This Mentally Ill Guy is Special

  It’s football season and I’m meeting the boys at a local sports bar for an afternoon of beer, hot wings and nachos.  I was the first one there and sat at the bar to have a beer before everyone arrived.  It was a mix of the usual pre-game shows, cute waitresses and guys huddled together talking up their teams.

  Sitting in a booth near me was these two guys.  For whatever reason, one of the guys thought it was amusing that this mentally ill guy he knew had apparently fallen in love.  I surmised that he worked in some mental health facility and that some new intern had won the affections of this poor guy who was a patient.

  The more he went on, it was apparent that this guy was kind of callous and really felt that in his poor mental state, this patient should have been incapable of feeling love.  From what I know about the mentally ill, they are very capable of knowing right from wrong, feeling the depths of every emotion; and while not prepared to deal with society in a real mature way, find ways to show their emotions, if possible.

  The more I thought about this guy being in the wrong line of work, the more I thought about this lovelorn mental patient.  What would he think?  How is he dealing with this?  What if this mental patient wanted to tell someone he was in love with them?  I decided to help him out.

I asked the cute waitress for a pen, grabbed a napkin, and...

SPECIAL

   My mother calls me special

   But my friends just think I’m weird

   There’s so many of us in here

   Sometimes I feel as if I’ve disappeared

   They’re more than voices in my head

   That tell me what to do

   They say and do things to help me

   And the best part is they lead me to you

   So after all these years

   Living with the constant debate

   They’ve agreed to have me stay close to you

   And smile, and listen, and wait

   Love’s much more than a funny thing

   It seems so quiet and new

   And while I can speak with only one voice

   All my voices want to talk to you

  The guys start to show up as I’m writing this down and the waitress comes over to take a drink order.  The waitress politely asked if she could hear what I wrote when I just told the guys I finished a poem.

  When I was done reading it aloud, the look on her face made me think she thought I was mentally ill.

  Tip o’ the hat to Will Sampson and the character he played in One Fell Out Of The Cuckoo’s Nest.  From his portrayal in that movie, it was clear his character was not entirely mentally ill but instead, wanted to live in the asylum.  At least, until Jack convinced him to break out…