As I sit in a corner chair in the psychiatric hospital, just getting off the phone with my parents, tears consumed my eyes. I set the phone beside me and stared off into space wondering how in the fuck I got to where I am now. I'm 21, I should be happy, living it up, drinking wine at 7 P.M. while I get ready to hit up the bars with my roommate. But here I was, locked in a room with ten other people all dealing with a different mental illness of their own.
I sat watching as one of the patients, probably in his late 40's, sat at a table ten feet away from me, with one roll of toilet paper, he began tearing apart the pieces. He looked up at me with sympathetic eyes and asked if I'd come sit with him. As I began to sit down he looked at me, smiled, and said "You're in a rough place now." I nodded curious as to where he was going with not only his words but that damn roll of toilet paper. That's when he began to tell me his story. As he told me his story, he assembled the toilet paper and began shaping it and dipping it in water. He told me how it was week two compared to my night one of being in the hospital as another piece of paper was dipped in water and wrapped strategically around another. He told me he'd been in multiple times before and how this place was nearly home to him, something I couldn't fathom. Then, he changed the course of his story.
More and more toilet paper was being added to his art work and I will never forget how concentrated he was in the motions of his hands as he spoke with ease.
"You see, we tend to forget why we are here. We seem to lose ourselves in the big things and forget that it's really the small things that matter. Look at these pieces of toilet paper. We all know what they're for and tend to only use them for such. But here I am, turning nothing into something. Something some may find bizarre, but others, others with the intellectual minds who see the deeper meaning behind life, now they see art. Not art in a sense that it'll be in a museum some day, but the type of art that captivates your heart and reminds you that even the simplest of things, can be turned into something beautiful, and become a treasure of your own."
His words hit me hard but in that moment as he handed me a paper rose, I felt at ease. I'll never forget that moment nor will I forget the man who saved me with a rose made of toilet paper in a psychiatric hospital. And to this day, I still have that paper rose, sitting on the dashboard of my car, with him in mind, a guardian angel if you will, as a constant reminder that life is worth living.
