That was where I got to last night, but I forgot to post it. So there it is. There's also more that I wrote this morning in section 6, but that's just because I sort of stopped in the middle of it, last night. And since I was pasting it in anyway, I figured the whole section might as well be together.

I'm staring at the hospital wall, sleepless, annoyed. I feel like I have nowhere to go, no place in the world. I'm acting just as weird in my fantasies as outside; maybe it's really true that I'm crazy. Maybe I am in the right place, and I shouldn't try to make them let me leave. The thought of going back to school fills me with tiredness so heavy it's almost like despair. I don't know what to do. I'm lost no matter where I am. School isn't right, hospital isn't right, City isn't right. I'm out of options, I have nothing left. The wall above me is white and black, between the natural darkness and the light that pours in through the crack in the door. I want to sleep, I really do. The woman who showed me this room told me that I could come and get a sleeping pill if I was having trouble, but the thought repels me. I don't like feeling drugged; I don't like feeling out of control. Not that I'm particularly strong on control over my life right now. She told me I was on a 5150, which means 72 hours of being locked up, no consent necessary. She said that didn't mean I'd necessarily be here for all three days, but I think she was just trying to make me feel better.

The mattress and pillow under me feel flimsy and plasticky. They rustle every time I move, and I'm not a very quiet sleeper. I've always been too restless for my own good.

Someone in the hall outside is pacing up and down, crying. I hear a nurse with brisk staccato footsteps come, repeating "Settle down, now" over and over, in an exasperated voice. The crying subsides into louder sniffling, then fades as they go back down the hall to the dayroom. This world is unfamiliar and uncomfortable; I reflect that it's no wonder so many patients ask for sleeping meds. I didn't even need a doctor's order for it. They were the default for everyone, a standing prescription. I don't fit into their world, and I know that means nothing good for me. But we've established that there is no world I really fit into. Life seems so hopeless, a story aleady told, one where a calm unchanging rut is the best I can hope for. I want to cry here in the partial darkness that won't be quiet and won't be friendly and won't forgive me for my messiness. I almost wish I did fit into the one of the boxes that stood waiting open for me to slip into and get lost.

My mother would say that my sense of not belonging was more of my drama, an immature need to feel different, to be exciting. I wish sometimes that I could swallow her view of the world, because I'd be so productive and, supposedly, happier. But I've tried to make that work for me so many times. I've been so afraid of seeming self-centered that I never open my mouth, and people assume I'm too much of a snob to talk to them. I'd try to be hardworking, and force myself to do so much that suicide starts looking better than going to work, or finishing that paper, or whatever. I'm a failure any way you slice it.

I am in that dozy place where I'm too tired even to sleep, but my mind kind of quits on me, blurs confused dreams with reality. It seems to me that the squishy hospital mattress I'm lying on is in a vast dark room, elevated on some sort of table, with candlelight flickering all around me. Someone speaks to me but I can't understand what they're saying. They repeat themselves over and over, with increasing urgency, and I am afraid that they want me to do something, but I don't know what. I try to tell them I don't understand, but my tongue feels swollen and my vocal chords won't work. They recede into the darkness, then approaches, again and again. The ebb and flow is like the tide, dizzying, grand and frightening. Finally I sleep.