You
know those movies and TV shows with survivors struggling in a dystopiac
futre a toxic lifeless landscape with all the resources pillaged out of
it? It's not the future. That's where homeless mentally ill folk live
today.
Earlier
this month, I spent a couple hours near Detroit in hundred-degree heat
with a wreatched delusional guy. At first I was scared of him because
he was raging and yelling and throwing his backpacks around. But then he
apologized to me because he saw that I was worried. He explained his
situation in terms he could understand. I don't think his explanations
matched what I would call reality, but I think they matched his
feelings. He was telling me he felt like someone whose wife had been in a
car accident and similar intense events.
To
summarize this sad situation briefly, temporarily-mentally-stable
people kept arguing with him that his perceptions didn't make sense. In
particular, bus drivers rejected the damp, rumpled piece of paper the
man held out which represented a bus ticket. It might have been an
expired bus ticket, or maybe it was something else entirely. Not only
was the man thought-disordered, but I suspect he couldn't read. I didn't
think the drivers should necessarily give him a ride without a ticket
and invite trouble onto their buses, but his guy really needed help.
I
think he was dehydrated and exhausted and I would guess out of
anti-psychotic medication. Other people were being mean to him but his
delusions were worse for him than for the rest of us, I'm sure. If only
there was a bus that just drove around and picked up wretched mentally
ill people (the driver could be in a safely-screened-off area and took
them to a cooling shelter and a nurse could draw blood and see what
medicine they're supposed to be on and give them relief from the
scrambled neightmare perceptions. I understand their life problems are
huge and nearly-impossible to fix. But there's no reason for humans to
suffer in this rich nation.
When
I left the Southfield Greyhound station, the poor guy had calmed down
(I think it helped that I gave him cautious sympathy from a distance)
and he was resting in semi-shade in the grass under a tree. He'd asked
to use my cell phone and I'd had to refuse because I feared he might
throw it in frustration if someone hung up on him or something like
that. I was traveling by myself and couldn't risk not having my phone.
But I did give him my supply of Doritos and pretzels. He said "God bless
you," and I said "God bless you."
