Chapter Eight
I’ve become a pickled egg immersed in psychiatric brine, I thought; I live in a big jar. I was struggling with the uneasy feeling that people were seeing past my defenses, seeing through what I’d done and what I’d subsequently become. Few there were that had any sympathy. As I illegally sat in the bar, I morbidly likened my defenses to the see-through glass of the pickling jar that sat to my left on the bar’s top. I was an example of what not to become, I was exposed, a big, bare egg behind glass.
I was growing exhausted with freedom that was condition encrusted - everywhere I went I was reminded that I was bound for jail. A big part of me just wanted to get it over with. I was weary of the bargain basement freedom that had been granted to me by the law, regardless of whether it was justified or not.
Walking the streets I saw lawyers looking at me, running their cold tongues over their icy lips, checking their watches, rubbing their hands in expectation until they were red, like underdone steak. My days were numbered and of negligible quality. The judge himself would soon be fishing in the pickle jar, business-like, with his sleeve rolled to his elbow.He would have me detained in a literal sense, housed in an enclosure that was the real thing. I would be moved from feeling constrained by the limitations imposed on me by law, to looking at physical restrictions in the form of steel bars.
Knowing that it wouldn’t be long until I was fenced in and possibly at the mercy of some type of jailhouse hierarchal system, I didn’t want to waste time mincing words. So, I outdid myself trying to show my therapist I had understood him, that having been informed of the doctor’s diagnosis I didn’t want or need to be told twice. When he had told me of my diagnosis, the therapist had told me that my life had changed forever.
“You’ve been struck down by schizophrenia,” he explained.
It was chronic. His advice was to get used to it, to make the best of it. I’d probably never have much in the way of girlfriends and I really shouldn’t bother with the whole idea of marriage.
“Just too tricky,” he said.
“Maybe I’ll turn gay,” I suggested, facetiously.
He shrugged his shoulders and turned away as if to say, “Whatever gets you through the night.” His reaction made me wonder about him.
He didn’t explain much else to me. Behind the grave looks, medical jargon and near ceremonial atmosphere, he managed to pin a label on my coat. It said, “Schizophrenic” and would so stubbornly resist my attempts to smudge and render it unreadable thatall I could do was to try to put it from my mind.
When I was given the bad news, I believed we were caught up in a serious process. The therapist had some type of familiarity with what was happening and I thought that maybe that was why he was not as grave as I. I soon realized, to my dismay, that he was at a loss when it came to having compassion. He seemed to savour his position of being the bearer of bad news and in so doing, squandered any faith I had left in him.
On the very day I found out the lousy truth, when it seemed life was showing me its ass and telling me to pucker up, my father pressed me to start taking the pills. I took one and said to my father that I would get used to them as best I could.
He seemed to be comfortable with what was happening. Perhaps he felt vindicated. For years he’d thought there was something wrong with my mind; earlier in my life he’d championed the idea that I should see a shrink. It turned out he had been right all along and now had the opinion of one backing him up. Dad seemed to figure the tag I’d been given was appropriate, though he had no real way of knowing such a thing. Any label that defined and kept me in check was good. After all, I heard him thinking, the doctor should know what he was talking about, shouldn’t he?
I was choking on it all. I wanted my life back, minus the poking and prodding, the growing stack of paper that followed me around, a collection of fact and speculation that dealt with my case. Since when had I become a case?
Those who processed me from office to office put on airs when they dealt with me and I was new enough to the system that I was personally offended. I’d never seen anything like it and it was maddening - people staring, talking over you and then ignoring you. I once tried to use the phone on a receptionist’s desk and was fascinated when I realized that she found me so hideous that she denied access and threatened to call security. All I’d wanted to do was make a phone call.
The only explanation I received when I suggested I was being ill-used was that I was paranoid. Then I would think, “Don’t you get it, Carmen? You are, henceforth, a paranoid schizophrenic.”
Suddenly I would doubt my ability to understand the workings of life and myself and eventually I’d concede that I must be paranoid. It seemed I was destined to disassemble in increments, stopping at each crisis long enough to get my bearings as best I could and then to continue.
The early morning sun shone and painted a bright, fresh light through the window and on the wall of my room. I was still taking up space in my parent’s home, breathing their air, eating their food. The day was past when my role in life had been officially changed, when the medical profession had given me its appropriate tag. I was sitting stiffly in a straight-backed chair and rubbing my eyes. When I opened them they came to rest on the bottle of brown, sweet tasting pills, tablets to be taken three times daily, tablets that were to make me better.
I still believed that the onus was on me to fix what I’d become. It wouldn’t be easy. I was dealing with a force that could often turn its victim’s hands against himself. Anti-psychotic medication was being bragged up as the definitive antidote, my chemical savior. I wasn’t entirely sure.
Often, during those early days, when I thought about having schizophrenia for the rest of my natural life, I was sickened. Sometimes I swore I could hear the blood drain from my face. Fortunately, I had yet to consider hurting myself as a solution.
Then there were times when I downplayed the gravity of what was happening to me, telling myself I’d seen the worst of it. I was hopeful that I could defeat mental illness – after all, wasn’t it all in your head? Still, when it came down to it, I usually knew that my downward spiral had just begun and would be as a snowball rolling downhill in sticky snow.
I could hear my father in the shower singing, quite possibly for the first time since he’d come home and found me, morose and camped on his property under a sinister cloud of confusion. The smell of bacon and coffee caught my attention.
“Come indulge, eat, drink, for you know not what today may bring. Good or bad at least you’ll be full.”
I wished I knew where the voice in my head had come from, the one that, shortly after I’d started taking medication, was always saying stupid things like that. I didn’t want to believe it, but I supposed that it was now my voice, belonging to the new, improved, medicated me.
I made my way carefully down the stairs, fearful lest I miss a step and fall. The days of getting out of bed refreshed and ready for the day were gone, replaced by a dazed feeling that made navigating the steps an accomplishment. Once in the kitchen I poured a coffee and lit the day’s first cigarette. Ignoring my mother’s greeting of good morning, I went outside and listened to the world gearing up for another day.
It seemed that all of humanity was busy. Everywhere, people were involved in activities that gave them a sense of purpose. Everyone was eager to grapple with whatever the day held for them and just by grappling they knew they’d win, for trying was the only prerequisite for victory. I wrestled with feelings of uselessness.
“Look, look,” a voice in my head said. I looked and saw one of the neighborhood lads drive by on his way to work. I’d heard that he’d just bought himself a car and was soon to be married. He was a guy I knew from high school, though not well. I didn’t begrudge him his happiness and I was grateful that I was spared from being in too thick with the green monster, envy. How the voice in my head knew that I should look at that particular car was a mystery.
It was early and I could hear splashing in the bathroom sink which meant my father had finished shaving and was washing his face. He was then whistling which meant he was ready for toil and would be downstairs for his breakfast like clockwork, in a few moments.
My father loved to work, so much so that he’d work even when he was sick. If he had a cold he’d eat an onion sandwich, swallow some aspirin, put his cough syrup in his pocket and against my mother’s sound judgment, go forth to earn his daily bread. If the roads were too snowy for most and my brothers and I were celebrating our school’s closure for the day, he’d navigate the storm, slowly but surely. My father was an excellent driver; he was a crab in its shell during storms when most gladly stayed home from work and hoped the beer store was going to open as usual.
On that warmish morning, I sat outside smoking and chewing on bitterness, chaotic ideas racing in my mind, thoughts about running away from all that seemed to define me. Later when I thought back on my situation, I believed it was completely normal to have considered flight.
I felt like one of life’s jilted lovers. All that I’d believed was vital and rewarding had discarded me, leaving only shreds of dignity and self worth. So, I would wonder, pettishly, why should I hang around? Why should I do what I’m told? Why should I continue taking part in the outpatient program at the psychiatric hospital? It might be more therapeutic to forsake the whole thing, to only accept help that came from a doctor’s prescription pad.
That day was not a stormy one; rather it was a day where my father would easily find his way to work. Most people will probably think this is a beautiful day, I thought, full of venom, stabbing my cigarette into the well-cluttered ashtray.
I could easily imagine mothers with strollers complimenting the weather, “Oh, it’s just a beautiful day, isn’t it?”
Some guy asks another, “Did you order this weather? You must have friends in high places.”
Lovers walk hand in hand. Someone’s secretary takes a long lunch and upon hurrying back to work finds her boss has gone for the day. What a beautiful day.
I heaved a sigh of self-pity. I would have liked to enjoy the sun too, but it would burn me as I now had heightened photosensitivity. I’d become more prone to heat stroke than others. My skin would turn an unnatural red if exposed to sunlight for a half hour or so - side effects of the brown, sweet tasting pills. What a beautiful day it was.
“Bye, Dad.”
“Bye, Son. Don’t forget to take your pills.”
“But, of course,” I replied and he nodded, not realizing that I was mocking him, the pills and everything else in the little farce that I had no choice but to lay claim to as my life. I shook my head and looked at the ground. In spite of the way the cards lay, I laughed.
I think Dad might really have believed the brown pills would restore me. I’d take a job, maybe get married and give him a couple of grandchildren. I had to hand it to him though; he had both sides of the fence neatly covered. If I got better that would be great and he’d be happy for me, but if I didn’t, well, he had always maintained that I was crazy anyways. It didn’t matter how you flipped the coin he came up a winner, smelling sweeter than a ripe field of clover.
Sitting there I grew certain I would never regain my health; it wasn’t going to happen. The brown pills took you from one state of pointlessness to another. I would never work, never marry or be anyone’s father. I was eighteen and due to a sickness that coincidentally seemed to bring out some of the worst characteristics others harboured, I was looking at a life of idleness and loneliness.
Robins strutted around on the back lawn, pausing here and there to pick for worms. The leaves were on the trees and though we were well into spring, some still seemed young and light green; they spoke briefly of the beauty of new life. For a moment, I felt the whisper of the wind gracing my ears, making a happy sound after the long, cold winter.
“Hey.” Someone spoke to me from the gate but when I looked, no one was there.
The day of reckoning on which I was to be sentenced was beyond my control, sneaking up on me like one intending to harm me with nary a sound to betray him.
Justice was a big mystery. When all was said and done, I thought, those like me get away with very little in the way of lawlessness, little is tolerated. But where was my justice? If I was mentally ill when I wrecked the car, how legally responsible was I? Was I to receive a jail sentence as some type of lesson in tough love? Whose fingers were in the pie?
So it was that in no time the dreaded morning arrived, the one when I would hear what the judge thought of my misdeeds. I hoped that I wouldn’t cringe or flinch too visibly. It was fittingly a day of somber tone, gray with steadily falling raindrops that, in my state, suggested taunting applause as they struck the ground.
I dressed in gray pants with a blue dress shirt and jacket. I wasn’t dressing for the other lawbreakers. I was dressing for his Honour. I was freshly shorn and cleanly shaven. Whatever way the sentencing goes, I figured, at least I’ll look like I can handle it.
On that strange day when one human would have the wherewithal to lock me in a cage and give the key to another, Mom took her seat in the courtroom and watched the proceedings. Knowing that she was there, backing me up and still loving me, made me stand a little straighter.
It’s odd and touching when a tired mother stands by her child while others have given up. This unshakable loyalty of a mother for her offspring is beautiful though peculiar in cases where society has formed an opinion and its verdict is all but known. Mothers are the most likely to continue loving though, even when their loved ones are guilty as sin.
When I was led from the courtroom that day I couldn’t look at my mother. I was headed for the holding cell. It was over. I was sentenced to three months, two with good behavior. Someone advised me to apply for the halfway house as soon as we got to the jail.
We all smoked while we waited, though smoking wasn’t allowed in that area of the building.Someone had smuggled tobacco in. There’s always someone breaking the rules, I thought, while blowing smoke rings.
I prayed that I’d finally learned a lesson. If I thought of Mom I was convicted, knew the error of my ways and was momentarily and sharply guilty.Maybe in the future, if I thought of Mom when I considered violating a law, I could shake my head and try my hand at something constructive instead.