One of my earliest delusions was that hearing train crossings was an invitation for me to kill myself on the tracks. That solving crosswords with violent implements as words to search for was a devilish reckoning.
The second big influence on my psychology was strong color associations. Sky and fuchsia for Luke; a black majority paired with the finest strings of deep scarlet for his Li-Ning sweatshirt. White was purity; yellow was suicide.
If I were only a little more erudite. Colors are as deep and fleeting and beautiful as can be; not to be pinned down by mere moments of association.
I tyrannized the hallway, pacing in the manner only someone truly mad could do. “I’m going to walk these hallways, over and over, until something changes. The universe is only a series of variables by which something is bound to fall.” I felt for invisible exits along the walls, convinced that my sight was failing me. That I was in a maze through which I would find my true love.
An elderly black woman cried out into the corridor. “You stop that, you’re freaking me out.”
A young girl with boyish looks tried to stop me by standing in my way. I stopped only centimeters from her blazing blue eyes. “woah.”
If I had to explain psychosis, it would be an unrelenting acceptance that every day and every situation becomes a life-or-death escape room.
“Is it better to be wise, or the fool? The fool.” I stated into the dark room, as I crumbled the pills the nurse had forced in my hands. I spilled the cup of water she gave me onto the bed and the floor, reminiscent of “The Miracle Worker,” feeling the wetness blind.
I have no doubt that some counselors relished in the exploitative relationships between staff and patient. I have never so badly wanted to punch some faces, despite my average inert nature. “Red dog,” one woman spat in my face. Perhaps it meant something to her but I felt unaffected and disconnected from this statement.
As if the torture wasn’t enough: the next moments broke all expectations of mental suffering I had ever even conceived of.
Put simply: Pavlovian key-jingling.
The jingling would often be followed by social interaction, dispensing of medication, or meals. The conditioning was inescapable.
Add to the fact that some other patients would stand in my doorway, breathing at the same time as me while I rested to make me feel fatalistic.
I even had a machine inside me by which I fought to maintain control over my body. Friends would call me and try to recover my authentic inner self, using even Spanish to trick “the machine.”
“Machine, do you love me?” José asked.
I blabbered back an insensible combination of Spanish sounds and English.
I have to say: I’ve been hospitalized fourteen times now, to date. And no hopsital has been so hellish, enjoyable, and odd as my two times at Westborough Behavioral.
The first time, I had resultant seizures here, due to a lack of diligence and monitoring.
In the same hospital stay: after some signs of dehydration, besides my attempts to cause disaster and escape by any means, I was injected with a wicked sedative. Afterwards, staff were observant enough to give me a Gatorade, which no other patients had access to. I gave the cup to another patient. He drank greedily, after which I asserted, “Gatorade is for pussies.”*
*Don’t quote me on this. It’s been a few years but I captured the gist. It felt quite epic and I absolutely dunked on this guy.
From the second visit, I have a few anecdotes to share. It’s time to get sexy.
1. My brother calls me out for this all the time, but I tend to take concepts and run with them into the complete wrong context. My religious studies professor in freshman year of college often collated sex, Buddhism, death, and modernity.
I stood in my bra and panties in the doorway. (Made sense at the time, I swear.)
“Put on some clothes.” A staff member asserted.
“My professor taught me this.” I countered.
“Well, your teacher is FUCKED UP,” shouted one of the white women who later would show off her gymnastics skills and join me for workouts.
2. For some reason, I really fucked with another patient. He was somewhat inflammatory of a personality, and I wanted to stick it to him. I stood naked in front of his room.
Sweetly, before he left, he threw me a pair of smell-o-socks during morning check-in. The soles of the socks were grippy and well-scented.
3. This is for my friend Lexi.
He arrived dazed and somewhat passed out on one of the chairs in the common room. To myself, I thought he was a really pretty boy.
Before he was medicated back to regularity, he crept along the exit door, plastered to the wall like a flamingo. Understanding a little bit of his experience, I tried to convince him of objectivity.
“What color is the sky?”
“Blue.”
“Wrong. Orange. You have to believe in truth.”
Once doctored back to rationality, I found out that he was in the room next door, or just about.
Bantering with the boy next door, I stuck my wet panties in my mouth and threw him a Rubik’s cube.
He may or may not have rubbed his dick on it. To this day, I’ll never know whether he was just fucking with me or not.
Though my sentiments weren’t entirely reciprocated, the first time he acknowledged that he appreciated my presence was when I drenched myself in the shower before joining therapy, severely hoping that I could die of hypothermia.
4. “You don’t have to leave the door open, I know you’re hot,” one of the other patients complained.
“Well, I get to put on a show, don’t I?”
And for my artist friends, I have one last story to share.
On the schedule was drawing therapy. I entered the room, and the therapist was running a team-building activity where two patients sat back-to-back, where one was describing a pictograph, and the other would draw what was described, to be as close to the original as possible.
I was slightly loopy at this point, and I yelled blaringly: “I’m only going to be satisfied if I hear Dante’s Inferno, played perfectly, by Anshuman.” (ex, who is a pianist and who I promised I would pay 1k if he dropped a mix tape and I could see again.) One girl, with either jealousy or disapproval, said, “yeah, not everyone is as distrusting as you.”
I drew my friend Daniel’s first painting he gave me from what I could remember. I drew a picture based on the first copy, and then a third from the second. For some reason, my conclusion of meaning was “two small bok choy.”
And as the final test, I was thoroughly deluded into thinking that I could channel messages from my friends.
“OK, it’s time to test whether it’s Yilan, Victoria, or Daniel is here…” I muttered to myself.
I let my subconscious take over while I drew random scribbles on the large rectangular paper. I curved and ebbed along the surface, cognizant of what each friend’s signature might be like.
“Easy. Yilan.”
And after all was done, I made sure to scrap all my artwork. None of it is useful, or good, or worthy.
Well, if you’ve made it this far, I hope that these small moments make you curious, make you laugh, make you wonder about the oddity of a schizophrenic.
I’ll be here all day.