"One of my greatest teachers was a man picking through the trash of arrogant attitudes and college degrees."

Larissa Kaye Batten (LLbeara@aol.com) writes "Soul Food," a weekly column for SpiritSite.com.  

Larissa is a prolific writer whose work has been featured in several publications.

Somehow I assumed that a wealthy background and an Ivy League education guaranteed me a free ticket into the wonderful world of the morally intelligent and a pocketful of privileges and peaceful living.

Why I ever thought a piece of paper stating I had received a Bachelor’s of Arts in English from the University of Pennsylvania would provide me with a Master’s in Life is beyond me. My university might have had an abundance of green Ivy climbing up its ancient walls, but pretty leaves hardly lend themselves to pretty living.

Had I faced up to the triviality of a nice degree in the real world, perhaps I wouldn’t have been so horrified and surprised when I landed myself on a psychiatric ward less than a decade after my college graduation.

A psychiatric ward! And that was not all. Two emergency rooms in a week, a small-town psychiatric ward for a week, another hospital for five weeks, disability, welfare, food stamps, Charity Care, and a whopping, life-threatening eating disorder.

To top it all off, I had to ask permission to use the bathroom in the eating disorders unit. The bathroom stalls were door-less, as none of the staff could trust what eating disorders patients were likely to do with their food in the bathroom. And guess what? The intern who took me to the bathroom one day was a student at the University of Pennsylvania. So much for any pride I might have had left.

Of all the experiences I had during this time period, nothing to me was more frightening and devastating to me than being on a psychiatric ward.

I literally felt my life was at an end. I did not believe I would hold onto my sanity, particularly in the environment to which I had voluntarily admitted myself in my dire need for help.

Shuffling around in paper slippers, talking to people who didn’t know what they were saying, being too overwhelmed to talk to someone on the telephone, dropping to my knees at the bars of the window to pray and beg for help, thinking I was hearing voices, eating on dirty tables with no awareness of when I would leave – these were previously unimaginable experiences for me.

I think the biggest mistake we make in life is when we become convinced that hellish experiences are without merit. My life was in pieces in that hospital. I had no faith whatsoever in the medical care in this small-town medical facility, but my higher power sent me a gift beyond measure.

No number of university degrees could have given me an experience I had as a result of being on the psychiatric ward.

I was disgusted to learn one night that I had to attend a group of mentally ill people to discuss how we all felt at the time. I had been put on what for me was a high dose of medication, and had no interest in sitting in an upright position.

I had no choice. I attended the group. I shared with the group how I felt, and I will never forget what happened next.

A man in the group looked across the circle of people at me and said, "You are not alone."

I do not know what I would have done had I not heard those words that night. But the words were nothing compared with what happened several years later. The words came alive for me.

I had been given the gift of recovery, and I was walking down the street one day in my new recovery shoes to go somewhere.

Then I saw something that I previously would not have looked at in the way I did that day. I saw a man in broad daylight picking through the trash. He was scavenging for something he obviously needed.

Remember, I have an Ivy League education. I had learned not to stop for strangers. I had learned to associate with fellow intelligent, well dressed people.

Nobody had ever suggested I stop to talk to a stranger picking through the trash.

But that day, I did. This stranger was my friend. It was the very same man who had told me a few years earlier that I was not alone.

I stopped to talk to this stranger, my friend.

I asked him how he was. He said that he had just come out of the hospital because he had AIDS now.

Few times in my life have I been more touched by a stranger.

Let me tell you something. I spent a good many years of my life eating delicious, expensive foods with people my own age with somewhat similar backgrounds. I was too good for people who picked around in the trash. They could eat as much as they wanted of my food once I flicked it in the trash. I was an Ivy League girl who actually prided herself in not having an arrogant attitude.

I am not sure that I had much of anything besides arrogance during my college years. I am grateful for my degree the same way I am grateful for a good meal or a warm blanket.

But I am not special. I am human. And not only am I human, but I am not alone. Not only am I not alone, but I have strangers who are friends.

One of my greatest teachers was a man picking through the trash of arrogant attitudes and college degrees.

Somewhere in my belongings, I have a piece of paper that states where I went to college.

I don’t recall a single professor who taught me what my friend did.

He taught me that I am not alone. He taught me that we are all human. We are all the same. We are all a part of the same whole. I am no different than he, and he is no different than I.

I do not have a piece of paper that says I graduated from the psychiatric ward.

But I have a heart and soul that know the places I have been.

Wherever my friend is today, whether he is in the hospital, in heaven, or picking through trash, I hope he knows what he gave me.

- Larissa Kaye Batten

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