All Mixed Up

Where the Sunbeams End: Chapter 14

Photo by Cat Han on Unsplash

As I float here in the dark depths of my subconscious I realize I’ve come to the place where the sunbeams end. There is no light. The memories, scarce. But maybe that makes sense. 

~~~

“Finding your true love in a mental institution is probably not the best idea,” my father had said on more than one occasion. 

However, as always, Dad was supportive. Judith slowly moved in and we made the basement our own. Mom slowly moved out.

My parents rarely had fights. Not to say everything was always perfect, but it was difficult to hear the raised voices echo down the stairs on that fateful night. 

All the cards had been laid on the table. Mom was leaving. She claimed that our home was a drinking house. She had to get sober was her excuse. Maybe it wasn’t an excuse, but I knew she was seeing someone else. It still stings. As a family I think we could have rallied together, supported Mom in her journey, but I think she was done. She needed to embrace a new adventure. 

Judith was good for me in at least one way. She had valuable experience when it came to living with a mental illness diagnosis. Her first hospitalization had been way back as a young teenager. Our diagnoses were very different, but she still understood how difficult life could be, and understood what it was like to reach your breaking point. 

Around the time Mom was stepping away and Judith was stepping in, I had begun an internal battle with my own identity. My first psychotic break was such a religious and spiritual experience. But the doctors had explained that what I was experiencing was like a misfire in my brain. The medication would help restore my brain’s chemistry. I forced myself to accept the doctor’s understanding of my experience and turned away from religion for sure, but even turned away from God. 

When my second psychotic break began, I fell further inward, completely lost without a prayer. 

~~~

It was a warm Spring evening, the slight breeze waving the dangling branches of the weeping willow at the end of our yard. I stared upward at the blue cloudless sky. I was happy, giddy, just taking in this perfect moment. 

Then they were on me. Begging me to take my medication. All of them. Judith, Mom, and Dad. I resisted, upset that they were interrupting this moment of bliss. Finally, sitting on the couch in the basement, I looked up at my father. He held two large white pills in his hand. The Depakote. 

“Please. Just take them. For me.” 

I did. But it wouldn’t stop what had already begun. I think Mom and Judith called the police a few days later and I wound up back at Crossroads. 

There was a fellow patient, a young man, who resembled my Godfather. My uncle John. I believed in some way that he was a version of my uncle. I didn’t tell him this, or maybe I did. 

One morning at breakfast he threw his coffee in my face. I guess I had started to annoy him, or had offended him. Maybe this wasn’t uncle John after all. 

One afternoon I was convinced I was talking to my great grandmother, who had passed away. In my mind, Crossroads seemed to be like purgatory. A place where lost souls were waiting to move on. 

Judith had warned me not to sign anything, but then I was scribbling my signature without understanding what I was signing. That’s how I ended up in that State hospital. 

While Crossroads was a short term mental health facility, the State hospital was long term. By signing that paper I had chosen my road. The road less traveled. 

I wish I had a story to tell about my visit to the State facility. But part of me doesn’t want to remember and perhaps part of me can’t remember.

Mostly it was waiting for meal and med time. I was so far gone from the psychosis or was it the meds? It’s all mixed up. 

I made friends with the fellow patients and I tried to bring hope and joy to a place that was riddled with confusion, paranoia, and uncertainty. You can’t help but compare yourself with the other patients. You try to gauge how severe your own symptoms are. But none of us were able to see ourselves fully. 

I think Dad got tired of it finally. He’s the one who got me out. I think he realized that if there was a road to recovery for me, that I would have to be out in the world. Being locked up in a hospital would do more harm than good. 

~~~

Sitting here, thinking about that second break from reality, I get a heavy feeling in my chest. It’s as if I’m tripping an alarm. I’m too deep into the dark place. My whole body is telling me to back off. You shall not pass. Return to the present.