the dangerous side, were clearer, more focused. I felt more in control. I got up on my own and wandered into the common room, sat in a comfy chair and read the Tolkien translation of Beowulf. I talked with the other patients on and off, letting them lead the conversations. The stories I heard were fascinating, but they are not mine to tell.

Breakfast came and went, the daily routine easy to follow and running smooth. It was the first good day I could remember having in a long time. Obsessive thoughts of self-harm were at a minimum, like the itch of a healed over wound.

Until it was time to go to the gym, and the wound was reopened. Growing up, I was the perpetual “New Kid” because my family moved so often. I went to six different schools in the sixth grade alone.  I was always the smallest kid in gym class, and almost always the last to be picked, and first to be picked-on. But that never bothered me, because the closer to last I was picked, the more I knew they were underestimating me. All they saw was a small kid that always raised his hand in class and got the answers right. A nerd. Nerds, epically small nerds, weren’t good at sports. Except, I was. I was really, really good. At everything. I could run faster, jump farther, catch better, throw harder, than almost everyone. I was never the best, but I was damn close. In class I earned the respect of the smart kids, but in gym I earned the respect of everyone. I prided myself on how competent I was physically.

That is why it hurt so much that day in the mental hospital’s gym. I crept over to the ping-pong table like a feral cat approaching a freely offered bowl of food. It looked too good to be true. I didn’t remember it being there the day before. Perhaps it was a magic ping-pong table. It traveled here from another dimension just so I could learn my lesson. No one payed me any heed as I picked up a paddle and sheepishly bounced the ball once on the table. With a nostalgic sigh, I did it again. I bounced it on the paddle five or six times and smiled. Then I kept it going, and added some flair. In between tiny bounces I would turn the paddle over, red side, green side, red side, gree…..

“Hey, you want to play a game?” A nurses voice broke my meditative exercise.

“Sure,” I say, playing it cool. This guy didn’t know what he was in for.

I gave him a nice easy serve, just a little warm up. He tapped it back, again nice an easy. I reached out, intending to continue our warm up, and missed. Completely. A little shocked, I served another, and again I missed the return. Fucking COMPLETELY. I couldn’t even hit the damn thing. It wasn’t just dulled reflexes. It wasn’t like I was swinging late. I kept my eyes on the ball, but my eyes had lied to me. My perceptions were skewed. The ball wasn’t where I thought it was. I’ll be damned if that wasn’t a fucking perfect metaphor for my anxiety and depression.

It was in that moment I realized just how close I had come to death. The full realization of my actions hit home. Silly how something as simple as missing a ping-pong ball can cause such a devastating epiphany. I had to change the way I was looking at the world. My perceptions were not reality. Everything I saw and heard and felt, were being filtered through my damaged mind. A line from Waking Up by Sam Harris flashed, “You are not your thoughts.” I reworded it to fit my needs. I am not my depression. I am not my anxiety. I am not how I see myself. I am something more. If I couldn’t trust my perceptions, what could I trust.

The same thing I always trusted. My wife. My friends. The people that loved me. I had to look to them for guidance when my mind went awry. I loved and trusted them. If they said I was worthy of love, who was I to disagree. I am not who I see. I am who they see, and they see someone that is worth their time and energy.

With that, I went back to playing. I served, he returned, and I hit the ball, but missed the table. But I kept trying. The nurse was super encouraging. I incrementally improved as muscle memory returned. Then something clicked inside. I felt good. Not just “Not Bad,” but good. I took a step back from the table, then a deep breath, and stepped into my serve, the one I used to have. The ball shot from my paddle like a bullet, cleared the net by a hair, and tapped the far-left corner of the table. The nurse stood dumbfounded.

“That is one hell of a serve,” he said.

“Thank you. I think I’m remembering how to play.”

“Good. Are you ready then?”

“Yes, let me have it.” I smiled.

What he didn’t know was, I am really, really good at ping-pong.

What I didn’t know was that he was better.

He kicked my ass. But I had fun doing it. And more importantly, I could see where the ball really was.

Stay tuned for the last day of my 5051 next time.

Thanks for reading.