ERA CAUSHI Letra e Marilyn Monroe

Director : Driada Dervishi
Film Editing:Elisa Shahini & Uendi Cerma
Sound : Julian Shyti
July 2 ,2020

Marylin Monroe letter to psychiatrist Ralf Greenson
March 1, 1961

Just now when I looked out the hospital window where the snow had covered everything suddenly everything is kind of muted a green. The grass, shabby evergreen bushes — though the trees give me a little hope — the desolate bare branches promising maybe there will be spring and maybe they promise hope.

As I started to write this letter about four quiet tears had fallen. I don’t know quite why.

Last night I was awake all night again. Sometimes I wonder what the night time is for. It almost doesn’t exist for me — it all seems like one long, long horrible day.

There was no empathy at Payne-Whitney — it had a very bad effect — they asked me after putting me in a “cell” (I mean cement blocks and all) for very disturbed depressed patients (except I felt I was in some kind of prison for a crime I hadn’t committed. The inhumanity there I found archaic. They asked me why I wasn’t happy there (everything was under lock and key; things like electric lights, dresser drawers, bathrooms, closets, bars concealed on the windows — the doors have windows so patients can be visible all the time, also, the violence and markings still remain on the walls from former patients). I answered: “Well, I’d have to be nuts if I like it here” then there screaming women in their cells — I mean they screamed out when life was unbearable I guess — at times like this I felt an available psychiatrist should have talked to them. Perhaps to alleviate even temporarily their misery and pain. I think they (the doctors) might learn something even — but all are only interested in something from the books they studied — I was surprised because they already know that. Maybe from some live suffering human being they could discover more — I had the feeling they looked more for discipline and that they let their patients go after the patients have “given up”. They asked me to mingle with the patients... They said: “You could sew or play checkers, even cards and maybe knit”. These things were furthest from my mind. They asked me why I felt I was “different” (from the other patients I guess) so I decided if they were really that stupid I must give them a very simple answer so I said: “I just am”.

The first day I did “mingle” with a patient. She asked me why I looked so sad and suggested I could call a friend and perhaps not be so lonely. I told her that they had told me that there wasn’t a phone on that floor. She looked shocked and shaken and said “I’ll take you to the phone” — while I waited in line for my turn for the use of the phone I observed a guard (since he had on a grey knit uniform) as I approached the phone he straight-armed the phone and said very sternly: “You can’t use the phone”.

The girl that told me about the phone seemed such a pathetic and vague creature. She told me after the straight-arming “I didn’t know they would do that”. Then she said “I’m here because of my mental condition — I have cut my throat several times and slashed my wrists” –she said either three or four times.

Oh, well, men are climbing to the moon but they don’t seem interested in the beating human heart. …..