Frame Of Mind

“A brief interlude of excellence, a wrinkle in time, the titled frame that is my frame of mind.”

It was a mantra, an expression often repeated, but never spoken.
A mind flowing, ever flowing but to no one unparticular, something sad, cold, hard and forever aching and present was this mantra.

That was the story of the Patient, so young and vulnerable. So tilted.

He came to me late in my life, at that time I was an aging but not yet old man, I was a psychiatrist that was still sharp enough to cut to the chase but still human enough to know when to stop.

I remember the day clearly. Probably the only clear thought I can say is my own. I remember my day was coming to a close, I was anxiously keeping time with the old grandfather clock that sat in the corner of my office. It was supposed to add warmth, solace to an aching mind, but at that point in time it only reminded me that I still had time before I could let apathy for my patients wash over me and worry about my own problems.
A soft knock sounded on the dully colored wood of my hard oak door, snapping me from my trance and back to reality as I knew it.
I called for the intruder to come in, trying to push back in my mind that I wholeheartedly considered this person to be an intruder in every sense of the word. I thought of all of my patients that way; the only thing welcoming them to my door was the promise of a trained ear and a sharp mind while I weighed out my rewards and slapped my back for my knowledge and whit. Many cases had becoming boring and in my shoes I had found that I no longer listened as wholeheartedly as I would have admitted to.
Patients stories had become routine and I was giving out one-size-fits-all-answers for quite some time by then.
But as my eyes landed on a pair of leather two-tones shoes I was held in a blissful moment where I had no clue what the future would bring, and it hadn’t donned on me to care.

My eyes traveled North from those two-tones shoes, up a pair of legs clad in beige pants, you could tell the boy was thin when I was greeted with a brown leather belt that gathered his pants unattractively, signaling that they were in fact, too large. An off white dress shirt was tucked into the restraints the belt provided, the color made his skin look pink and you would feel a twinge of guilt for his appearance.
Further North I’m met with his face, it’s round and also pink, a few unattractively scattered freckles adorned the childish face and sandy blonde, center part straight hair stopping at his too-large ears, topped him off.
I smiled and welcomed him into my office.

To this day I still remember that I had to fake that smile.
Everything about the boy exuded in my a deep sense of sorrow and contrition and a certain paternal aching that I had never felt comfortable in acknowledging I possessed .
I remember his voice too; it was quiet and shy like himself with a certain hint of confidence that faulted on certain words.
I still stifle a chuckle of amusement as I remember, I thought that to be a key.

Seeing that boy became as routine to me as coffee in the morning. I didn’t just expect him to show up, I counted on him to show up. And each time he did I sunk just that much further into a whirlpool I was then too naive to recognize and too ill witted to understand.

What he had to say wasn’t always all that interesting, maybe not all that well thought out, but that’s to be expected of a boy his nature.
He always had something to say regardless of the captivity it would hold on my increasingly fragile attention span.
I remember one day he came to me talking of flowers.
I hadn’t had the slightest interest invested in flowers then, and all my life leading up to that point never thought I would.
To this day I still hold no interest in flowers aside from the fleeting acknowledgement as I pass them or maybe on a day my mind works clearly enough to take notice of their aroma.
Flowers weren’t of any interest to me, but he didn’t care, he simply wanted to speak and for me to hear him.

One day he came to me precisely on time, right on the dot, and if I was paying attention I might have realized to the second, but I wasn’t paying attention. In fact I was losing my grasp on reality and found myself drifting from day to day without hardly realizing a thing.
I figured I was just getting old and tired of the day-to-day, I had reached my sixties with hardly a stir and that maybe I was entitled to my midlife crisis. I became restless.
When he walked into my office in much the same manor he always would; with careful steps and a polite atmosphere I wondered why he arose in me such a pain of the heart.
As he walked to his seat. The homey style sofa that exuded such a image of home I sometimes distained other patients to make use of it because when it all boiled down at the end of the day, I had imagined that sofa to be His sofa and not theirs, not mine.
He takes his seat gingerly as he always does and a polite smile played on his features as part of routine.
This day he spoke more of his thoughts, which didn’t surprise me, something about this routine filled me, thrilled me with something fantastic.
As my rapidly declining attention span wondered aimlessly through the world unbeknown to me, I found it clutching to this Patients words like a starving man to sustenance.
His point of view conflicted the many I had heard in my years as a psychiatrist and perfectly mirrored others. In a sense this boy was all encompassing, all knowing. Or as I thought, as my sanity slowly left me.
I remember when the boy had stopped talking, he licked at his lip as part nervous habit, like many of us have; moistening them before he broke a polite smile.
I never understood why he continuously came to my office, seeking my aging ears and probing my aging brain to comprehend his thoughts.
I never really thought to ask then either, and as the months turned full cycle into a year it still hadn’t donned on me to ask.
Something about the simple mystery it held captivated my attention and ruining that mystery wasn’t something I thought was justified.
On that day he spoke to me of his bus ride to my office; that was all.
The entirety of the time my mind was held captor to his words and thoughts, his phrases, it hadn’t yet donned on my why he would make an appointment for my solace without a word to say.
For the bus ride was what happened during his journey to my increasingly secluded office and not a word was spoken off that solitary, lonely subject until the old grandfather clock struck a tone saying our time was up, that it was time for him to leave.

I can still remember the way his eyes focused and unfocused as he recalled his journey to me.
It was as if his job in this world was to observe us all, but I had never let that sink in just yet in the time I knew him. No, my mind was still slowly leaving me then.
I never questioned him the entire two years he pervaded my office, in that delightfully routine way.
I only just watched him, I enjoyed his softly enthusiastic manors as he spoke of various subjects, and I listened to his soft, careful voice describe to me scenes, not so spectacular, but scenes I wasn’t able to witness being locked away in my office, dealing with patients till I was given my time to hand to Him.
His words were never witty, and they never unfolded in a way that exuded suspense, they were simple but concise and I appreciated that.
His keen eye for detailed only matched for his observation of human emotion. He understood people, and if I was a betting man in my old age now, I would say he knew humanity better than it knew itself.
Course that’s a retrospective notion, at the time when I knew him I could hardly understand what it was that struck me about him, and in the end, I gave up all together.
But in hindsight I now understand what struck me, and I again have to stifle my laughter at my naivety.
When the dust settled on my fragile mind I knew why he came to me, looking for my needy and hungry mind. I swear it was like a starved dog in those days, rabid maybe, or just neglected.

His frame of mind was always open, always seeing and in the end he needed and outlet in which to exude his imagination, his spin on reality was different from many: In some cases it felt unrealistic and stretched but then I realized I had become subject to the worlds naïve notion that we are to extract the Beauty from the Beast when he was merely trying let them coexist.
In my years prior to him I was wondering blind through a world I claimed to know, now on my death bed I’m proud to acknowledge the Beauty in the Beast and nothing seems dull anymore, in fact that is why I’m writing this: My frame of mind has opened and its flooding my world with words.
I realize I don’t care who reads these words, just as my Patient didn’t need an audience to voice his slice of reality to, he just needed one; and that was me.
Now as I feel myself fading I am choosing you.
I do not know who you are, and it doesn’t matter to me in the slightest so long you will lend an ear and listen to these words.
I realize in my final stages of life that my dear beloved Patient, that awkward boy with the two-tone leather shoes and the forever beige pants and overly pinkish skin, the too large of ears and the sandy blonde center part hair that came down to meet them, didn’t need help, or solace or comforting; as I don’t now; he needed a place to hang his frame of mind, however tilted it may be, so that it may flood out.
Just like how he never knew what he was going to say when he sot refuge in my office, just that he was going to say something, and that I was going to hear him.

I leave these final words to no one unparticular.
I’m an old man now; there is no denying that, and I haven’t much left to say and no one to say it to.
Somewhere in my own flood I’m hoping You will find this, my beloved Patient.
I hope you find this perhaps because you are the only person I know anymore, perhaps because you are the only one I think would understand.

Yours truly
The Doctor