Ticket to Madland is the true story of a mysterious mind-body illness that struck me in the summer of 2020, making me first irritated, then discombobulated, then desperate, then suicidal. Eventually, I made a full recovery.
This excerpt takes place at the nadir of the whole journey: October 31, a few days before I went to the hospital. (The fortnight in the psych ward was, in comparison, a pleasant getaway.) It may be a little tough to read; note, however, that my guardian angel, whom I call Sane Me, never quit watching over me. –Jocelyn Davis
***
… Your body is breaking down, Sane Me observes mildly as I lock the kitchen door, make my way down the gravel driveway under the halogen glow of the streetlight, and turn left on Granada. Soon you won’t have the strength to walk at all, and then what will you do?
I turn right on Booth Street in order to visit one of my trees.
Trees are a major focus these days. Hanging, I have decided, is the only feasible way to go, and what’s needed for hanging (I reason) is a tree with a branch low enough to throw a rope around while I stand on a chair or fence or wall, but high enough (obviously) so my feet don’t touch the ground after I drop. It’s surprising how many trees are not suited to the purpose—almost as if God has designed trees, most of them anyway, to be suicide-proof. Kind of frustrating, to be honest. Nevertheless, there are four or five trees in the neighborhood that might do; this aspen-like one on Booth Street is especially promising, though it lacks a well-placed wall so will require me to bring a chair, which might be difficult, then again it’s only a block from home, it won’t be hard to carry over a small chair, or maybe the stepladder, plus the property on which the tree sits is an apartment complex, not a single-family home, which is good because I don’t want to inconvenience a homeowner, but of course people will be inconvenienced, imagine looking out your window with your morning coffee and seeing a dead body hanging in a tree and you have no idea who it is and you have to call the police and it’s a whole big thing, how rude is that? And how will they know whom to contact? I will have to write a note with contact info, put it in my coat pocket, I’ll do that when I get back … I wonder if anyone’s looking at me right now, as I stand here on the sidewalk looking up at this perfectly nice innocent tree, this must be like the thirtieth time I’ve done this, stand and stare at a tree, surely one of the neighbors has seen me and knows what I’m thinking, how embarrassing! I should just do the deed at home, but no, no, can you imagine, Matt will be devastated if I do it at home, poor guy, and anyway I’ve looked everywhere at home and there’s no place that’s any good except for the iron fence above the outside stairwell down to the basement, there’s a nice drop there, but that rose bush is in the way, stupid thorny rose bush, never liked it. No, it has to be a tree. Still, when I get home maybe I’ll have another look round the house and yard. For now, I’ll keep walking. Keep going, go, go, here it takes all the running you can do to keep in one place, said the Red Queen. Turn left on Don Gaspar. There’s another tree in this block, maybe two, that’re worth assessment. This one, for instance, this one here has a good stone wall right next to it, let’s climb up on the wall, must be careful in the semi-darkness, though … up we go … easy, now, hold onto the bark … let’s take a closer look at this big branch, see if it’ll work. Hmm. Maybe.
I climb down and continue on the trek. Franklin, one of my dog friends, barks at me as I go past his gate, bringing startled tears to my eyes. Even the dogs hate me now. The sky is getting lighter. It’s very cold. If I walked into an arroyo and took off most of my clothes and lay down, how long would it take me to freeze to death? They say freezing to death is quite pleasant; they say you get sleepy and warm and just drift away. Sounds OK. But the temp probably needs to be, like, subzero for hypothermia to set in fast, and what is it now, 20 degrees, 25, warming up to 45 once the sun rises at 6:30? That’s not enough time. Maybe I could do it earlier, like at four a.m. Right, like you’ll have the willpower to get up, leave the house, and find an arroyo at four in the morning. True, true, and suppose I did manage to do it and it worked and they found me half-naked, dead in an arroyo! That’d be even more embarrassing for everyone than the other scenario. No, no, it has to be hanging. Any other method is completely impractical.
Ten a.m. now, and I’m on my second walk—or is it the third? I am keeping a lookout not only for trees but also for other likely structures. Downtown there’s a footbridge over the Santa Fe River (dry at the moment, and it’s hardly a river at the best of times, just a small stream) which has steel bar railings and, again, a nice drop. No need for a chair when there’s a nice drop. I crouch down, patting the railings with my gloved hands, imagining how I will loop my scarf around my neck, then tie it to the steel bar, then climb over—or would I have to climb over first, then loop and tie the scarf? It all seems extremely awkward and challenging. I am also vaguely aware that I do not know how to tie a proper noose, not really, and that the scarf is not long enough, and the fabric is not strong enough, and moreover that I do not want to die.
But I go on planning and walking, walking and planning, examining the trees and footbridges and playground monkey-bars and basketball hoops and even the big metal outdoor sculptures that belong to a gallery at the bottom of Canyon Road, but mostly the trees, my stalwart friends, the trees—because as long as I am planning my suicide, as long as I am looking at trees, I am doing something to solve the problem. I have a focus, a purpose, a goal. I am seeking a way to Make. It. Stop.
***
Months later, Susan and I will laugh about it: how I would cruise the neighborhood for hours, soberly assessing the trees for hanging potential. “I bet you had them plotted on a two-by-two matrix,” she says. “Oh, you bet,” I say, “I had a whole spreadsheet!” Gallows humor, literally. But at the time, it did not feel the least bit humorous, or even all that crazy. Rather, it felt like managing a serious, vital project, like launching the Space Shuttle or negotiating for the release of hostages. A matter of life and death. And Sane Me (unbeknownst to Mad Me) was the project manager, the driving force behind this deadly serious planning.
“But,” you object, “that can’t be right. If someone has a suicide plan, that means they’re closer to doing it, which is a very bad sign. Much worse than just thinking about it.”
Yes, I’m sure that having a suicide plan is indeed a very bad sign. I’m not convinced, though, that planning suicide is at all the same as having a plan. The medical pros asked me many times whether I had a suicide plan; when I answered yes, what I meant was not that I had a plan, noun, but that I was constantly planning, verb. A plan is an executable file on your computer, sitting inert until you decide to open it: <Are you sure you want to run this program? Click yes only if you trust the sender> But planning: that’s not a file you open, it’s a process in which you engage, a process that may continue indefinitely.
When I’d called the crisis hotline a few weeks before, Hotline Lady suggested I think of some future event I could plan for and look forward to, such as my daughter’s birthday or a family trip. Although this advice was no doubt sound, I was in such pain that contemplating anything beside the pain, how to endure it and how to stop it, really wasn’t possible. If you’re trapped in a burning building, you can’t be planning a birthday party; what you can be planning, and should be planning, is how to douse the fire or exit the house. “Douse fire or exit house” was the very sensible assignment Sane Me had put on my plate, and since the heat was growing intolerable while all attempts to stifle the flames had failed and all ordinary routes of egress had been blocked, my new assignment was to locate the button that would blow the escape hatch. A twisted assignment, for sure, and perhaps a dangerous one. (Don’t try this at home!) But as long as I was seeking the button not pushing it, compiling the file not clicking it, planning my death rather than carrying out the plan—I was staying alive.
***
Ticket to Madland: How I Went Insane and Met New People is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.
