On the beach, a treatment plan

I'm on the beach now, taking a few weeks off from driving up to the office, spending too much time indoors, listening, grunting, mumbling, a few slight of hand tricks, you know, the usual.

Today, I was standing in the water, up to my knees, just kind of taking it slow. A friend comes up to talk to me. Friends are important in keeping the mind going. I like friends, at least a few of them.

She begins to tell me about the daughter of a friend of hers. The kid is nineteen, anorexic, depressed, sometimes lost and suicidal. "Probably a cutter, too" I added, just to show that I was listening. Yep, she's that too.

So, I was thinking, happy to be here in the water, happy that she's not on my list.

Then my friend began to describe how this young woman's parents were trying to get her into a hospital, but there are problems with the insurance, problems with the screening, problems with the girl. She has already been on and off six kinds of medication. None really helped.

What is the best plan for her? my friend asked. I answered in my summertime, mostly ironic way, so that my friend thought I was being my usual oppositional self --except that I really wasn't.

What I said was -- get her the hell away from doctors and hospitals and medicines. Tell her that she is better, and that she had to go get a job and take care of herself. Don't call her sick anymore. The label is doom. It like Wittgenstein said, the meaning is caused by the language. If you call her that, then everyone thinks she's that, and then she is that. So don't call her that.

Of course, my friend hadn't read much Wittgenstein, so she thought I was nuts. I feel badly for the young woman, but she is in the system. Unless she gets up and runs away, she's fucked.