October 22, 2024

If you have to live in the woods, this isn’t a bad place to do it.

 

The humanity we share is more important than the mental illness we may not.

-Elyn R. Saks

 

It’s mid-afternoon on the rail-trail, around 3 PM.  The temperature is 63℉ and there is a light breeze.  There are a few tan leaves on the tarmac, mostly birch, and, in places where white pines grow close by, patches of needles.  The oaks, black walnut and most of the maples are still green, but the smooth sumac has turned to red.  There are towering dark green oaks accented with large dark red splotches of Virginia creeper vines that have crawled their way up the canopy of the tree.  Veils of fox grape vine hang loosely from the upper branches of some trees like they’re wearing yellow and tan shawls.  The sky is partly cloudy and the ground is slightly damp from a storm that passed through yesterday.  Waldo and I are making our way down the still very green tunnel through which the path passes.

A fellow on a bicycle passes us, going the opposite direction.  I recognize him as the guy who lives in a tent just off the trail near the Hudson/Marlborough border.  Before he can go very far, I ask him if he’ll stop and talk.  He puts on the brakes and comes to a stop.  “Sure,” he says.  I ask him, just to be sure, if he’s the one that lives in the tent.  He says that he is.  I tell him about the boys and their scooters, but he doesn’t know anything about them (other than someone ransacked his place).  We are soon wrapped up in a pleasant conversation about his circumstances.  Waldo sits down and ignores us as we talk.

He is homeless, unemployed and living in the tent for the past couple of months.  I ask him several times if he needs anything and he says that he does not and he gets enough to eat.  Although he smells of the great unwashed, he appears quite healthy and in good condition.  He is twenty-six years old and is going to court tomorrow, but we don’t get into about what.  His adopted family and his biological family have abandoned him and he has struggled with many issues that have forced him to be homeless.

I am not surprised.  It doesn’t take long before it’s quite apparent that he is delusional.  All the factual stuff is imbedded in a confused litany of beliefs about how the world works that make absolutely no sense.  The man has lost touch with reality.  This is not a judgment call.  It’s not that I disagree with his beliefs, they’re incoherent and disconnected.  He talks about having seen his “Akashic record” several times and that he has special powers that he wants to use to help people.  He claims that he has platinum crosses worth a lot of money and he owns a house, but he doesn’t know where it is.  He expects to come into a large inheritance soon, left by his biological mother.  What he talks about is a jumbled mish-mash that’s impossible to follow.  I think it’s all dreams and wishes without any substantial reality.  I’m pretty sure he has a diagnosis of schizophrenia and is not taking his meds.

Massachusetts is a “right-to-shelter” state, so I ask him why he doesn’t stay in a shelter.  He says that he’s afraid that “they” (I presume he means the other people staying there) will steal all his things.  That is a very real possibility and something that is shared by many of the homeless but sheltered.  They are desperate, after all.  In addition, people with psychiatric problems don’t like being constrained by people who are trying to help them.  Those people often, believing that they are being kind and caring, pressure psychiatric unfortunates to do things they don’t want to do.  Like seek medical help (they feel there’s nothing wrong with them), take medication (that makes them not feel well in various ways), live in safe housing (in which they don’t feel safe at all), or go to a hospital (which robs them of their self-determination).  21% of the homeless report having a serious mental illness.  Compare that to 16% who report having a substance abuse disorder (being as how people like to self-medicate, I’m not sure how the two are teased apart).

I ask him what his name is.  He says it’s Derrick.  I introduce myself and Waldo, shake his hand, tell him it was a pleasure meeting him and we continue on our separate ways.

Derrick is neither unique nor unusual.  In the latter part of the last century, when antipsychotics first came on the market (allowing patients to be able to function well enough in society), it was decided that it was inhumane and a violation of a patient’s rights to forcibly keep psychiatric patients (who were not a threat to themselves or others) in hospitals and many hospitals were emptied.  The result was, and is, that there are many people out here in the world that don’t fit in, although they offer no great threat to anyone.

I don’t feel sorry for Derrick, that would be condescending.  He’s struggling with his demons, as we all do with our own.

I do worry a bit about him, though.

 

I don’t think Waldo would mind at all… At least until it got cold.

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