Michael, The Exhausted and Defeated Earthbound Angel

 

from inside a seclusion room in a psychiatric hospital as it would appear
c. 1984

 

I was still a young therapist, not quite familiar with psychosis upclose, when I worked at Baywood in Webster, Tx.  It was here that a man, probably in his 30's, with wild beard and hair was in a seclusion room.  He was frantic.  Asking for assistance, demanding as I recall, a Bible as the only thing that could possibly help.  I don't know what he did or how he searched in the Bible, but I know that in the end he was laying face down, surrendered to defeat? with pages of the Bible strewn about. Perhaps finally exhausted or finally medicated?  I don't recall anyone going into the room to medicate him.  We did listen outside the door, talk among ourselves and people looked in through the little window in the door at him.  I remember being in the background watching all of this and being still, absorbing. Someone remarked that he had torn the pages out of the Bible.  His name was Michael.  I thought perhaps I was witnessing a spiritual , significantly spiritual--perhaps iconically so--battle that was more than psychosis.