"My Prison-Cure in America", Chapter 11
Adapted from Annemarie Schwarzenbach, by Cleo Varra
Content warning: Involuntary psychiatric commitment
Read previous: #10. Sometimes I Shake My Head No
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THe Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic, White plains, NY-- 1941
The guards had beaten me, again; and when I screamed,— nothing, nothing, nothing.
I covered my ears, and my face was on my knees.
Everything was in vain, everything just hurt.
***
They left me alone, and I screamed.
Nothing stirred in the silence.
—When I lie down, I thought.
There has to be a limit to the pain.
I will lie down, with my arms and legs spread wide, unbound, and my breathing will come easily, and I will close my eyes forever.
The ceiling will keep getting higher and higher, and I will feel the light through my closed eyelids.
***
I will lie down, and I will feel no more pain. And the view outside, of freedom, of undulating floods of darkness, I will have forgotten it.
Because there is a limit to pain.
Isn't there, dear God.
***
—So I was, still talking and listening on all sides.
I was listening so hard, I could have heard a leaf falling. But nothing moved.
I was so tired.
I would lie down, on that bed; and my heart might break, and I might have to go on living.
*****
Then I got up.
Later, I would never be able to explain what happened to me.
It was as if another person’s will were gaining power in me.
My breathing became very easy.
The overwhelming silence lost its terror, and I no longer recognized myself, but seemed disembodied, dissolved, one with the shudders of a wonderful clarity.
And a power was able to take hold of me: a power which I did not recognize; which I knew, even then, with astonishment and a feeling of gratitude, that I had never experienced before.
It was as if a hand had grabbed my back, and had forced me to sit up; then get up, and go to the door; then over the threshold, and out into the hallway.
When I wanted to hesitate ("But it's impossible, they’re lying in wait, they're watching me already, and there are four of them, and I don't have the courage, I can't even walk….") -- When I wanted to look around for a second, to see if I couldn’t find a weapon, hadn't forgotten something important,--then it drove me on, because there was no time to lose; and if I was afraid, then all would be lost.
What would be lost? --I didn't know.
And I left.
*****
