The Diabolic Labyrinth by Cameron Carr - HTML preview

Chapter Forty-Three

I only saw Marie a few times after that. I was starting to settle into a condition that will one day be easily and humanely remedied, that will be short lived and stigma free. I was starting to lose my grip. I was once again entering psychosis. This was to be my last foray into that flabbergasting state of being. It was so frustrating to be that way. Way at the back of your mind there is a very small voice telling you that you took a wrong turn a while back, that things aren’t the way you’re seeing them.

“Get help,” it says and then the voice is swallowed up by garish delusions that make your heart beat too fast and fill you with strange explanations for everything curious under the sun.

Yes, I was going strange one last time. No longer domestic, a little wild, and somehow unable to see it. All too soon I would finally “understand”, that is I would be illumined by delusion and I would know the reason behind the rhyme. I would mourn for all the years I had been kept in the dark. I once again would come of age – I would know that the guy named Bob that I had grown up with, ‘my brother’, really was Jesus. My father was a United State senator and he had discarded my mother. I was being chased by a mind control cult. I was an angel; I was a demon, a movie star, rock star, and a cat. I was a tree and a stone imbedded in a wall. I was rich and I was poor, cold, hungry, drunk and sober. Bags of garbage were filled with treasure. Yes, I was rich beyond words and waited for a man with a briefcase to walk up to me and end the abject poverty that had hold of me. One minute I was a king the next I was a toothless, 16th century commoner, a stereotype of everything base, vulgar and disgusting to those who really were royal. Oh, how they hated me, the pretender to the throne, an imposter who nonetheless had a following. License plates could give me the lay of the urban landscape, informing me as to which streets were sympathetic to someone who had all of a sudden time traveled from the 16th century to the 20th,century courtesy of God. Of course, there were others like me. If I walked up to the man on the corner and borrowed a dollar, I would be given instructions on how to meet them. I was to be murdered. I was a woman. I was a genius and a fool. I lived alternatively in heaven and hell. I was a world famous painter. I communed with the dead and all the demons in hell loved me because I dared to. I was Satan’s ashtray and I saw Jesus in the donut shop smoking a cigarette. I wasn’t sick. Those who said I was only wanted to harm me. On and on it went, thankfully, for the last time. I would turn and face my illness when this bout was over.

From where I eventually found myself, on a cot in the storeroom of a rooming house, with a month’s worth of medication in my system, I would accept the strong presence of schizophrenia in my life. I would admit that I needed medication and from then until now, a period of twenty-five years, I have never considered missing even one day’s dose. If I forget my pills, as sometimes happens, I do not double up on my dose, but go back to my regular schedule. These days, I’m as close to a cure as I can hope to be and I have to say that the key to my about-face was acceptance.

Acceptance of one’s plight can be difficult and painful. Be it a job you have to stick with to put food on the table, a straying wife or, in my case, a chronic sickness that’s always lurking in the bushes, acceptance can be a difficult and disagreeable task.

I’ve written with my heart on my sleeve on matters I believe I know something about. The act of recording some of the curious experiences I had trouble letting go of, has allowed me to do just that. To a degree I’ve forgotten. We all have our methods; whether we search them out or just happen upon them, we all have a means to escape, to forgive ourselves and move on. No one method is better than any other, as long as you don’t injure others in your journey towards acceptance of a person with an existence as valuable as any.

No matter how hard it seems no one should give mental illness the right to run their life. I regret the years I wasted, the giving in that was my daily lot in life. When I understood that I possessed ways unique to me with which I could fight throwing my life away, I realized that my unusual vantage point is but part of the whole that makes me unique. This uniqueness was something I learned to work around and then became something to celebrate. My impediment is only a part of who I choose to be.

If you are mentally ill, you can and should reward yourself for even the smallest steps forward – getting out of bed while it’s still morning, taking your medicine as prescribed, keeping an appointment when you really feel just too tired to go or encouraging another who is having a hard time. Eventually the small things add up and you may find yourself in a state where you’recounting your blessings rather than cursing your rotten luck.

There is always someone who has it worse than we do. We know this because we hear about them all the time. Anyone who believes they are the only person who suffers in this life has to have been trapped under a rock and had absolutely no contact with the world around them, had no one with whom to converse barring the odd worm or a bug with legs too numerous to count.

If you feel isolated and alone, should you choose to come out from beneath the rock that is distinctly yours, you’ll find that with new medicines being employed these days and even better ones on the way, your suffering is a barrier you can quite possibly get around and do so to a fair degree. You owe it to yourself, to those you love, and to those who love and care for you, to try, to aim at wellness and all the benefits that go with it.

As for me, I believe I have greatly bettered my odds of accepting the way things are in my head and going forward by ignoring the counsel that I was given at the age of eighteen, the age of my diagnosis.

When I was diagnosed I was counseled that it would be best for all if I had little concern for romantic entanglement. If I wished to be all that I could be, I would be fairly wise to concern myself with my own plight and subscribe to Playboy. Above all, I must keep my existence as uncluttered as possible. Of course, not all advice is good and we all have the right to choose, to trust our intuition, particularly if it is behaving sensibly, and to take to heart words that seem right and are encouraging, for we may quite possibly need them along the way.

So, ignoring the advice I was given, I became a slut who dated whenever possible, even though I was clearly told I shouldn’t. In some ways my obstructer was right. I had my heart broken more than once, but the last time I checked that was part of life, or at least a distinct possibility! Why should I be exempt? Not only did I date, I actually committed an unthinkably normal and in my case, almost unnatural act. I got hitched. Sometimes one should be a little careful when it comes to whom one accepts advice and encouragement from! This being said, my wife is in no way a trophy in the sense that she is much more than walking proof that I can do things that those in charge told me I couldn’t.

I love my wife and she loves me. It’s that simple. I’m human and so is Sue; we’re both endowed with the capacity to give and receive love, to enjoy tenderness and intimacy. Why should we be denied these great and wonderful silver linings lurking about the dark clouds that hover ever near?

Sue suffers with the same illness that I do. In less than a year we will celebrate our twenty-second anniversary. We anticipate sharing old age and its aches and pains with one another and I would expect, being laid to rest beside each other. Still, as my wife will point out, sometimes with eagerness and liveliness that makes me a mite uncomfortable, marriage for us is not always easy.

Thanks to modern medicine, we only have to deal with muted symptoms of our illnesses as opposed to being warehoused in an institution in a state of permanent and utter derangement. We are spared from being unable to make sense of anything. Still, sometimes neither one of us feels too good; our respective illnesses can make life miserable, especially when they fight with one another.

Of course, there was no certificate attached to our marriage license granting us immunity from other more mundane problems of matrimony, those nasty moments that are common to any marriage, no matter how well they may be hidden. We argue and fight at times; we feel misunderstood by the other, we get mad. We’ve yelled and acted otherwise poorly, we’ve graciously apologized and we’ve swallowed our pride for the sake of making up.

Sometimes, because we both have leanings that can make life seem bleak and pointless, it can seem like we’re alone. When we look around realistically it often seems we really only have each other to turn to for compassion, that there’s only one warm body close at hand that understands, that really tries to care and will issue the hug we are often in no small need of.

We have to possess, on some level, a measure of selflessness, we have to listen and bite our tongues while our own sickness is biting us, we must try to put the other first and in so doing sometimes we end up feeling better ourselves, and, sometimes not. Our willingness thus far, to put the other first, especially when they are out of sorts, may help our marriage work where others unfortunately fail. This is all very well and good, but, every now and then, like anyone else, we have to clear the air when we realize it’s taken on the static of a week’s worth of electronic heat in a biting cold snap in January and reeks of a thousand cigarettes smoked out of boredom and indifference.

Sue was diagnosed eons ago as having schizophrenia. She has a hard time on dark days. She is a kind and giving person who wears bright, vibrant colours. She’s not given to being judgmental, nor is she a selfish person. She prays and usually fights her battles quietly. Though she wears lively colours, I think she looks great in darker shades and in this, she will indulge me from time to time. Her hearing has faded over the years, possibly because she’s heard all of my stories more than once.

Our beginnings are a bit strange and from my view, a bit, tongue-in-cheek funny.Really, I don’t like having fun at the expense of another, but sometimes that’s just the way things slip into place.

I had known the guy who first introduced me to my wife-to-be and considered him, in my more benevolent moments, to be an oddball acquaintance, someone whose life happened to overlap with mine. It was unavoidable; we ran in some of the same circles. He’d been bullying me for ages; I never knew what to expect from the guy, he’d be your long lost pal one day and convinced that you had been scandalizing him behind his back the next. He even went so far as to try to make me leave a bar one night, simply enough, telling me to, “Get out.” Of course, I refused. When he and his buds got up to shoot pool I drained their beers and then I left, in search of some bushes to sleep behind, for I was hopelessly homeless. Though he was a bit volatile for my tastes, through no conscious effort he burrowed out a little piece of my heart that he and only he can occupy. If he knew he was domiciled within me, rent-free, with an endless lease he would, I’m quite sure, try to give two months notice and leave with a snarl. But, I’ll always know him as the guy who introduced me to my Sue, so, I’m stuck with him.

Sue was attached to Randolph when we all got together for the first time, attached but not seeming very happy about it. He was shameful towards her; always sure she was running off to be with someone else as soon as he looked the other way and so forth. In the end she had to tell him, in a nice way, to take a hike.

When we met on the street a few months later and conversed, the only thing we had in common was our acquaintanceship with Randolph. With him as an unwitting springboard, not to mention the butt of a few jokes, we became friends.

Sue was living in a group home around the corner from the mildly squalid, warmish and homey little bachelor apartment in which I lived. In the dead of winter we would get together at my place. She would arrive, cheeks red from the cold though the walk was a short one, boots off at the door, rubbing her hands together and smiling.

“Cold, isn’t it,” I would offer as I went to put the coffee on. “Not really,” she’d reply and I would remark inwardly that she possessed a hearty soul.

In the beginning I valued the friendship that sprang up between us and I believe she did as well. Neither of us was really looking for anything more than companionship, a friend who would brighten the restless depression of short winter days and dwarf the long, coal-black nights when the even the whispering cold sought refuge, seeping through any crevice, chink or crack available, always searching in and around my windows and door.

For my part, I had virtually given up on romantic entanglements of any stripe. When I found myself becoming attracted to Sue, I tried to douse the flame that was a maddening trick candle from the novelty store; every time I thought I’d extinguished it, it reappeared. As we grew to know each other better my feelings became stronger and any attempt to squelch them became more like dousing a fire with gas.

We grew closer and eventually we went from being friends to being great friends who were always together and, as is known to happen you could say we became even friendlier, closer – the finest of friends you could say. We jumped feet first into romance and became an item.

There was a guy I knew who I lent fifty bucks to when he was, apparently, hard up. I shook my head and laughed when I saw him, a few hours later, stagger by my place with a case of twelve bottles of beer, not the first for him and his buddies I guessed by the way he swayed and floundered. A few days later when I met him in the park he mentioned he’d have the ten dollars he owed me within a few days. I laughed a bit and let him off the hook for the money. He had then insisted repeatedly, as he slapped me on the back and shook my hand, that I was good people.

Later, as being one for whom money means little, I chuckled and thought, Maybe I’ve found something with Sue that could stand the test of time, something lasting, maybe the Good People Fairy is favouring me. Be she fuzzy or striped, perhaps she makes it her business to reward “Good People.” At any rate, I suppose I’d fallen in love again as I often felt during those days as though I had located a field of sweet, four leaf clover and was perpetually reclining therein, at peace with the happy buzzing of the bees, without a care in the world.

Friendship to relationship to partnership, this natural progression eventually led us as if it were benevolently boxing our ears, to sit across from one another and talk about what it would be like if we lived together. It was actually a short-lived discussion, there wasn’t much to say; it had already been said. We were becoming as serious as my lost fifty bucks would have been to a miser, pleasantly devoted to one another. We two wanted to occupy one space, one dwelling, we wanted to fall asleep together and wake up seeing the other when we first opened our eyes on a new day full of possibilities. So that is what we did and we’ve never lived apart since.

The night before Sue moved into my bachelor apartment I lay on my couch and couldn’t help, once again, remembering the words of authority: “Forget about dating. The chances of finding a compatible mate are slim for you and it would not be worth your while to look.”

Whoever it was that said that, well, that’s irrelevant, though it is a bit disconcerting as he was a mental health professional. What I saw was that he’d been dead wrong. I was living proof that he was wrong, that men with schizophrenia could give and receive love. Hell of a thing to tell a teenager, I thought as I reclined in contemplation and I gave the provider of such advice, who actually gets paid for doing so, the Bronx cheer.

The next day I sat and waited, wondering what the future held. Would we continue to get along or would we tire of one another, get on each other’s nerves, squabble over the last scrap of food in the fridge and whose turn it was to do the dishes? Was she a runaround? I didn’t think so, but you never knew. I wanted to protect myself, but from what? She’d shown me nothing but kindness; she’d been gentle and caring.

I helped her with her green suitcase that had the look of one that had seen a few miles and the few boxes that held her earthly goods as we began a life together that I don’t think either of us dreamed would be going strong more than twenty years later, most of it lived as husband and wife.

Walking to the Beer Store with my friend Stirling was pleasant. Spring, having laughingly chased winter away with a flexible green sapling was everywhere, and I could reach into my pocket and finger the money there, enough to pay for all the beer you and your cronies could possibly drink in a night. Stir and his girlfriend were going to put a few back with Sue and me. I was in a good mood, bubbling over with unselfishness and other pleasant feelings. I was in love and the beer was on me, even though I knew that drinking with my friend would leave my pockets feeling pretty light the next day, that is to say, he had a wonderful tolerance, the more he drank the more laid back and kindly he became. It’s hard to not cater to a guy like that, you just want to make sure he’s always holding a cold one and bending his elbow.

As we sauntered I told him that, though it had only been four months or so, I’d finally, just when I was really about to give up, found the one I’d been waiting for. It was crystal clear to me. I was happy and wound tight in giddiness that made me want to propose in a hurry. I was excited and frightened at the same time. Though I was still in possession of my senses, sometimes I couldn’t tell elation from fear, the physical symptoms of each were strangely similar.

I was escorted from a room in the back of the church along with my best man who happened to be my younger brother, Bill. While we had waited to be thus led and every reason to flee danced in my head, I’d stared at the Bible for a while before realizing that it was upside down. I was getting antsy and a wee bit tense.

Before long we were standing in front of the crowded church and I couldn’t for the life of me stop looking around. I was tormenting myself, more nervous than I’d ever been. Still I fully believed that I was entering into something that would serve me very well. My eyes were white, blue and black, in perpetual motion. I wish now that I could have relaxed enough to enjoy it all, every moment.

As we watched the video the next day, my brother-in-law kindly remarked that I looked as though I was expecting the cops to bust in at any time.

It seemed as though I was left up front making a spectacle of myself for an unusually long period of time. Then my bride walked towards me, began to make her way down the aisle. Everything seemed designed to heighten my anxiety, though having never been married before I really had no yardstick to measure by. I have since seen videos of men who fainted at the alter so I suppose I was a tolerable groom. I managed to stay on my pins anyways. Maybe I should have tried to entertain the crowd when they had seemed to be restless and made bored by my unease; maybe I could have done some break dancing or sang Amazing Grace while drinking a big glass of one intoxicant or another, but I didn’t and wouldn’t had I been given the opportunity. I wasn’t there to entertain – all that was expected of me on that day was that I show up in a tuxedo that fit and, for the most part, stay out of the way. I wish I could do it again and someday I might. I was too wound up to appreciate what a lovely bride Susan was.

We walked out of the church hurriedly. There was no rice but people were clapping.

“I’m dying for a smoke,” Sue confessed, “should I?”

“Do whatever you like,” I answered, removing a pack from my pocket. I gave her a cigarette, lit it and then lit one for myself. “I mean, what are they going to do, annul the marriage because we were too full of nicotine to know what we were doing?”

Sue giggled, which was one thing I appreciated – she always seemed to get my lame jokes.

At the reception, my brother Bill was required to deliver a short speech.

“I remember Carm, the athlete,” he said, speaking with emotion, “always ready to take one for the team. He was a good athlete in his time. I remember Carmen the musician, a consummate musician in his day.” What, I thought, did I die? Did I become a part of history when the hospital first swallowed me?

When we arrived at the honeymoon suite that had been booked for us, we were both tired. I uncorked the champagne only to find out that Sue wasn’t fond of it. So, while this person who seemed suddenly brand new to me and who I’d vowed to always cherish slept, I watched late night TV with the volume low and drank champagne out of a bottle. Later, I kissed my bride softly on the cheek and smiled. I wiped a tear from my eye and wearing a smile that was now more than tender I congratulated myself, for I was looking forward to sharing the rest of my life with someone I loved.It was something I was told could never happen

In the morning, I woke and looked at the ring on my finger. I smiled a different, thoughtful smile. I was no longer a “schizophrenic” nor was Sue. I was someone’s husband and Sue was a wife. A man and a woman united in love.