Scratch
001
“You are diagnosed with schizophrenia,” the social worker says and hands me a sheet of paper to sign. I see that I am also diagnosed with “post-traumatic stress disorder.” I read over the discharge page, signed it, and gave it to her. We both stand up and leave. I am unsure of what to do now. A smile almost escaped my lips as she read the diagnosis because I knew, I knew my fate. The diagnosis was no surprise, but the uncomfortable feelings afterwards were.
What am I supposed to do now?
Will people still love me?
Does this mean I will become violent?
Being given a schizophrenia diagnosis by a brazen social worker whom you have never met inside a psychiatric hospital is probably not the best way for the news to be delivered. I have often wondered how many other schizophrenia diagnoses she handed out that day. It is probably the most common way for the news to be delivered. I’m sure the general public envisions the presence of families and hand holding and crying– the truth is… that is not the truth.
Later, in group, to my defiance or perhaps my detriment, I mentioned that I had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Even inside a locked psychiatric hospital, people are still afraid of schizophrenics. I only had a few hours left in the hospital, but I forced myself to go down fighting. If that was what that was. I was no Randle McMurphy, but I may have, in the smallest sense, started separating schizophrenia from my identity.
002
I’m a real lunatic, you know
I’ve been locked up for my lunacy.
I was turned around by a waxing crescent and led into a King Tide, and as I circled my fate, I fell into a keyhole the size of a pin prick.
I was jolted back to life by the sea. Waves frail, collapsing upon themselves to make an unsteady froth of white and green and brown.
I hear the ocean follows the moon, too. We’re both just two lunatics trying to get by.
003
I remember it was the fall before everything started. Before it started. I was placed on administrative leave at work for erratic behavior, and what was meant to be a two-week to six-week stint ended up in five months for me in a manic episode that seemed to pass under the nose of everyone who knew me. I would wake up every morning at four-thirty to get ready and walk to the Starbucks that opened at five. There, I would work on my masterpiece at the time– a graphic novel about a girl with epilepsy who could turn her brain waves into usable electricity. A special power in a world where everything had gone dark. I had been diagnosed with epilepsy the summer before, and I suppose I was looking for a little control over the situation. Looking for a life where I was less the erratic employee and more the hero of my own story.
That was the fall when it all came around.
Sometimes I’d be doing the dishes or taking a shower, and I would find myself in very long conversations. “Everyone has shower thoughts,” I would think to myself. I’d catch myself wanting to extend these conversations when I was out with friends or on public transportation. At home, I would speak out loud, but in public, I had to learn to keep them inside my head. I felt as if I was bursting at the seams. These thoughts were impossible to ignore. So I shut myself in. They felt far superior to any other conversations I was having, anyway.
I eventually went back to work in the spring, and that was a total nightmare. I quit in the summer.
I was back on my own again, with my thoughts. They occupied hours of my time. I remember once looking at the clock and noticing that I had been talking to myself for six hours and not feeling bothered by that. My thoughts had developed a personality. They were anthropomorphized. His name was Chris. Chris Evans. I was hearing the voice of Chris Evans.
004
AM
Aripiprazole (30mg)
Lamotrigine (50mg)
Clonazepam (1mg)
Omeprazole (40mg)
PM
Zonisamide (600mg)
Lamotrigine (300mg)
Lithium Carbonate (900mg)
Quetiapine (200mg)
Quetiapine (50mg)
Clonazepam (1mg)
Benadryl (50mg)
005
I fell in love in a manic episode. I was two weeks out of my first psychiatric stay, not yet diagnosed with schizophrenia, and I met someone in the late fall. I was new to antipsychotics, and the world seemed bright and winding. Everything was full of possibilities. My partner knew next to nothing about severe mental health conditions and took my intensity as a personality trait. We traveled all over the state, along the coast, and often stayed in his beach house. We fell together like the ocean and the moon.
The problem with mania is that there is a comedown. That comedown started happening in a myriad of ways in the spring. It mostly started affecting my general self-care and personal hygiene. When I had been a hair-done, make-up wearing, dressed-to-the-nines partner, I became one who could barely take a shower. Additionally, the antipsychotics caused significant weight gain. I gained nearly twice my body weight in under a year.
I began to rely on him for everything. I had a drinking problem that was growing out of control, and my manic spending had me maxed out on all my credit cards. He was financially supporting me, even buying me toilet paper when I was too broke to afford it.
Through all of this, I was under the impression that our relationship was headed in an upward trajectory. While he was not always an A+ partner, he put in a lot of work to balance out my mental illness, whether he was aware of what he was doing or not. When it crashed, it crashed hard. But that is what happens when you fall in love in manic episodes.
006
To: GardnerP@SeattlePsychosisPsychologists.Com
From: melanie.cole@mail.com
Subject: Please help!!!
Dear Dr. Gardner,
My name is Melanie Cole, and I am writing to you today in hopes that you may be taking new patients. I am desperate to find a psychologist in the Seattle area and would be willing to drive an hour or more to meet in person if that is what it takes. Cost is not prohibitive, and I will pay out of pocket, but if you take my insurance, that’s great too. I am diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and have been unable to find a psychologist who will treat me. Please, Dr. Gardner, this is my last chance. I have been in and out of therapy since I was fifteen years old, so I am very familiar with all the different modalities. I am also very interested in being treated by you because you and your practice treat people who have experienced psychosis. I believe we could be a good fit to work together. As I said, I am desperate and will do whatever I need to do to see if we might get an appointment set. Please feel free to call or email me as soon as you can.
Sincerely, Sincerely, Sincerely,
Melanie Cole
007
When I think about it, living life with schizophrenia is like looking at life through a kaleidoscope. Except there’s a big scraaaaaaaaaaaaatch on the lens. Have you ever looked at a kaleidoscope with a big scraaaaaaaaaaaaatch on its lens? Everything is dull. You’re left with nothing but what’s inside your head. Just the voices arguing with you and the thoughts playing pickleball with old poems you wrote in grade school. There’s no use in getting out of bed or your chair or off your porch or wherever to brush your teeth or wash your hair or take a shit because everything’s dull. The TV swears to you that JFK is running for re-election as you take your pills and lie down to sleep at night, while you hope those neighbors of yours aren't drilling holes in your walls again. You’ll catch them next time. scraaaaaaaaaaaaatch. Just another dull moment.
008
Nurse: What makes you think you’re having a psychotic episode?
Me: I looked up at the ceiling, and the universe was there, and then it shattered into two and floated away.
Nurse: What happened after that?
Me: Whispers all around me. The universe was telling me all its secrets. I knew everything. It was so loud.
Nurse: So what did you do?
Me: I got a knife.
Nurse: Do you have that knife now?
Me: No.
Nurse: Where is the knife?
Me: It’s at my house.
Nurse: What did you do with the knife?
Me: I was going to kill myself, but I stopped myself.
Nurse: How did you stop yourself?
Me: I ran to the mirror to look at my eyes.
Nurse: Why did you do that?
Me: To see if I was still me.
Nurse: …And?
Me: I was not me.
Nurse: So what did you do then?
Me: I ran across the park to the hospital.
009
What does it feel like to be in recovery? There is never really a recovery. There’s no cure for this thing. But eventually, with the right support, you’ll find the right meds and your life will get back on track. Have you ever had a tiny scritch on your glasses? You take them off, blow on them, thinking it’s an eyelash or a piece of dust, but then realize it’s a tiny scritch? That’s what it feels like. I can fearmonger and say that every day I wait for psychosis to come around the corner, and, on some days, that’s true, but most days, I take my meds and live my life, and that is the greatest freedom of all.
I don’t have an enormous amount to say about growing or learning. What I have learned is that the veil of sanity is far thinner than most of us think it is. Once you cross to the other side, you are irrevocably changed.
