Dreaming is a Real Curse

He had not been expecting a letter. But he held it, Fr. Lawrence's chicken scratch handwriting on the envelope. Tom tugged his own beard, and laughed all the way to his room.

"No running in the halls."

The voice of one of the staff stopped Tom from his joy. Tom almost forgot where he was. But he walked the rest of the way to his room, ignoring the urine smell from the bathroom and the stench of cigarette from the shower stalls. He tore open the envelope before his bedroom door slammed shut.

In his hand was the answer to his question and plea. Tom had always dreamed of belonging somewhere, with people who loved him. He was always the unwanted one, the one who brought "mixed blessings". But not today, for today all that would change. The monks would love him, would want to take care of him and just love him even more. He would have a family at last. And with a family, he would be healthy.

The bed creaked as Tom sat. He read the letter. He read it a second time, and then a third, the half sized page echoing in the silence of the room as he gripped it tighter. The blue ink did not change its message.

He looked outside, beyond the dirty metal grill covering the window. Freedom was so far away it seemed. Three months in this place, six months in the place before this one, ten years and a lifetime before that. How much more of his life would he lose?

His room door swung open, the madness of the day room breaking the silence as it reached his ears. In came the faded grey cart, the Mohawk Valley Psychiatric Hospital logo etched on its side in an even darker grey spray paint.

"Sir, it's time for your medication," the nurse said. Her long blonde hair hung over her shoulders as she handed Tom the small paper cup holding a single pill.

Sanity and love became once more a dream that faded with the coming of reality. Tom took the Haldol medication. He walked past the cigarette stench of the shower stalls and urine smell of the bathroom and into the chaos of the day room. He wanted to numb himself in front of the blaring television, but Father Lawrence's words drowned it out with the prophetic message of Tom's life:

Tom. The answer is we want nothing to do with you. Father Lawrence.

The knowledge that he was all alone with no one to love him was easy to bear. It was the tears he had to hold back. When you cry in mental hospitals they give you more drugs and more drugs, and all you do is sleep and sleep and sleep, dreaming of sanity and love.