John’s Schizophrenia
I volunteer at the food closet. So many people help me and support me. It’s good for my soul and it makes me feel good to help them. It’s the first job I’ve had since college, and things have been good. Lately, though, the paranoia has crept in.
It all revolved around nametags. Patrick my friend had a nametag, and so did Kristen, John, and Gloria. They all had name tags but me. I thought this was a secret message.
We hate you John.
We don’t want you around John.
We think you’re an awful person John.
It’s not right, but I can’t help it. It really devastates me. This kind of stuff happens to me all the time.
Let’s not get him a name tag, we’re going to fire him anyways. What’s the point?
I’ll probably be the first person to ever get fired from a volunteer position at a food bank.
My friend Anne is doing ok, even though she’s getting so old. She hunches over her walker as she comes in again to collect her food. “This is such a good sandwich.” She says as she tries to bite through the PB&J sandwich. Her gums slide across the soft bread, slowly tugging to separate off chunks of the sandwich. Her health used to be better before she got sick too. Now she doesn’t have teeth and has a hard time eating the turkey sandwiches.
“Are you feeling better today?” I ask.
“I’m still on my Depakote.”
“You hear voices sometimes still?”
“Yeah. How's yours doing?”
“Good. I’m an even keel lately. There’s always the paranoia but I learn how to deal.”
She looks groggy, breathing heavy with a blank stare. She reaches for her french fries with a shaky hand, barely able to extend for them. I hand them to her and help her eat. She’s been out of it since she started the Depakote, and it’s been hard to comfort her. I wish there was more I could do for her. It feels so good to make her smile. I try to tell her a joke.
“I’m worried about you Anne, you’re so groggy. Let’s call your doctor.”
“It happens all the time”
“When did it start?”
“When I came back from the hospital.”
“I can’t understand, I’m really worried about you. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Today’s my 30th birthday, and I wonder if I’m ever going to get better. The gray hair edging around my temples in a steady stream back to my low ponytail reminds me of my younger rebellious years. It’s one of those days where I don’t feel like talking to anyone. One of those days where I just don’t think I can handle it. I think I’ll read. I look at the page and try to put the words together but they become jumbled, making no sense. I forgot to take the Clozapine last night.
I’ve been struggling with this beast for nine years now. That’s what I call Schizophrenia. The doctors call it a mental illness, but to me, it feels more like a monster that’s taken over my entire body and my life, not just my thoughts. I remember my schizophrenic friend Ed said “Yeah when you get to be fifty the symptoms ease up.” Then he laughs “Only twenty years to go.”
Being around lots of people is very hard for me. I feel restless like I have to pace. I have an age-old fear that people are out to get me and mess with my mind like there’s a secret agenda that everyone is interconnected and dropping clues to each other. A glance here, a wink there- it’s evil. Evil is after me. I have morning dread, a paranoid feeling. This makes it difficult to reach out to others and to make friends.
When I was at my brother’s house last week, his friend Patrick cracked a joke about me.
“So Jimmy does your doctor hook you up with lots of drugs or does he make you do therapy?”
“No therapy, just Clozapine”
“Hey Yo! That sounds like a lot more fun” He says with a sly smirk.
Everybody in the room laughed. I think he was making fun of me. My brother Mark was laughing the loudest and agreeing with him. I talked to my little sister Sally about it the next day.
“Of course Mark likes you.”
“Yeah sure, but I just know he likes Patrick better.”
“You know that’s not true Jimmy, he’s your brother.”
The doctor said my weight gain is temporary and a normal result of the medication. For the first three months after I started Clozapine I would wake up in the middle of the night with a craving for salty, sweet, and savory sustenance. I imagined I was a vampire with uncontrollable bloodthirst. If I didn’t get my blood, my soul would shrivel like a dry grape scorched by the sun. I call it the beast, this thing that lives inside of me and controls me sometimes. It’s taken up residence, paying the rent with persistent tormenting. If I don’t feed it, it torments me the next day with more paranoia. I remember one night sitting in front of the fridge with six slices of pizza, devouring them as fast as I could. I was so hungry I didn’t even bother to heat them up in the microwave or take the food back to my bedroom. I just sat down right on the floor in front of the fridge. The pizza tasted so much better than usual. It was like my taste buds had been amplified, giving me a heightened sense of pleasure with every bite. The smell of my body odor from the night sweats didn’t even affect the taste of the pizza which had dominated all of my senses. That was the start of my meal that night, and the nights to come over the next three months. I don’t recall most of my nightly feasts as I drifted in and out of the half-awake stupor being driven by the beast. I was just the passenger of this ship with no access to the wheel. The beast must want me to get fat so he can be lazy. Or maybe he’s just trying to get back at me for taking this medication which muzzles his mouth during the day.
The most troubling part of my illness is the violent imagery. I don’t think I would hurt anybody, I know I don’t want to at least — but I scare myself. I don’t tell anyone about these images, I don’t want to scare everyone away. The violent imagery is really awful. Sometimes I think I’m evil. Why would I fantasize about this sort of stuff? It’s not right but I can’t help it. When my mind is wrapped up in this imagery I can’t do anything. I was chopping vegetables at my mom’s house last night. As soon as I picked up the knife I had an image of me cutting my mother. I don’t want to hurt her. I threw down the knife and ran into the closet, locking myself away from her.
The only way I’ve managed this symptom is through artwork. I paint my feelings onto the canvas. It gives me relief when the brush strokes the canvas and makes me forget about the violent images. I paint the images in violent strokes of appalling color and meaningless shapes.
I had a revelation one day and realized the entire purpose of my art is to search for God. There’s such mystery in art and in the creative process. I was thinking about enigma in my art and God flashed in my head. God is the ultimate enigma, but how do you portray God as an enigma? He is full of such wonder and awe.
My hobby of artwork has paid off though. NPR’s morning exhibition showcased my artwork when they did a special on people with mental illness who do art. I thought the special was about art, but then I realized it was about people with mental illness when they filmed me more than my artwork. The show was on in a famous New York Museum. I was standing there as they took pictures of me in front of my work. The photographer shoots and shoots and shoots again. The flashes were like lightning bolts being fried into my brain. I looked down to protect my brain from the effects. He took pictures from above, then from below. Then he put the camera about three inches from my face. He’s here to examine me, to study me as a specimen for his research, I thought. He doesn’t care about the art at all. I’m such a fool.
The artwork stands alone as I am on display for his examination. I try to tell him the print took 106 hours, but the words wouldn’t come out. I try to say that I set a goal to have a print done by the time I was 30 and I finished three months early. My mouth wouldn’t move. I put my hand over my beard but then I realize I don’t know what’s happening anymore. I wonder why am I doing this, was this their plan the entire time, to set me up to come and stand here so they could take pictures of me for their damned examination.
I try to look at the man but I can’t. I feel like an empty vessel. I see nothing but shapes. When he flashes the camera the shapes move. I’m still frozen stiff. My body is numb, and I exist but not here. My being is locked in a bright room with clear windows. Birds outside diving at the glass. They crash into it, their heads turning to mush as they fall hopelessly to the earth below.
“Can you look up?”
All I can do is focus on the shapes. Maybe I’ll use them for my next painting.
It is a glorious day to celebrate art. The show separating truth from the darkness. I gave a speech on the triumph over the tragedy of mental illness. My cousin Katrina helped me be able to get through my words without being nervous. She said to talk slower than normal.
“If you can do it, look up from your paper,” she’d said.
“No, I don’t need to do that,” I said, sounding stubbornly helpless.
She reminded me of why I’m doing this. “This art show proves that even though we have mental obstacles, we can strive to accomplish our dreams.”
I thought Katrina was manipulating me, using me to further her own career. She doesn’t care anything about me.
She only cares about her own film career.
She’s lying to me and using to me.
It gets in my head and festers in there.
“It’s not true it’s not true it’s not true it’s not true,” I tell the voices.
I pace and march while I say it. I say it over and over again and pull my hair. There are times when I can’t work and it feels awful. It’s terrible. I don’t have much hope and I know it. I walk the sidewalks staring at the ground. The fresh air feels good to my soul. I need to lighten up but I don’t know how.
Katrina has a good heart, her smile lights up my day because it’s something I don’t know how to do. Since we were kids she jokes constantly and never takes anything too seriously. She teases me about finding a girlfriend on the way back to mom’s house.
“I can’t just go up to a girl and tell her I want to jump her bones”
“Well, when was the last time you washed your hair?”
“I don’t know”
“John!!”
We are a competitive family and my father is most competitive. He has the most money in the family and the nicest house. I was trying to find housing for a long time, but it’s hard for people with mental illness to find permanent housing. I went to the city council meeting to sign a form demanding better housing for us, but then they called me up to make a statement and I was so nervous I forgot the reason I signed the form in the first place. I need my independence. I need my solitude. Even if that means I have to do my own laundry and my own dishes. One day I’m going to find a nice place with my SSI benefits, but for now, I’m living with Dad and Susan, my step-mom in the San Francisco Bay area. They live in a nice house on the beach. It’s brown pinewood with a deck overlooking the sunset on the ocean.
“Do you want one or two potatoes?” She asks dad during dinner.
“Two is fine.”
She serves me 1 potato with steak and green beans. She never asked me if I wanted one or two potatoes. Why? She must think I’m overweight.
I bet she’s been convincing my dad not to let me come over because she’s afraid I’ll eat too much food. He just eats too much, and how did he gain all that weight anyways?
Dad looks down and then watches me while I contemplate eating. Maybe I won’t ask him to come on that fishing trip with me next year because he’s going to eat all the fish. I can hear his thoughts. I look up and realize Dad and Susan are done eating. I haven’t even taken a bite because I’ve been staring at the food for the past twenty minutes.
“Are you done, sweety?” Mom asks as she takes my plate.
“Yeah.”
“You’re a lot more lucid,” Dad says as we walk on the beach after dinner. “You think?” I ask. “Yeah. You are more in touch with what’s going on it seems. I’m proud of you, son.” He tosses the football at me and I miss. It must be funny because he starts laughing. I chase after the ball so I can throw it back to him as fast as possible. It’s not often I get to hang out with my dad.
He’s been so busy with his law firm and his step-kids who are attending USC in Los Angeles. I know he didn’t understand what was happening inside my brain when I first got sick in college. He told me “just man up and finish it you only have one year left.” I explained “Dad I can’t go to class. You don’t understand. Everyone thinks I’m going to fail. Everyone in my class is trying to make me fail. I can’t take my tests because I know they’re staring at me, waiting for me to make a mistake.”
At the beginning of my illness, I didn’t know how to deal with these thoughts as I do now. I sat in my basement apartment on the weekends pacing and drinking coffee, thinking about how my classmates were out making plots against me. I knew that’s why they didn’t ask me to study anymore. In my freshman year, I had so many friends. We went out and drank beer every weekend at the pubs downtown. They tried to hook me up on dates with the freshman girls, but it never worked. My best friend Mike told the girls I was shy and they often called me “cute” and “adorable.”
Sharon was the first girl I ever dated in college. We were inseparable. She loved my shy personality and bragged to her friends and family that I was an “inner genius.” She was even there for me for a while when I started to get sick. The tipping point, though, was when I told her about the elves. I never saw her again after that. As I became more and more paranoid, I didn’t know who to trust anymore. I started staying in my apartment longer and longer periods of time because I became afraid to be around people. One night when I was having a beer during an old episode of Jeopardy, the elf started playing Jeopardy with me. He appeared when the Jeopardy theme song would play. He came dancing and playing his fiddle, merry-making in the middle of my living room! “I am Eldston, High Elf of Camebryn. I am here to show you the wisdom of the elves.” We became best friends right away and he visited me every time Jeopardy was on. He challenged me to games and he was so hard to beat. He’d get most of the answers before me. The only ones I would get were the ones having to do with pop culture. He said this was because elves had no interest in American pop culture. He explained the elves had a culture all their own, a magical, whimsical way of loving and playing which left no room for the American way.
We’d watch episode after episode, and he’d always win. Eldston had a cunningness to him, an innocent but clever way he would draw me in to make me think he didn’t know the answer. Then…BAAM! He’d shout out with the answer just as it was on the tip of my tongue. It’s like he was in my mind and knew right when I was about to say the answer. Then when the show was over he disappeared. “Farewell!” He said, “Until next time!” He shouted gleefully. He told me he came to play because in Camebryn the elves didn’t believe in game shows. It was rude to insult others by making them look dumb. “So you come here to make me look dumb!” I yelled one day while the beer dribbled off my beard. “Well, you do such a good job of doing that on your own!” He replied. We would banter back and forth during the commercials, but then when the questions started it was serious business. One day during a commercial he told me “You know you’d probably beat me if you had some more beer.” “Challenge accepted,” I said. Then one day we made it into a drinking game. Every time I got a question wrong I had to take a shot of Jack Daniels. It was fun, but then I’d wake up the next day with a splitting headache, cursing the elf. After two weeks of this game, Sharon finally came over to investigate. “Why haven’t you answered any of my phone calls! I haven’t seen you in class for weeks!” She said.
I would have paid more attention to her attacks on me if she hadn’t interrupted our game which I found quite rude. “Can’t you see we’re playing Jeopardy?” I yelled. “Who?” She said. “Me and Eldstan of Camebryn.”
So it was a big surprise to dad when I told him I couldn’t finish my last year of college. He had spent so much money on my tuition and rent. He even paid for my cell phone and groceries. He believed in me and told me I’d be a great investment banker one day. I did have a way with numbers which is strange because they say if you’re good with numbers you’re left-brained and if you’re left-brained you’re not artistic. But the funny thing was I had talents for both. I loved solving complex math problems and I loved creating art. I think the reason I like math so much was that I could use my creativity to solve calculus problems. By developing new ways to think was like developing new paintings on a canvas. Building neural pathways to make new thought processes and create newness. It was the same, whether in math or in art. Although the math was challenging for me, I just didn’t care about making money for people and that’s where I started to lose interest in banking. What was the purpose of understanding the intricacies of the world economy? The ebb and flow of the market were like the ebb and flow of the waves on the beach, only much less peaceful and less predictable.
I like predictability. I like being able to control my situation. When the smartest investment bankers in the world couldn’t predict the market enough to make significant gains for their clients, then what was the purpose? Also, even if I had a magical eye for the rise and fall of the market, what was the point? Life to me is more than making money. Life is about finding happiness and meaning in everything that I do.
“What is the point?” I asked dad one day. “Why am I doing this?”
“You need a job, Johnny, that’s how life works. You need to be able to build a life one day, and support your family.”
I thought about what he said for a long time. If building a life meant that life is built from money, then that means your life is only worth the amount of money you have.
“Is that what I’ve been created for? To make lots of money and to build a big house? And if so then at the end of my life this means I’ve accomplished my purpose?” I looked out at the ocean as we stood on the porch that day. The stormy clouds settled in the distance, hiding the setting sun. The silver lining in the clouds indicated I should try to see the positive in the situation. So I imagined myself in a cozy beach house with the perfect wife, the perfect children, and all the money in the world. I was not motivated. I simply could not grasp how people are motivated by these things.
I started to feel sick in the bottom of my stomach as I realized I didn’t even know what happiness was or how to define it. Dad was also looking out into the ocean, trying to find words. I wondered if he regretted his life of success because as I looked at him a feeling of pity came over me. For the first time in my life, I felt sorry for this man I’d always admired.
“You’re so smart, and I don’t have all the answers.” He muttered. “I wish I could tell you what happiness really is, but I don’t know if I’ve ever really had it either.” He smirks “So I guess we’re all just a bunch of hopeless fools, trying to figure things out.” He laughed and I saw the humor in what he said. As one of the most successful lawyers in San Francisco, at 65 years old, he was just as clueless as me.
That was four years ago, right after my first mental breakdown. I was released from the hospital with my new medication psych meds and sent home. It was the first time my dad realized I really did have a serious problem. He finally came to terms with it and accepted that I would never be the man he wanted me to be. Since then we’ve grown close, and he’s accepted me the way I am, all of me. He loves the good and the bad of me. From my paranoia to my days of pacing the house, to my days of creating extraordinary works of art from the imagination I’m only able to tap into on rare occasions.
It’s like I’m living in a dark room with a tiny skylight window. Once a day, when the sun lines up just right, the beaming rays of light will shine into my soul and light up the darkest places of my mind. When my mind comes to life like this I’m unstoppable. I’m a mad inventor who can see the product and I know I only have so much time to create. That’s when I go to my studio and work until the light passes. I’ll be there for hours at a time without taking my eyes off my work. My mind is clear. There’s no paranoia, and nothing holding me back. It’s like my confidence soars on the back of an eagle, diving through the sky, down toward the mountains unafraid. The darting eyes of the eagle are precise, hunting for food. They have laser focus guide the wings and spirit of the eagle, cutting through the crisp air toward the lake surrounded by birchwood. From 100 meters away the eagle spots the fish.
It pulls in its wings, dives toward the water, and…SPLASH!!! That splash is my crash. Right when I’m about to finish, I crash.
It’s okay though because even though the darkness is here, there will be another chance tomorrow. There will be more light and another fish. Until then I might have to face my fears again, but I will be back.
I throw the football back at my dad. The years of working at the firm have aged him but in a graceful way. The deep smile lines fit so naturally with his tan skin and thick wavy gray-streaked hair. He reminds you of a retired pro-surfer, a wise man the young ones go-to for life advice and tips on how to pick up girls. I bet when mom had me he thought I would grow up and be as cool as him, a ladies' man. He thought I would be his little prodigy, taking over the family business and having dinners with important people over, sipping wine and eating cheese mulling over the best investments. I wonder if he thinks about the son he never had, what he would have been like.
“I’m so glad you’re back,” he says as he tosses the football back at me. “I’ve missed you. Life is just not the same when you’re not around.” I wonder what he means by this.
“Well you know Joe and I haven’t been getting along so well. He didn’t like my staying up all night.” I thought about how Joe had told me almost every night that I was too loud at night after he went to bed.
I told him I have to sing while I paint, that’s how I keep the juices flowing. But really I think he wanted me to fail at my artwork. He knew I had the art show coming up and if he could make me miss the deadline to finish my art then I’d look like a fool at the art show. Dad just nodded and said “It’s alright, it’s hard to live with another person who’s not family. They just don’t love you the same. You’re always welcome here.” I thought about that for a long time as we walked back to the house. I really believe my dad wants me here.
