Chapter Seven
What I’d thought was true; I sweated out the return of my parents, filled with dread, quietly drinking the nights away. I smoked out the window as the moon made its rounds. I listened to records spin on an archaic player. Charming times really, if you took away the car accidents and the disheartenment that I heard even the house complain of, as it settled a bit at night.
Because of my misdeeds, sadness would steal my mother’s eyes. She would be forced to drag a weight I had shackled to her. I feared that she would endure low looks, meant to injure. Would anyone believe me, if I told them that breaking her heart was going to break mine? When I thought about the chaos I’d created, I chewed over what Dad’s reaction might be when they returned, full of post-vacation, gee-it’s-good-to-be-back sentiment. Relaxed and revitalized, they would walk into their home and learn of the violent and unnatural death of their vehicle and worse, the identity of the murderer. As retribution, I believed there was a good chance that I would be thrashed.
I began to wonder where I would live. Which hotel or rooming house would I feel comfortable in? Which would meet my needs? Once there would I take a second look at myself and discover that the days that had passed had really been years, that I’d become a longstanding denizen, quiet, a guest who always paid on time, whose hair and beard had gone grey. I wondered many things.
What was Grandma thinking of her wild grandson? She might claim she’d known he was a bad seed for a good while, even before he was first slapped by the doctor, cuffed about until he cried and took in great big sad breaths that were foul with fear. When the big monster slapped me I cried and I breathed, just like everyone else. I didn’t know that all the slapping was for my own good; all I knew, as a newborn was that, by nature, life wasn’t fair. It was a transition from solitude, warmth and darkness to high beam chaos. On hospital floors all around you, people are saying their last goodbyes while you breathe for the first time. I wanted to go all the way back to where I was dealt like a poker hand, no one knowing if I was four aces or a fistful of jokers. What was Grandma thinking? She looked at me with sad eyes. She made a poultice and put it on my hand to draw the glass out. When all was said and done, Grandma loved me. The poultice, though it did nothing else, showed me that.
My brother came in and glanced sideways into the living room where I sat. I felt something in my throat go tight as I heard him bound up the stairs and slam his bedroom door. Later he came downstairs and motioned for me to join him in the basement. I followed him, taking the steps two at a time. He turned on the television. Over the noise of Maxwell Smart, he asked me how I was.
“I’ve been better,” I replied, dejectedly.
We looked at each other and snickered a bit. We didn’t think the problem at hand was amusing; rather we were guilty of uneasy laughter, mirth that shook its head and said, “Pal, you’re up the creek.”
We turned our attention to the screen. “You know,” I observed, “I’ve never found this show funny.”
“Neither have I,” Bill offered, “it’s filler, you know, it’s there when there’s nothing else to do or you’re waiting for a good show. Fluff.” He motioned, pansy-like with his hands.
“What would you like to be doing?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, “getting high I guess.”
“You’re into that now, eh?”
“Sometimes.”
“After supper we’ll go for a walk, hmmm?”
“Sure, Carm, if you want to. It’s not going to screw you up is it?”
“No,” I said, suddenly full of self pity, “I can’t get any more messed up.”
If only I’d known how dreadfully wrong I was. If I’d known that I was buying into the fantasy that things couldn’t get worse when they would, I might have distanced myself from everyone I loved for fear of dragging them down further and from what little I called mine, for fear of destroying it.
One night, when we were breaking bread with my Grandparents, I looked at them. What could I say? Granddad was Granddad; he loved Jesus and believed in miracles. God was everywhere if you asked Granddad. Grandma believed in Jesus too. She could be strict, but underneath the sternness, I believed she thought the best of us, that we could do whatever we set our minds to. In all likelihood she had probably been convinced that this was my first and last foray into criminal behaviour. She had probably been kept in the dark as to the severity of matters, was unaware of my meaningless destruction of a perfectly good automobile. The wretched role I had played in creating all that was to transpire, the disappointment, the pain and sometimes the hatred, was something that I’m certain my Grandmother was shielded from.
As we ate that night, I tried to think about my first evil act, but my memory wouldn’t cooperate. Instead, I focused my thoughts on the kindness both of my grandparents had shown me. My mind drifted until suddenly and angrily, my parents popped into my head, unannounced and waiting for answers. At that moment, I happened to be thinking, with as much amusement as decorum would allow, of Gram and her belief in the healing powers of the poultice. I was bowled over by the intrusion of the vivid imagery that had stormed my mind. I excused myself from the table. It seemed as if another dimension had been added to my life, as if some type of telepathy had occurred. I had to slow it all down.
Putting on my boots, I was halfway to the gate when I heard my brother calling me. I kept going, not wanting to look back. I had to be alone and to do this I had to pretend I couldn’t hear. As I set off into that which was largely familiar, I wished my heart wasn’t racing and that the lump in my throat go away.
I walked the back roads in the black onyx night. I walked my disquiet off as best I could. After awhile, I realized I’d left my cigarettes at home and went back to retrieve them. Once there I was laid low by the knowledge that there was absolutely nowhere else where I could lay my head. My grandfather had taken responsibility for me until my parent’s return and wherever he went I was to be. Finding a book, I went to my room and settled in for the night. Shortly before I fell asleep, I came to a complete understanding; the blame would always rest with me for the mess I was in. Any way I looked at it, there was no one else I could hold responsible .
I had been released by the police into the care of my grandfather, who, when the time came, passed me onto my parents, while they were in a state of disbelief. No one knew what to do. I didn’t hear my grandparents leave - they just quietly faded. I wished I could follow suit but that wasn’t possible. After a one-sided discussion, I was given a choice; get help for my mental problems, or get out. I opted for the former. Knowing I would receive the help of a doctor, I suddenly wanted to know why I did mindless things. What I’d find out was that there were no precise answers, even though initially I thought the hospital would be a place where answers grew on trees. Peterborough’s Psychiatric Unit would turn out to be a strange place that didn’t give up its secrets or solutions readily.
By agreeing to get help, I had taken the first step towards a relationship with the dreary profession/industry that attempted to minister to the needs of the insane. Sometimes there seemed to be as much weight on the shoulders of the staff as the patients. Sometimes it seemed to me that staff members liked to take the attention from the people who were ill, almost as if they couldn’t stand being upstaged by their clients. This was distressing and, I hoped, a misperception.
Hospital policy seemed to say: “If treatment doesn’t make them better, at least let it leave them placid. As long as they’re quiet and don’t hurt anyone, at this point that’s the best we can do. We’ll review the case periodically. What else can anyone ask? ” Not exactly the rallying call I wanted to think of as belonging to the mental health care system, particularly when I was being treated by said system, but that’s the way it seemed to be. Many pills and, then, with just a little more water you can swallow your pride.
In no time at all I was a regular outpatient. Most of the people I met had schizophrenia. Though I had received no formal diagnosis, I figured I probably had it too. It was such a common diagnosis. I stood around waiting for my personality to split in half or somehow splinter. While I was waiting around to be diagnosed, I was made to understand by others that, contrary to what I’d come of age believing, I would still be in possession of one, perhaps miserable yet completely singular personality, if schizophrenia was the disease that plagued me.
So began my existence as one who was a step ahead of being certifiable, with a coffee in my hand and cigarettes at the ready. I had a doctor and a therapist. I came equipped with ignorance and with prejudice; holding on to my belief that what had happened to those around me would never happen to me. I may very well have a disease but I certainly wouldn’t be sitting in a hospital at age thirty. I’d get better. Deep down the others were weak. Strength flowed from my wellspring; it had just been momentarily diverted. Until things righted themselves, I thought self-righteously, I would take the time to learn, which was after all the noblest pursuit under the circumstances. I was snooty and foolish and that would make for a foul taste in my mouth when I looked back.
The doctor I had yet to see and the therapist I had already seen too much of. I would rather have had it the other way around, rarely seeing the therapist who was a pain in the ass and seeing the doctor often, as I’d convinced myself that the doctor had some snake oil that would make me well. If one didn’t work we’d try a different snake. The belief that I would be cured would die without too much of a struggle. It wasn’t long before assembly-line psychiatry became obvious to me as the meat market it was. The therapist, for his part, never ceased to be a pain.
The psychiatric hospital wasn’t a very happy place. Possibly this was due to the relatively limited methods of treatment compared with we who were individuals, not one mass of sickness, needing more than a rubberstamped prescription to make us well. In the psychiatric discipline, the resources for tailor made treatment were scant. Yes, we were all different. The inability to treat the individual as a person separate from the herd was part of the problem in successfully treating him or her at all.
One day I sat in a chair, in the institution, smoking. A woman came towards me in a wheelchair, propelling herself with her feet, arms outstretched and her eyes closed.
She stopped in front of me and said, “I’m flying, flying, flying, flying.”
“Not around me,” I replied and using my foot, pushed her backwards.
She started to wail which brought a nurse running on a rescue mission. I was dealt an angry look the intent of which was seemingly to make me wither. Thankfully, I’d already withered enough for one day. The flying woman in a wheelchair was taken away for reassurance or a handful of pills. I didn’t have anything against her really and I was too new to realize that harmless behavior like that was usually tolerated.
Being an outpatient meant that I didn’t have to take part in any lengthy sleepovers at the hospital. I was a little bit intrigued by the place, and, though I wondered what went on there at night, I preferred going home after being shooed out the front door at three o’clock in the afternoon. I did have a fantasy about a certain nurse and the night shift but fantasy was all that would ever put us alone together in a room with the windows steamed over. If I had a dollar for every fantasy a client has had concerning a member of staff, and a few dollars for the converse, I imagine I might buy a small country.
One day my therapist asked me, “When you look at people do they seem to be shrinking at times?”
“Yes, yes, that’s it,” I answered, figuring, ah, what the hell. After that, he asked me if people seemed to be getting larger at times.
“Oh no,” I replied, “only shrinking, they’re shrinking all the time, they never get bigger, no, no.”
I laughed later on when I pictured him trying to figure out the significance of smaller vs. larger, shrinking vs. expansion. I never liked him anyway.
Eventually I found myself in his office and knew he had the goods on me. I had by then seen the psychiatrist a few times. The oaf and the doctor had conferred and now the oaf seemed to be smiling, as though what he was about to do were enjoyable. His eyes burned bright behind his glasses.
I eyed with suspicion the folder that sat on the table between us; after all, my name was on it. I waited for an explanation. He riffled through the papers in the folder, a sheaf full of observations about my behaviour. I was looking out the tiny window though all I could see, as usual, was the upper half of a tree and the sky behind it. I was on edge and when he spoke I jumped. All of a sudden, the wall clock in his office couldn’t have been louder, the sparse light penetrating his dirty pane of glass brighter. He pushed his box of Kleenex closer to me.
“As you know we have to give an account of you to the court.” He set down the file and a sigh of befuddlement escaped his frame. I could almost hear him thinking, how’s this one going to react?
“First,” he began, “I suggest that you get your prescription filled and take it as directed. It’s part of my job to have to tell you that you have schizophrenia. It’s certainly nothing personal, I couldn’t give you the disease if I wanted to and in no way am I made happy by nor do I benefit from your suffering.”
I suppose it all hit me harder than I’d thought it would. I don’t remember much – snatches of riding the bus to the highway. I must have handed in my script when I got home because my father had my pills ready for consumption before supper was on the table. He told me that sometimes you have to do unpleasant things, things that you don’t want to do and that this may be one of them.
“Understand?”
“Yeah, Dad, I get it.”
“Well, you may as well take one now. They’re over there, on the table.”
Thus began life on medication. As I fell asleep that wretched night, I saw hundreds of doctors, all with the face of my therapist. They must be wearing cheap plastic masks, I thought as I drifted into sleep. I wished I were wearing one, not of the therapist, just of anyone who didn’t look like me, a young man known to have schizophrenia.