I'd Like to Buy a Vowel
Learning to laugh before it makes sense
Emma is still in a psychosis.
What has it been now—six weeks? But who’s counting?
I’m as used to this annual occurrence as I am to tax time, which often coincides—pulling out the same fear, the same rationalization, sometimes even the same dissociation. The familiar quiet dread. It’s almost a tradition at this point.
And what exactly is a tradition, anyway—or even a psychosis?
Why does it show up every year as if we were doing an NPR pledge drive? Something you know is coming, unavoidable, a little drawn out, and somehow stretching far longer than you think you can tolerate.
Just switch off the station.
Can I switch off my daughter?
No.
She calls all hours of the day—sometimes 10, 15, 20 times in a 24-hour period—and I find myself both bracing for it and answering anyway.
“Hey, how’ve you been since I talked to you a half hour ago?” I say, lightheartedly.
Time passes differently on the inside, though. The second hand becomes a steady metronome, announcing something impending with no mercy.
Is she doing FaceTime from the behavioral health unit?
Clearly breaking the rules.
But then again, there are no rules in this alternate universe.
I answer her FaceTime call at 6 a.m., still in bed, not fully awake, not fully anything.
And it’s not Emma.
She doesn’t have her phone or earbuds. Instead, a young man with shaggy blond hair and days-old facial hair is staring directly at me as I sit up in bed, fully clothed in pajamas that pass as acceptable daytime wear somewhere between yoga and quiet resignation.
Where the hell is the video off button?
My fingers move clumsily across the screen, not quite landing where I want them to.
And he just keeps staring.
Emma is in the background, following him around like a lost puppy, like she’s tethered to something only she can see.
My sigh is heavy.
I force my brain to reload.
Reset.
Actually do something.
What comes next?
Tell her—like she doesn’t already know—that giving everything away is not a great idea.
Just days ago, I asked, “Where are your shoes?”
She told me she had split her heels running up and down the hallways—karaoke, stripping naked, dancing, protesting every injustice of this world—and apparently, the solution is to give everything away, like we’re at Woodstock in the 70s.
I try logic over and over, as if saying it one more time—more clearly, more slowly—might finally make it land.
“Don’t give away your shoes. You need those. Your heels won’t get better if you keep running on hard floors…”
But she’s not listening anymore. She’s already talking to someone else as they pass by.
How is it that China’s always to blame? I wonder. And the U.S. government? She says this constantly. It’s like an anthem in this secret society—its origin story, its alma mater.
She hasn’t mentioned alien invasions yet, and if the others knew (shhh—you know the others), there would probably be consequences.
And sure—there’s probably some thread of truth in there somewhere—but I have to remind myself:
She’s not here right now.
I say that not as a judgment, but as her mom—someone who has stood this close to it time and time again, who has watched it unfold in real time, who knows what it looks like from the inside out.
And the kid?
No doubt crazy in his own very specific way—the special sauce spread a little extra thick.
He’s talking to Emma, but I can hear him, see him, track him as he moves around the room. I’m watching all of it while Pam watches over my shoulder and then calls the nurse’s station.
“Do you know the nurse?” I ask Pam.
No.
But her name sounds familiar, she says.
She reminds me that the staff is very good.
“These are the most compassionate, caring people—nurses…and really the entire behavioral health team.”
And I believe her.
I’m also quietly grateful that Pam worked in this very unit not long ago—long enough to understand it, long enough to see both sides—because it gives me something to hold onto right now. A foundation of trust, even when Emma has me almost convinced she and the others are being tortured, made to suffer beyond what anyone should tolerate, as she cries into the phone.
Pam eventually left and returned to her tried-and-true law-and-order world.
“I feel like it never stops,” she said. “Nonstop mental health crises at home and at work. It’s too much.”
I can’t blame her.
It’s a lot—for anyone. Especially the caregivers.
Yes.
The crazy can get to you.
From the outside, none of it makes sense, and trying to force it to make sense is exhausting—like watching the same Dateline episode over and over and still hoping for a different ending.
As I write this, a song comes through the speaker—smooth, easy.
“Some people say life is for the living…”
And I laugh a little at the redundancy—or maybe the irony. I use that word carefully, given what we’ve all done to Alanis Morissette over the years.
And we are living—but in a way that feels worn thin around the edges, like something handled too many times.
Some days are harder than others.
Actually, most days are hard.
I’ve been calling it “tempering,” as if life can be stabilized and I can be made stronger from the broken pieces—as Japanese pottery mended with gold, where the cracks are highlighted instead of hidden.
But really, it’s dopamine I keep reaching for.
Sugar. Carbs. Sometimes a little THC with that CBD gummy.
A glass of wine—with “heart health benefits,” of course. Ounces of justification.
And I ride that wave—whatever small lift it gives me—letting it carry me just a little further than yesterday.
God forbid I become a drinker. Or a drugger.
But apparently I have no problem getting fat, as if there’s some dignity in that. At least there’s no law against it—or I’d be as thin as the sliver of hope that sometimes eludes me.
I don’t need any more problems than I already have. No more problems than upsizing my bra every year.
I could write this differently—long and poetic, drawn out until my eyes blur and everything dissolves into something heavy and unmoving.
But that’s not actually fun.
And it doesn’t solve anything.
Instead, I try to find the humor.
Somewhere.
Anywhere.
Every day.
Not to make light of it—but to lighten it, just enough so I can keep carrying what’s been placed on my shoulders, forcing me—quite literally—to straighten my spine.
At 59, there’s something liberating in saying,
“I don’t really care anymore if you mind.”
Just saying. That’s where I am.
So where is the funny story in all of this?
Because this has to be a joke, right?
Why are unfortunate things only funny ten years later—when you’re sitting somewhere calmer, looking back on a version of yourself you barely recognize?
Instead, I choose to tell it now.
To laugh now.
I would like to buy a vowel.
Because nothing on the board makes much sense.
But I can’t afford it.
So I keep spinning.
Sometimes I hit “lose everything”—every ounce of joy, self-respect, energy, gone in a single turn.
And sometimes I hit something better.
A double, maybe.
I don’t know.
I pick up the phone again.
I keep saying it’s going to be okay.
Because it really is.
Good or bad—
It’s all okay.