May 1990. According to the medical chart, I enjoyed an outing in the park. Along with the other ward residents, I helped plant a maple tree, and after climbing on the playground equipment with D. (who was my boyfriend at the time, and headed for prison after his release from the hospital), I told a nurse the sunshine felt good, that it was amazing to feel the wind on my face after living in the sealed ward for so long.
I don't remember any of this. What I do remember are the locked cupboards in the group kitchen, so the staff could control every calorie; the locked toilet in my bedroom, so my bulimic roommate couldn't purge her dinner without being caught; the basket full of tennis shoes behind the nurse's station - removed from our feet, so we couldn't run away; morning exercises in the hallway (rolling our ankles, stretching our shoulders, touching our toes); the education room supervised by a teacher who couldn't understand the math homework forwarded from my high school; the maroon couches we were never allowed to share with members of the opposite sex - under any circumstances; and more that I won't write here. Or anywhere.
You would think the tree would stand out against all this - a bright day interrupting the dull flourescence of the hospital. But it made no impression at all. Half a lifetime later, I don't even mind that I forgot. What gets to me is that I don't think I ever remembered it, not even that night, as I curled up on my hospital bed, the electrodes of my portable EEG* poking sharp into my scalp. You see, there have been many times when I had to be careful about what made an impression. When it was better to forget.
But then, that's what charts are for. Paper and ink have a longer half-life than memories. It's why we write things down at all.
*a portable EEG is used to try and record brain waves during, before, and after a seizure, especially in cases where a patient shows up as "normal" on a regular EEG (which is common - fifty percent of cases, approximately)