According to Korean tradition, after a baby is born, mother and baby do not leave the house for the first twenty-one days. There are long cords of peppers and charcoal hung in the doorway to ward away guests and evil spirits. At the end of the twenty-one days, a prayer is given over white rice cakes. After one hundred days, there is a large celebration, a celebration of survival, with pyramids of fruit and lengths of thread for long life.
When my son was born, I was reminded of this tradition daily by my family and by my in-laws, because we were breaking all the rules. I took a shower after birth, ignoring the weeklong rule of no water on the mother’s body, and my first meal wasn’t the traditional seaweed soup, it was sushi. We opened our doors, let in guests, bundled my son in layers, and took him on walks in the falling snow. And then we did a fateful thing: we left our home.
My son was two months old when we embarked from London for an extended trip across the United States. I had come up with a plan to use our shared parental leave to do a cross-country tour of family and friends and introduce them to our son. I didn’t see why we had to pay attention to Korean traditions, or superstitions, as I thought of them. As Korean Americans born and raised in the United States, my husband and I had never paid much attention to the rules, and I had always thought our families didn’t either. Except that suddenly, with the birth of a baby, the rules seemed to matter.
We had avoided any evil spirits from California to Virginia, but perhaps we’d just been running away from them, because they found us at last at my in-laws’ house in New Jersey. My son was eight days shy of his hundred-day celebration when I started to see devils in his eyes.
My husband would take me to the hospital emergency room; by then I would be screaming and tearing off my clothes in the waiting room. I was admitted to the hospital, where I spent four days without sleeping.
In desperation the doctors gave me a cocktail of drugs that my body rejected; I still wouldn’t sleep.
The decision was made that I should be admitted to a psychiatric ward. I was checked into an involuntary psych ward in Paramus, New Jersey, which is where I am now.
It’s difficult to know where the story of psychosis begins. Was it the moment I met my son? Or was it decided in the before, something deeper rooted in my fate, generations ago?
* * *
My first memory of psychosis is the light.
A bright light. I’m lying on a bed. The room is white, stark, and plain. I’m wearing a hospital robe; it feels like paper against my skin. I try to raise my arms, but I can’t—there are restraints crossing my body, snaked around my wrists. The restraints are heavy and made of dark cloth, loops that cut into my skin. My hands are clenched. I notice that there are strands of hair in them. There are metal curtains around me; they fold like an accordion.
I try to lift my head, but I can only move it from side to side. I see a man, standing in the corner. He’s looking at a clipboard. He has dreadlocks, and he’s wearing glasses. He looks up and smiles at me gently.
“Hi,” he says. His voice is calm, grave.
“Nmandi,” I say, reading his name tag.
He looks surprised. “Yes, I’m Nmandi. I’m a nurse here.” He points to his chest. “Do you remember how you got here?” he asks.
I shake my head. I don’t know. I have a vague memory of tearing off my clothes in a hospital waiting room. I remember terror. I can still hear the sounds of screams in my ears. I think they were my own.
My lips are dry, and I try to clear my throat. I find my voice. I want to feel something certain, something to take away the fear. Nmandi is looking at me kindly.
“Nmandi, do you believe in God?” I ask.
He pauses, and he looks thoughtful.
“Fifty-fifty,” he says. “But I’m okay with that.”
He walks over to me and takes my hand.
“Do you see me?” he asks.
“I do,” I say. And I do see him, in the fullest sense of the word. He’s Nmandi, the one who speaks with his hands. Someone who comforts those who mourn and helps those who are afraid. But I also know that he must be the archangel Michael, come to deliver us from the demons.
The rules of time don’t exist in a psych ward. Each of us counts the time differently. There are some who count in days, others in weeks and months. And then there are those who don’t count the time at all, they’ve been here for so long. The ones who count in days, they are the ones who pace. I am one of them.
* * *
I’m wearing foam slippers, pale blue with smiley faces on them, government issued. I claimed them from the trash bin. They’re now a treasured possession.
I walk past the glass enclosure of doctors, past the TV room where the sound of the twenty-four-hour news cycle is blaring, past the activity room with the conference table, the hallways of resident rooms, to the heavily locked doors, and then back again.
I’m not sure how long I’ve been here. I think it’s a few days. But I count today as day one. The first day that I’m aware of where I am.
In my pocket, I have a folded piece of paper where I’ve written my truths in purple marker. These are words that I cling to as reality, or at least the reality I hope for. I’ve repeated the phrases so often, I know them like the words of a prayer.
* * *
I am alive. Real.
I am married to James. Real.
James loves me. Real.
I have a son. Real.
My son is three months old. Real.
My husband and son are waiting for me. Real.
I have postpartum psychosis. Real.
* * *
I have postpartum psychosis. I had never understood what it meant to doubt your own sense of reality, to be removed from time. The closest way I can describe it are those moments in dreams where you’re not sure if you’re awake or still sleeping, but in psychosis, no matter how many times you try, you don’t wake up.
The medical definition of psychosis is a mental illness in which an individual has difficulty determining what is real and what is not—it’s a loss of objective reality.
I had never heard of postpartum psychosis before my own diagnosis. Pregnancy had brought a list of worries—episiotomies, prolapse, preeclampsia. I was so preoccupied with the idea of losing my body, it had never occurred to me that I might lose my mind.
* * *
When I woke up this morning, my memory was in fragments. I was flooded with glimpses of past versions of my life, real and not real, as though I’d been copying and pasting a paragraph of my life on repeat.
When I reached for my body, I didn’t recognize it. My breasts were a network of red angry knots from not breast-feeding, my ribs were protruding, and I could feel the edges of my collarbone. I was wearing a hospital robe, and my wrists were sore with the marks of restraints. My hair was damp, tied in a strange way—someone else must have tied it. I wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. Wasn’t I married? I was sure that I was. I remembered a lace dress, roses and ivy in my hands. I tried to remember the song that played at our wedding. But which wedding? I remembered a few; the groom’s face was blurred.
As I pace the hallways, I’m trying to find the molecules of myself, to collect myself in the present, to contain myself.
Any time I try to remember something from before, to what was certain, I come against loops, tangles of repeating memories, replaying with different outcomes.
I remember living and dying, again and again, each lifetime of decisions splintered into possibilities.
I go back to my truths. I am Catherine. I am married to James. I have a son.
Counting my footsteps makes me feel reassured. Numbers are certain; they hold a linear logic. It occurs to me that no matter how many steps I take, I will remain constant, in this place.
I try to remember, but I can only recollect moments.
I remember a baby. The curl of a small fist. The feel of a breath against my arm.
I remember a balcony in Hong Kong, counting the seconds while surrounded by the grit of an orange sky, listening to the man pacing inside, hoping he will forget about me and go to sleep.
I remember sitting with my brother under a maple tree, watching the clouds descend, reveling in the silence, waiting for the tornadoes to come.
I remember my first conversation with my husband. His smile. The swirl of bourbon in cut glass.
Mostly, I try to remember who I am.
There are twenty-five of us in the ward, men and women. We aren’t allowed shoes, and so we shuffle in socks and slippers. We act as though this is temporary, like travelers at a departure terminal. People come and go, and we wave them off. Those who get to exit promise to keep in touch, but we know that they will not. Someone new will appear and join in quietly, and the cycle continues on.
There are those who make a fuss, who scream, but we ignore them, it’s too much. I’ve already become part of the routine. It’s as though I’ve always been here. I have trouble remembering anything before; the rhythm of the ward feels innate.
No one talks about their lives outside of this place, and we don’t acknowledge that there is anything outside this place; instead, we exist separately from reality, obedient to the rules of the ward. We are suspended in time.
We move along to the preordained schedules, waiting in the meds line, waiting to be called to the cafeteria, waiting for lights-out.
I can’t get used to the smell of the ward. It reminds me of the chlorine of a swimming pool, dank and dark. The walls are beige; there are tiles on the borders like the ones you’d find in a high school. The paint is peeling in places, and there are stains on the walls.
The ward is shaped like a Y, three corridors that intersect in the center. In the center of the ward there is a large glass enclosure with a circular desk inside. It is where the doctors and workers stay. The desk faces out onto each side of the ward; it reminds me of the control panel of a spaceship. On either side of the glass enclosure there are two rooms, a television room and activity room, each with a pane of glass so that everyone can see in.
On one side of the glass enclosure is a hallway lined with rooms. This is where the residents sleep. During the day, the doors are kept open, and at night they are latched shut. Some of the residents sleep during the day or sit on their beds. There are workers sitting on chairs in the hallway, looking at their phones, standing guard. The workers aren’t nurses, as far as I can tell. They wear civilians’ clothing. We identify them by their earpieces and clipboards. They don’t have lanyards around their necks; I guess it’s a choking hazard. Their poses aren’t natural—they seem tensed, ready at a moment to jump to attention.
* * *
My room is not in this hallway. I am in one of the twenty-four-hour high-security rooms. It’s located straight across from the glass enclosure. There is a worker who sits outside my door, making notes in a chart every time I leave.
In the glass enclosure, the doctors and workers tap away at computers and talk on phones. They pretend they can’t hear us when we tap on the glass.
I am like a zoo animal, except the zoo is inverted, and the cage protects those who belong on the outside. We, the animals, roam.
* * *
I wait for the showers to open. I have my arms across my chest, which is sore and so swollen it feels like it’s about to bleed. Shara, one of the workers, nods at me. She’s hunched over her phone, her elbow under her chin. “Good morning,” I say.
“You’re going to shower, baby?” she asks. I nod.
Shara mumbles into her earpiece and makes a note in the chart on her lap, and then she goes back to her phone.
* * *
The showers are in closets, doors that open in the middle of the hall next to the television room. There are two of them, side by side with curtains, but really it’s meant for one person at a time. I stand by the door uncertainly. I know that Tamyra is going to take the first shower slot, meaning that she’ll have the brief window of hot water. Tamyra swoops in without any greeting. She wears a Walking Dead T-shirt that’s stretched tight over her belly. She’s twenty-one and pregnant with her third child. Tamyra is a returner, residents who are released each week only to return the next. She knows all the nurses and residents by name and presides over them with authority. She is initially suspicious of me, but we make peace when I give her the shower slot in the morning and let her have my portion of dessert.
I sway from foot to foot while I wait for the showers. Around me, the ward is starting to come to life. In the glass enclosure, I see workers appear from one of the back doors, a door we don’t have access to. They turn on computers, unpack papers, open binders. They greet one another, but they don’t look at us.
Tamyra steps out of the shower room without looking in my direction; she’s wearing shower shoes and a towel wrapped tightly around her hair. She’s still wearing the Walking Dead T-shirt.
I step into the shower room. The tiles are green; it feels like the showers at the gym, smelling of bleach and mold. I take off my clothes quickly and balance them on the sink; there’s nowhere else to put them. I don’t have shower shoes, so I stand on folded hand towels. The showers are icy. There’s a burst of hot water for a few minutes, and then it pours down cold. I try my best to massage the knots from my breasts, but it’s difficult with the cold water. I start to feel like stone.
I quickly dry myself with a small hand towel and shrug on my clothing. I’d found clothing in the panels next to my bedroom door. Maternity leggings, maternity bras, sweaters that I recognize as my husband’s. I’m wearing one of his gray ones now—it’s soft, woolen, and smells familiar. I tuck cotton wool into my bra so that I don’t leak through my clothes. On top of my sweater, I zip up a hoodie. I have my hands in my pockets, so that I can keep ahold of the piece of paper with my truths. It makes me feel grounded, a talisman.
I walk back to my room where I fold my towel and make my bed. The bed linen is gray from being overwashed, and the material is scratchy and thin.
I can’t stand being in the room more than a few minutes, it feels so damp. I step outside the room and shut the door behind me. I start to pace the hallways. From the other end of the hall, residents are starting to walk to the cafeteria; it’s breakfast.
Copyright © 2020 by Catherine Cho
