I met her on the psychiatric unit. I don't remember the year anymore because I've been there so many times I think my memories have gotten blurred together. One of my first memories of her is seeing her tell one of the psychiatrists that he was an idiot and didn't know what he was talking about. The psychiatrist with the southern drawl and haughty demeanor seemed displeased with being ridiculed in front of the entourage of medical students with him.
Sophie was manic. And, a mathematician. A manic mathematician. She had a degree in mathematics and had coauthored at least one paper published in a professional journal.
Yet, there she was on a psychiatric unit with the rest of us.
She had blond wavy hair and a curvaceous body. She was fond of wearing a pink half slip as an outer garment like a skirt instead of as an undergarment as it was intended to be worn.
She didn't pay much attention to me in the day room at first. Maybe she was wary of talking to me for some reason. We didn't have any groups together because she was on the Mood Disorders Track and I was on the Eating Disorder Track. But, eventually we exchanged a few words. We spoke about Haldol. I'd been strongly urged to try it and some other antipsychotic medications as well but didn't want to take it any longer because it made me feel like hell. She comforted me and said she knew what I meant. She'd been injected with Haldol on several occasions against her will.
She mentioned something she called Haldol hazes. I think she was familiar with being surrounded by members of a Code Green response team. I think she was familiar with being put in four-point restraints and injected with drugs. I think she was familiar with the QR (Quiet Room). At least she had her mathematics to keep her mind occupied when strapped down to a table.
Sometimes Sophie would talk about mathematics and physics concepts I knew nothing about.
For example she might mention:
Axiom of choice
Bijective function
Binary code
The electromagnetic spectrum
Fundamental theorem of calculus
Isomorphism
Integral
Integers
Jordan canonical form
Not gates
NP-completeness
Sines and cosines
Spin matrices
The space-time continuum
Twin prime conjecture
Venn diagrams
She might mention the periodic table of elements. She might mention Blaise Pascal or Kurt Gödel. If I'd tried to endear myself to her by talking about the Pythagorean theorem, monomials, binomials, parabolas, and quadratic equations would she have just laughed at me? "Those are mere child's play," she would have said.
She was brilliant. She should have been working at NASA. She should have been an astronaut. But, she didn't need a rocket or a shuttle to travel anyway. She liked the idea of her spirit or psyche taking the form of radio waves and traveling wherever she pleased. I guess she liked the notion of her essence needing no corporeal body in order to travel.
She had her own room on the unit while I was there. They wanted to keep a close watch on her. She got into trouble for writing on her wall. It would be cool to tell you she was writing equations and proofs on the wall in an attempt to unravel the mysteries of the universe. And she may have been. I really don't remember any more. Perhaps she wrote some poetry or drew some pictures on the wall. I just remember the wall being covered in pencil or ink. Perhaps it was just a bunch of scribbling. Maybe she was bored and angry and defiling her wall was simply a big "fuck you" to the powers that be. Either no one was watching her when it happened or they didn't think it warranted a potent response.
I like to imagine her wall being covered in equations and her declaring, "I've solved the twin prime conjecture!"
The hospital wasn't the only place she'd been forced to do things against her will. Out in the real world things had been just as bad. She'd been physically abused and sexually assaulted. She'd been mistreated by others and had her heart broken.
But, I guess she trusted me.
Eventually Sophie developed a crush on me. She wrote me notes and drew pictures for me. She asked me to write her a note. I didn't really want to but finally acquiesced.
I wrote something like:
Sophie,
Maybe one day I will be as cool and interesting as you.
She responded by writing:
You already are cool and interesting my beautiful sweet boy!
Then one day she asked me to wear a ring. It was a plastic ring like one might get from a gumball machine. She wanted me to wear it to signify I was her fiancé. She wanted us to be engaged while we were on the unit.
I didn't really want to wear the ring but she pleaded with me, "Please, just while we're on the unit."
One morning I was sitting in front of the nurses station with my breakfast which had long since went cold. I was feeling like hell and couldn't eat it.
"What's going on?" asked Sophie.
"If you don't eat your meal in a certain amount of time they make you sit with it. Those are the rules for eating disorder patients," I said.
"Oh, I'm sorry babe. That doesn't seem fair," she said.
My therapist noticed Sophie taking an interest in me and asked me about her.
"Oh, it's no big deal. She's just got the hots for me," I said.
"Well you need to get yourself pulled together, kiddo, so you can get out of here and back into the real world. Then you can get the hots for someone," advised my therapist. Even though I was a grown man she still called me kiddo sometimes.
One afternoon my parents paid me a visit on the unit. We sat in the empty dining room of the unit at a table and talked. Sophie noticed us talking in there and cautiously walked in and joined us.
"Are these your parents?" she asked.
"Yes," I replied.
I introduced Sophie and my parents to one another. I think Sophie asked my mom to look at one of her eyes because she claimed there was something unique about it. My mom smiled and took a look.
I guess Sophie wanted to meet the parents of her fiancé.
* * *
A few years earlier I'd been a patient on that same unit. On Friday evenings we often watched a movie. The usual Friday afternoon activity was visiting the Patients' Library which housed books, music, and movies. Usually some of the patients would pick out some DVDs so we'd have a movie to watch that evening. We didn't have any therapy groups on Friday evening and it seemed natural to kick off our weekend with a movie. One of the nursing assistants would even make popcorn. Every eating disorder patient was allowed to have popcorn on Friday night. It's not very pleasant being locked on a psychiatric unit so doing something kind of normal like relaxing and watching a movie was nice.
One Friday evening not long after my arrival on the unit we watched the film A Beautiful Mind based on the life of mathematician John Nash, a genius who also suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.
In the film Nash believes he is working on a classified assignment for the U.S. government to look for hidden patterns in magazines and newspapers to thwart a Soviet plot. It turns out the mysterious agent who recruited Nash only existed in his imagination.
After Nash is committed to a psychiatric facility his wife visits his office at MIT. The walls of the office are covered with magazine and newspaper clippings connected by strings. I was as shocked and horrified as his wife. Nash's troubled mind was seeing patterns where none existed.
I sat in my chair in the day room of the psychiatric unit watching the screen as Nash is forced to undergo insulin shock therapy. It was unsettling. It was strange watching this film about a schizophrenic man while I was literally locked on a psychiatric unit. I was freaked out.
I suppose the film had a bit of a happy ending. John learned to accept and live with his mental illness. He eventually returned to teaching and in 1994 received a Nobel Prize for his revolutionary work.
* * *
I don't recall if I thought of John Nash and his office when I saw what Sophie had done to the wall of her hospital room. I think Sophie got caught up in patterns sometimes like Nash. I believe she was captivated by the mathematical notion of mapping.
In many branches of mathematics, the term map is used to mean a function.
A mapping is a function that is represented by two sets of objects with arrows drawn between them to show the relationships between the objects.
In all mappings, the oval on the left holds values for the domain , and the oval on the right holds values for the codomain.
Did mundane things in her universe take on special meaning? Why did she get carried away with mappings?
But, she was interested in more than just mathematics. She could also talk about sex, drugs, music, and literature. She mentioned drugs like China White, DMT, MDMA, and LSD. I think she'd tried LSD once but was merely interested in the other drugs.
Did she want to use drugs to numb her emotional pain? Or, perhaps she wanted to experience states of consciousness beyond her day-to-day normal experience. Perhaps she believed that certain drugs could help her to become a self-actualized person. On the other hand, maybe she was simply seeking to find pleasure like most other human beings.
She also seemed spiritual which surprised me. I think I expected a mathematician to be very rational and to want proof for everything.
I expected her to say, "I don't believe in anything I can't prove."
I expected her to be an atheist. And yet, I think she considered a higher power like God to be possible. I think Jesus and the holy trinity interested her. She was interested in the concept of chakras and especially the so-called crown chakra.
Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised. Even the mathematical genius Ramanujan said, "An equation for me has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God." It seems that Ramanujan may have believed he was merely a conduit to a higher power.
Moby-Dick was her favorite book. I'm not sure why. Interestingly, some have argued that Moby-Dick is a work awash in mathematical metaphors. Herman Melville, the author, touches upon the so-called tautochrone problem in a passage in the novel.
The tautochrone is a curve such that a ball rolling down the curve takes the same amount of time to reach the bottom, no matter where along the curve it starts. (The name comes from the Greek tauto for same and chrono for time.) It doesn’t sound like such a curve should be possible because balls starting further up the curve have longer to travel. However, balls starting higher also have more potential energy, and so they travel further but faster.
From the novel:
The try-works are planted between the foremast and mainmast, the most roomy part of the deck. The timbers beneath are of a peculiar strength, fitted to sustain the weight of an almost solid mass of brick and mortar, some ten feet by eight square, and five in height. The foundation does not penetrate the deck, but the masonry is firmly secured to the surface by ponderous knees of iron bracing it on all sides, and screwing it down to the timbers. On the flanks it is cased with wood, and at top completely covered by a large, sloping, battened hatchway. Removing this hatch we expose the great try-pots, two in number, and each of several barrels’ capacity. When not in use, they are kept remarkably clean. Sometimes they are polished with soapstone and sand, till they shine within like silver punchbowls. During the night-watches some cynical old sailors will crawl into them and coil themselves away there for a nap. While employed in polishing them—one man in each pot, side by side—many confidential communications are carried on, over the iron lips. It is a place also for profound mathematical meditation. It was in the left hand try-pot of the Pequod, with the soapstone diligently circling round me, that I was first indirectly struck by the remarkable fact, that in geometry all bodies gliding along the cycloid, my soapstone for example, will descend from any point in precisely the same time.
I have no idea whether or not Sophie knew about mathematical allusions in Moby-Dick. Perhaps she simply thought a novel about a big white whale was cool.
I don't recall if we had a chance to say goodbye when I was discharged. I think she gave me some drawings to take with me. She kept the gumball machine ring. I guess I was going to be a free man again in more ways than one. After I was discharged I lived in a care facility for a while and attended a day treatment program in something called the Partial Hospitalization Program (PHP). The patients simply called it partial.
Not too long after my arrival in partial Sophie showed up one day. She too had been discharged. She walked into the small dining room on the unit and sat across from me. She seemed very calm which kind of concerned me. What had they done to the feisty girl I'd met on the unit? Had they finally broken her spirit? Was she drugged up? I was worried about her and yet she didn't seem sedated and genuinely seemed serene.
She was wearing a simple but nice outfit. She was wearing a backpack and carrying a lunch bag. She looked like an innocent school girl ready to go off to school.
We didn't see much of one another because, of course, I had to spend my time with the other eating disorder patients. While attending partial and for a while after being discharged I was living in a care facility (i.e. an institution). Eventually I returned to my apartment.
A few years later I think I may have seen Sophie on a city bus a couple of times. Her hair was shorter and darker and she may have been thinner but I'm sure it was her. I don't know if she recognized me or not. She never made eye contact with me and I didn't want to bother her so I never attempted to talk to her.
I'm not sure where Sophie is now. Perhaps she has perfected time travel. Or, perhaps she has perfected astral projection allowing her spirit to leave her physical body when she pleases so her consciousness can travel throughout the universe. Or, perhaps she's even evolved into an energy being like from a sci-fi movie and dispensed with the need to have a body altogether. Maybe she has visited other universes and other dimensions.
Maybe she discovered a way to download her consciousness to the internet. She has achieved the so-called singularity. Human and machine have become one. Her consciousness can travel the world on fiber-optic cables. Her consciousness could possibly be uploaded and saved in digital form, loaded onto a spaceship, and then downloaded or "resurrected" when the spaceship lands on a another planet.
I don't really like the idea of Sophie being transported in digital form only to be resurrected and placed in some sort of artificial body in some galaxy far away. However, we could still possibly communicate even over vast distances. Sophie mentioned a piece of sci-fi technology called the Ansible that allows spaceships and human colonies that are lightyears apart to communicate instantaneously, thus allowing intergalactic culture and government to exist. Scientists might actually be able to create such technology one day. We may have an intergalactic internet someday.
Then again Sophie might be leading a mundane but satisfying life as a math teacher and a mother.
Maybe she likes the TV show Numbers. The series follows FBI Special Agent Don Eppes and his brother Charlie Eppes, a college mathematics professor and prodigy, who helps Don solve crimes for the FBI.
Maybe she likes the TV show The Big Bang Theory, a sitcom that follows the lives of geeky physicists, astrophysicists, aerospace engineers, neuroscientists, and microbiologists.
Maybe she even likes to celebrate National Pi Day. Pi Day is an annual celebration of the mathematical constant π. Pi is the ratio of the circumference of any circle to the diameter of that circle. Regardless of the circle's size, this ratio will always equal pi. Pi Day is observed on March 14 since 3, 1, and 4 are the first three significant digits of π. In decimal form, the value of pi is approximately 3.14. Some people like to observe Pi Day by eating pie.
* * *
I have thought a lot about time travel and parallel universes myself. The multiverse theory states that there are an infinite number of universes coexisting with ours on parallel dimensional planes. In each of these alternate universes the reality is different from our own, sometimes only slightly and sometimes quite radically. The point is every possible eventuality exists.
Maybe in other universes I made different decisions. Maybe an alternate universe exists where I am healthy and happy. Perhaps I'm even rich and famous. Can I contact and learn from these other duplicate versions of myself? Can I travel through time somehow and live a different life in a universe just like this one but where I am healthy and happy? A universe where I am a better son, brother, lover, employee, and citizen?
But, I know I'll just have to do my best and be grateful for the life I have in this universe. And, I suppose that's all Sophie can do as well. We can't square a circle, right Sophie? We can't do the impossible. Thank God Sophie was there to support me and inspire me at a time when I wasn't sure I would survive.
I recall that she found the song "99 Red Balloons" ("99 Luftballons") interesting. I think she mainly got carried away thinking about the number 99 and what it might represent more so than being interested in the lyrics. Nonetheless, I heard the English-language version recently and thought of her especially when I heard the last verse. Balloons can be fragile. And yet, balloons can be surprisingly strong even when buffeted by strong winds and can float away to a better place.
Ninety-nine dreams I have had
In every one a red balloon
It’s all over and I’m standing pretty
In this dust that was a city
If I could find a souvenir
Just to prove the world was here
And here is a red balloon
I think of you, and let it go
Wherever Sophie is and whatever she is doing now, I hope she no longer finds herself sleeping or screaming under Haldol hazes. I hope the days of abuse and assault are over. I hope she found true love. Perhaps she's found a way to make order out of chaos in her beautiful mind.
