whatever you do, don't come to Missouri

Who said you can’t live in the past.  That’s only if you want to live.  Truly.

 So, the girl who could talk to a doorknob or a nail, now couldn't manage to

string together four simple words, no less a phrase or two.  What was

> happening. Could it be a brain tumor? Could it be an infection? Countless

> doctors, medicines, tests.  Cocktails.  There was no black and white remedy.

I was admitted after a few days to the 9th floor of Barnes Hospital.  

>Devastated.  A mess. Most of all, she was embarrassed.  

 A conscientious student.  A popular and well-liked girl.  Now a random young sick patient

locked up in the psychiatric ward.  Did I mention that we're still in

> Missouri?  So, here we are, in a seriously unflattering, bluish gown, behind barred windows. Could it get any worse.  At least she doesn’t have to write my exams this semester.  Who knows if she’ll ever finish school. Lord knows the way she left the joint, she may never be able to show her face at that university again. Hopefully she’ll muscle through. Friends visited. They brought gifts.

Someone brought fancy chocolate covered pretzels from a lovely downtown

 boutique.  She still dreams of those treats. 

More pills.  More tests.  Are they kidding with this?  Her roommate is really mental.  Is she mental too? Why is she still here?  They used to joke about this.  Now this a reality?  This couldn't be.  Pinch me. Hard. Someone save me.  PLEASE? I'm asking nicely. Hello? Help?  Okay. Cut toTony. Tony. Love to Tony.  Where is Tony all these years later?  Tony, her twisted lover. Tony, he crack cocaine dealer. Okay, fine. Tony, the chocolate provider.  Every hour,more chocolate. Snickers, Milk-Ways, he kept her wired.  He kept her company and he kept her happy. With Tony she felt normal, whatever that meant. Thank goodness for Tony.  It was after the countless weeks and the plethora of "uppers" that she remembers running in a sport's bra (and not much else) through the long hospital corridors.  She was determined to keep up with her workouts.  She needed it after candy and lots of pizza dinners. 

Now she was high.  High as a kite as a matter of fact.  In retrospect she was manic, and  loving every minute of it.  They let her out for good behavior.  A football game,with parental supervision.  A trip to watch hot air balloons one afternoon.  They even visited a botanical garden, and then it was back to the ward.  At least there was Tony.  Then there was her bloody roommate who CUT herself to feel alive.  Thankfully she wasn't her.  She went back to school. She didn't sleep.  Didn't eat.  She wrote papers with rapid speed and precision.  She joined clubs. She formed clubs.  She danced.  She drove other people's cars.  She never asked permission. 

 I apologize.  I was high.

 In retrospect, I was manic. (I was thrilled, but to the real world, quite unwell) Still all this time later and no one really knew what to do.  Not even all these smart and sophisticated doctors.

 It was winter. I was still cold.  Same tight jeans and white v-neck t-shirt.  We

 were still in Missouri. Then they asked me to leave school.  Now were were in New Jersey. Could it get worse? Maybe you shouldn’t ask if you don’t want to hear the answer, ok?

My parents were sure the doctors in NEW YORK city were better.  Didn’t everyone feel that way about NYC stuff?  So they schlepped ½ way across the country hoping to find some relief.  Maybe even an answer or 2?  The best they could do was deduct that too much Prozac had been given (remember it was the 90s after-all) and this had potentially led to maybe a manic episode.  Sounded like a lot of probably and maybes for this family.  Didn’t anyone have a damn clue?  No, not this time around.  More drugs.  More doctor’s visits.  Parking was expensive in NYC.  The hallways were scary, the doctor’s were worse.  She was sure she’d wake up from this bad dream.  Honestly.  This was a nightmare.  When would it ever end? 

Then, good enough help was found on the NJ side of the river.  The doctor was from NYC, and half asian ½ jewish. Could there be a better mix?  She was kind and warm.  Laurin was sure the doctor napped throughout the visit.  Laurin was right. Mostly.  They saw each other 3 or four times a week.  On Mondays Laurin reported to the blood lab at the local hospital to check her levels.  This was the trying part of the story.  It was tedious to find blood sources, and the nurses had to resort to pediatric needles.  It was a torture.  Each and every visit.  Mostly the levels were fine.  Her liver was fine.  Her mood was changing often.  Sad bouts of missing friends and school.  Usually just missing her buddy Brian.  He’d write her often.  Thanking her for the meal card she mailed him.  Telling her how much he loved her.  Always mentioning their favorite jokes.  He promised to punch her in the belly and give her a slap if she’d return to him.  This was supposed to be charming.  She was dying to get back to reality too.  She just didn’t have the slightest idea of how.

So how does this love story go so sour, so rotten.  Where does it fall apart?

I’ll cut to the end first and then to the beginning and we’ll go over the crazy details of the legal issue later.  Laurin was eventually let back into her prestigious university.  Thousands of dollars and countless hours, but she was back in business and ready to fight the world.  What she didn’t realize was that she’d actually have to.  Fight that is. 

Her first day back she was in Brian’s basement apartment, playing with his fancy Mac computer.  It was the 90’s and this was still a novelty.  While she clicked away at the keys, she also held a glass bottle of red candle oil.  Brian was into glass candles and this was a new oil she had sourced for him.  He was taken by the gift.  And then just like that, she poured the red poison all over his white keyboard.  Her actions were cruel and calculated.  Mean.  His eyes welled up, but not because he was angry with her actions.  This wasn’t the case at all.  He was crying because she was not his girlfriend, and he had no idea where she had gone.

After he gasped, she stormed off in a rage.  Where did she go?  Who was this girl?  She was prettier than ever, but just not the girl they all knew from years before.  And as predicted, Laurin ran right into trouble.  Seemed she was getting rather good at this.  As it appeared men everywhere were interested, she took them up on their offers.  This time it was Doug.  Doug Kane.  He was a first year law student and she was smitten from the first hello.  They began dating just after the oil debacle, and truthfully, the relationship had probably begun weeks before.  People weren’t as dumb as they appeared in Missouri. She was still high and on a roll.  Where she was heading, no one was sure.  Clearly she was going down.  And fast this time.

The lawyer lasted less than a month and then she was back to frat row.  What an exhausting way to go through school.  You know, exhausting the Greek alphabet.  Sigma Ep, Beta, Sigma alpha mu.  She was well too familiar with the lot of them and her face was nearly a permanent fixture on the strip.  For what, she wasn’t sure. The days were fun, the nights were better.  Everyone loved her again.  This time, she wasn’t really sure why?  It was getting pretty gross out there.

The girl was bored and needed a plan.  So to add a bit of excitement to her life, she began to fabricate stories.  Innocent enough she thought.  Stories of what might have been, but never actually was.  The worst such story was told to Brian one night while they were trying to make up.  She told him that she had had a boyfriend the previous summer in La Jolla and now that said boy was dying from AIDS.  It wasn’t actually the least bit true. In reality, Jim was the cleanest most respectable guy from Chico U.  It was all a figment of her imagination, but Brian was petrified.  How could she? How could he?  He was devastated and called Dotty.  Dotty called the school and the administration set off to ruin Laurin.

So this is when the lawyers got involved.  Brian’s mom had a restraining order put against her.  She was not even to so much as look in his direction.  It was tragic.  They were still in love.  Laurin had lied to him and this was the worst betrayal.  How could you go about life so hedonistically, deriving pleasure from everything you do?  How could you lie to me and your friends in an effort to make you feel better about yourself? You’ve become a person I no longer no.  A girl I no longer want to be around.  I’m so sorry, my love.  Goodbye.

His words would sting for years.  Decades maybe?  She’d commit his letter to memory. It was like indelible ink on her brain. She’d always miss him and always wonder.  She wished she could explain to him about her illness.  She knew he’d no longer care.  Or would he?

The story gets worse.  When she is home trying to recover, her parents receive a call from Missouri.  It was the dean on the line.  The dean phoning long distance to make them aware that their first born was not to return to campus.  EVER.  Everyone was confused and saddened.  She was such a bright girl with a sparkling future.  Her room had already been reserved in Salamanca.  Her plane tickets already purchased.  But she was stuck.  Stuck in New Jersey.  It could have been Missouri.  Which would have been worse?

And so this is where Ken stepped in.  He was a kind and loving soul.  Ken accepted her story from the start and began to try to heal her world.  Her dad poured his heart and her story out to him over the phone.  The first plan of attack was to fly back to Missouri and meet in person.  The second part of the dance was to head to the hospital and undergo a battle of tests and exams.  The university needed to see that a medical doctor deemed Laurin well enough to return.  Funny enough, she was never contagious.  You would have never have known.

Man was this doctor old school.  And plain old old. The examination was enough to make a porn star blush and till this day laurin is not sure what went down.  She sailed through his interrogation like a superstar.  And that’s where the fun began.  Ken immediately embraced her and never made her feel bad about her falling life.  They were a team and they’d fight till the end.  Spoiler alert: they win.

Her dad threw money at the problem and slowly it began to lift. After a long and silly battle, she earned the right to attend her university again.  Maybe this is where the troubles began in earnest.

She must have been down to 125 and that was including all of that long black hair.  Classes were once again attended.  A favourite was an English literature class where she learned about paradigms and their shifts.  What a life lesson that had become.  When she started school she’d never even heard the word.  Soon she was due to embody the teaching she learned in that super book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn.  This was an analysis of the history of science. What sorts of intellectual options and strategies were available to people during a given period? What types of lexicons and terminology were known and employed during certain epochs? Stressing the importance of not attributing modern modes of thought to historical actors, Kuhn's book argues that the evolution of scientific theory does not emerge from the straightforward accumulation of facts, but rather from a set of changing intellectual circumstances and possibilities. Such an approach is largely commensurate with the general historical school of non-linear history.  As she was just coming out of a depressive episode, she clung to the theories in this book.  Oddly the words spoke to her and gave her a feeling of knowing.  His words made her whole.  At least for the time being.  But in class, she wasn’t allowed to look at Brian. Not even in the direction of his chair. 

But life at college was, well, life at college.  Parties, drinking, parties, drinking.  Studying. Exams.  Best friends, breakups, make ups.  Make-outs. 

The month was October and she was in her second year of school.  People had stopped regarding her as the girl who had lost her mind.  She fit right back in with the others.  Or at least she felt like she did.  Some days she wasn’t as sure.   Halloween was back and she can easily recall being out with friends.  The costume was kitschy, 14 carat gold.  7 of the prettiest girls donned GOLD leggings and dangled carrots around their necks.  The look was hot.  Short skirts, tights and edibles on their person.  It was destined to be a winning night.  And it was.  She danced the night away.  Brian was at her beckon call and the two were the perfect pair.  He often drank too much. Why?  Because he just couldn’t seem to socialize without it.  She stayed away from the booze and drugs, convinced a good time could still always be had by all.   Mostly she was right.  Until those times when she was wrong.