Captain’s Log 1/14/20, My Birthday

This blog is about living aboard a boat in the Pacific Northwest and snow-birding to Arizona while training an artificial intelligent mental health virtual assistant named Rubi ready to provide support in the traumatic aftermath of COVID-19.

I woke up from my first night in the RV to my birthday. In this new environment of comfort, surrounded by family and the heat of the desert. I thought back to waking in the middle of the night to my 25th birthday. I was back in my house on the island. I had just inherited it and I heard the school bus outside and thought it was there to pick me up. I was struggling to find clothes in the dryer to put on, to get ready, I was late, but I was too confused to find the right pair of pants. Then, everything turned red and there was smoke everywhere and I ran outside in my pajamas barefoot. I thought my house was burning down. I knew something was wrong, even though I could see my house intact, plainly behind me with no smoke. Everything was a strange color though, and the shadows were long.

I ran around the neighborhood and had the strong urge to visit the beach. I thought if I could make it through the forest, on the steep path, down to the shore, I could play within the waves. I could hear the waves now, crashing. And I had a strong desire to let them hit me. However, it was January, I was barefoot, and the grass was cold and slippery and a scraggily cherry tree grabbed my hair on the way to the forest path. I fell, shocked, in the cold frosty grass. I was cold.

I must find help! I tried the door of a parked car. It looked so comfortable inside. All the neighbor’s driveways had gravel on this side of the neighborhood, and I was barefoot and could not make the walk to a front door to ring on a door bell. I needed help. I made my way back to my house, but there was something wrong with the glare of the lights. Suddenly, a car with bright headlights lit me up. I ran towards it. I ran towards the driver’s side. The driver rolled down his window and I tried to throw myself inside. “Hold on, hold on!” he said. “What are you doing out here?” I couldn’t reply. I couldn’t talk but watched myself get in the passenger side of the door when he unlocked it. “You shouldn’t be out here! My name is Don, and I’ll take care of you.” His finger pushed play on the tape deck, and we proceeded to follow house numbers and roads to deliver newspapers. The tape was taking me farther and farther away from my house. We drove up Silverlake hill and I grabbed his hand. Frantically grasping it as I couldn’t speak. He patted me back and briefly touched my breast. My throat went dry. “There will be plenty of time for that later.” Right there and then I knew I was in trouble and started freaking out. He pulled over and demanded I get out of the car. I got out of the car. I was on a forested road. No signs of mailboxes. No signs of life. And he said, “I can leave you here, or you can get back in the car.” I hesitated Then he yelled, “get back in the car.” I looked around. It was so cold. I opened the car door and got back in. We were coming back down a hill from the secluded area when I heard him say, “dammit” and start slamming the steering wheel. He pulled over, fumbled around in the back seat and produced a water jug. Got out the car and proceeded to fill the radiator with water from the ditch. In the meantime, car lights appeared. “Get down! Get down!” He pushed me down. I popped up and it was a cop!

I was confused but made sure I was seen. I’m not sure what he told the cop, but the next thing I knew is he got back in the car and we were driving, and he said “I’m going to take you to where you need to be. To get help.” After that, I must have passed out. Because the next thing I realized we were delivering more newspapers, and fast, it was a flurry, and then after that we were going across Deception Pass bridge. I passed out again. The next thing he was yelling at me to, “Get out! Get out!” I got out of the car and was in a parking lot. A kind man coaxed me inside. I was utterly confused. I sat at a chair at a check in desk with a map laminated in the surface. He laid a pair of socks on the map. The socks looked like Whidbey Island. I tried to point where I lived on the socks. He pushed them further at me. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t answer his questions. I was confused. He looked closely at my eyes and then made a phone call. Before I knew it, socks were being put on me and I was in the back of a police car….and then before I knew it, I was walking across train tracks of a parking lot and escorted into an emergency room. I was left in a glass walled room with an examining table. No one said a word to me. There was no instruction. I had no idea where to sit. I didn’t want to be there. The door was guarded. I looked for anything to help defend myself. Or maybe I should off myself? With what? The tongue compressors? A nurse came in, had me pee in a cup. Put some medicine under my tongue and they said, I could walk 3 flights of stairs or take a gurney. I said I’d walk. They said, “you probably won’t make it.” I could hear them taking bets if I’d make it. But a nice man escorted me up the stairs to a locked ward and another room with glass windows and a bed and a toilet. I fell asleep as soon as they laid me down. When I awoke that morning. I woke to my 25th birthday. And I had my period. And I knew where I was. Back in the psych ward. I knew what I had to do to get out. But first thing was first. The door was open. I wandered out to the nurse’s station and used my voice. “I have my period” One nurse looked at me in absolute disgust. Another said, “why don’t you find her a maxi pad?” and smiled. I stood there awkwardly, but I was snapped back to reality and a week later and was out of the psych ward, on some new, better medication and never went back.

And now, though not in my house, where I might run away and be picked up by the newspaper delivery man, I was in a comfortable RV in the warm desert. I saw no newspaper boxes so wasn’t sure where people got their newspapers if any but was sure I wouldn’t be running barefoot in the desert in the middle of the night. A lot of healing had happened since then. To remember how far I’d come, sixteen years later on my 41st birthday, was mind boggling.