Fantasy Sanatorium

This is where the fragile go for treatment, because in this fantasy land psychological pain is honoured, even if the source of it is common. Death, divorce – even the existential dilemma we call ‘mid-life crisis’ is treated with compassionate care.
The patients’ rooms are large and immaculately clean. The nurses wear traditional nurses’ garb. There are doctors who treat both physical and mental disorders and each one has plenty of time for each patient.
There are lovely drugs, of course. Therapeutic baths. Little walks around the aesthetically pleasing grounds are encouraged but not mandatory. The food is irresistible, delivered three times a day by pleasant people. There is beautiful music.

Everybody is kind. The more the patient suffers, the more delicately she is handled. Sensitivity, in this world, is highly regarded. Those who work in the arts are valued for their dedication, not their popularity. There is art everywhere in this land but in the sanatorium all the art, while of the highest quality, is soothing.

The patient has no workload; it’s all being taken care of. If her home needs to be cleaned it is cleaned. If she has pets they are well-looked after. If she has children they are coddled. There is nothing for her to worry about while she is in the sanatorium.

She sleeps between sheets of fine Egyptian cotton. She sleeps until she isn’t tired anymore. She talks until she doesn’t want to talk anymore. She visits with her friends as often or as infrequently as she wants. Everybody understands. When her children come to visit they bring fresh flowers and chocolate and they are delightful. They shower her with baby kisses, even if they aren’t babies. They love her more for her fragility than they did before. She doesn’t have to be strong for them, they are magically strong and well and sweet.

There are peer-affection-workers; nice men and women who have been where the patients are now. They visit often and their job is to pet and compliment and make love to their patients. No pain; no expectation. If she wants kisses she is kissed. If she wants sex she gets sex. She is not expected to play any role of any type. She accepts what she wants when she wants it. There are no complications or consequences, except she feels better. The human touch.

Because she has been diagnosed as sad, all her external problems are taken care of in her absence. If she needs a bed, there will be a bed in her home when she is discharged. And so on.

Really, this is a place dedicated to loving and accepting those who have become, through sadness, pitiful and irritating. They don’t ever have to leave but because they get better they want to leave and so they do. Some return as peer-affection-workers or volunteer flower-arrangers. Some donate their paintings or their music or their art, some donate their time, or money. Some donate nothing. It’s okay not to give back. By getting well, the patient has already given back.

Oh! That’s right! In this magical sanatorium, everyone always gets well.

8 Months

If you could see me
you’d be so sad
your eyes might fill
with the only kind of tears you ever had
unshed.

I’m skinny, I swear, I smoke and I flirt like mad
there’s no black on white only the blur of grey and –
look, never mind, I promise I’ll be okay
I’m still here so I may as well stay.

Don’t let little old me
make you feel bad.
It’s a bitter pill
I choose not to swallow.
Close your eyes, sweetheart, or turn away
I do not want to burden the gentled shoulders
of the dead.