A Journey Through Darkness (Published 2009) (2024)

IT IS A SPARKLING DAY IN MID-JUNE, the sun out in full force, the sky a limpid blue. I am lying on my back on the grass, listening to the intermittent chirping of nearby birds; my eyes are closed, the better to savor the warmth on my face. As I soak up the rays I think about summers past, the squawking of seagulls on the beach and walking along the water with my daughter, picking out enticing seashells, arguing over their various merits. My mind floats away into a space where chronology doesn’t count: I am back on the beach of my adolescence, lost in a book, or talking to my old college chum Bethanie as we brave the bay water in front of her parents’ house in Connecticut, where she comes to visit every summer.

In the 20 or so minutes of “fresh air” allotted after lunch (one of four such breaks on the daily schedule), I try to forget where I am, imaging myself elsewhere than in this fenced-off concrete garden bordered by the West Side Highway on one side and Riverside Drive on the other, planted with patches of green and a few lonely flowers, my movements watched over by a more or less friendly psychiatric aide. Soggy as my brain is from being wrenched off a slew of antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications in the last 10 days, I reach for a Coleridgian suspension of disbelief, ignoring the roar of traffic and summoning up the sound of breaking waves.

I have only to open my eyes for the surreal scene to come back into my immediate line of vision, like a picnic area without picnickers: two barbecue grills, bags of mulch that seem never to be opened, empty planters, clusters of tables and chairs, the entire area cordoned off behind a high mesh fence. Looking out onto the highway overpass there is a green-and-white sign indicating “Exit — West 178th Street”; nearer to the entrance another sign explains: “The Patients’ Park & Garden is for the use of patients and their families only, and for staff escorting patients. It is NOT for staff use.”

I can see R., the most recent addition to our dysfunctional gang of 12 on 4 Center, sitting on a bench in his unseasonal cashmere polo, smoking a cigarette and tapping his foot with equal intensity. On either side of him are ragtag groups of people culled from several units of the hospital, including the one I am on, which is devoted primarily to the treatment of patients with depression or eating disorders. (The anorexic girls, whom R. refers to as “the storks,” are in various phases of imperceptible recovery and tend to stick together.) The garden is also home to patients from 4 South, which caters to patients from within the surrounding Washington Heights community, and 5 South, which treats patients with psychotic and substance-abuse disorders.

The people on 4 Center, hidden away as it is in a small building, have next to no contact with the other units; we might as well be on different planets. Then again, as those who suffer from it know, intractable depression creates a planet all its own, largely impermeable to influence from others except as shadow presences, urging you to come out and rejoin the world, take in a movie, go out for a bite, cheer up. By the time I admitted myself to the hospital last June after a downhill period of six months, I felt isolated in my own pitch-darkness, even when I was in a room full of conversation and light.

DEPRESSION — THE THICK BLACK paste of it, the muck of bleakness — was nothing new to me. I had done battle with it in some way or other since childhood. It is an affliction that often starts young and goes unheeded — younger than would seem possible, as if in exiting the womb I was enveloped in a gray and itchy wool blanket instead of a soft, pastel-colored bunting. Perhaps I am overstating the case; I don’t think I actually began as a melancholy baby, if I am to go by photos of me, in which I seem impish, with sparkly eyes and a full smile. All the same, who knows but that I was already adopting the mask of all-rightness that every depressed person learns to wear in order to navigate the world?