Near Death Delusional Chimera: “A Pattern Arises from Past and Present Events.” PART I

The Present: Four years ago, I stepped out of my required science classes, geology, misnomered as “Rocks for Jocks” and walked into Harvard Square. It was a warm, late afternoon with dusk just starting to chase away the sun. Today, like then, the fall day was comfortable. I, however, was not. I was angry and highly irritable. Today was a bit different. I left the locked psychiatric ward where I was being treated for depression and anxiety. I was unaccompanied with permission from the staff due to an increase in my privileges for being a good mental patient. I had worked hard to regain my “privileges.” Anywhere else in the United States, my civil rights would not be taken from me and referred to as privileges. Today though, I was a mental patient who despite public appearances had no rights. Four years ago, as I began to stroll, each step grew quicker and longer. There were others present in the Square, yet no one knew what was about to be unleashed. I couldn’t contain my fury any longer. I felt driven by the force of my political belief, which bordered on profound and the human condition. Four years ago, I started a large riot. Today though I was incarcerated in a mental hospital. After making a very quick detour, I rode towards a gathering of other patients from the hospital in my electric wheelchair. As I approached them I lit up and joined both their nasty smoking habit as well as their conversation. For fifteen minutes or so, we took long drags of our cigarettes, blowing the smoke into the mild current of the breeze. At least you could smoke at this hospital, I thought to myself. Other hospitals wouldn’t allow you to smoke, which is mostly what mental patients do to pass the time in liu of other activities. Most of these non-smoking hospitals didn't ’even give you the option of donning a nicotine patch for the sake of sanity. After awhile the group ran out of mundane topics to discuss causing the topic of discussion to turn towards childhood sexual abuse, the reason that most of us were in this shithole to begin with. Of course we all had different diagnoses, like bi-polar disorder, borderline personality disorder, or my personal favorite, psychotic. I found other patient’s “psychotic” episodes to be very entertaining as cruel as that might sound. Suddenly one of the patient’s psychotic episodes began to focus on childhood sexual abuse. For me, a survivor of horrific childhood sexual abuse this topic was politically charged. Discussing this topic threatened the core of my beings known to me as the crew. I couldn’t bury my gargantuan emotions. I began to talk about my personal history as a “survivor” of this type of abuse. Little by little as the discussion went deeper and deeper; more people joined our group, which eventually became quite large. True to my form, I began a diatribe about people in our society who lived just outside the inner circle of acceptance. In this case, I stated that children because they were treated as property never had a chance of existing inside the inner circle. The discussion became very heated. People began to argue. Members of a growing crowd who were not deemed outcasts and did not belong to a peripheral group, became fearful when confronted by my river of fury. Just about everyone became fearful of my fury. After just a few minutes of the diatribe I had begun, some very frightened people began to leave, while those who stayed became very cautious for their own protection. Their fear emanated from my reputation as an outspoken rebel. They wanted to protect themselves just in case the “crazy disabled woman” and her rueful followers commenced an insurgence in the hospital courtyard. An insurgence just like the one that occurred four years ago. Curious bypassers joined the crowd, which grew quickly and steadily.

I felt driven by something if not my strong political beliefs. I was filled with pain, anger and hatred--- a cocktail for disaster. The oncoming tirade rose like reflux, first from my gut, up into my esophagus and flooded my mouth. The taste was sour. My words, like history, were about to be repeated. I started to put on quite a show for onlookers. A few members of the growing crowd were also at the tirade four years ago, but most of the onlookers were new. For instance, my mother and my 3 year-old son Matthew had accompanied my father and brother Martin on their routine nightly visits to the hospital for the first time. Shockingly, however, my parents arrived significantly earlier than normal. I’ll never know why they arrived early that day. I did wonder if someone saw where my anger was headed and had called them and urged them to come. Regardless of how or why their visit happened earlier than usual, they were there. They came almost every night to bring me a large cup of Dunkin' Donuts coffee with cream but no sugar, a newspaper and clean underwear. Smuggling in real, caffeinated coffee for me was supposed to help my sanity. Apparently caffeine didn’t work its usual magic this time. As my emotions escalated, my father and brother shoved their way to the front of the crowd which had now encircled me. My father tried to talk me down, “come on sweetie, you can stop now. You’ve made your point,” pleaded my father. This was the first time in my life that he addressed me as “sweetie.”

I wouldn’t, couldn’t be talked down. I had become completely mad. I didn’t care if what I had to say caused my own death. I was that furious. I was that stubborn. Suddenly but not surprisingly I realized that they were both armed. Violence maintained a recurring role in my family, most of it directed at me. My father and Martin did their best to fight off members of society’s outcasts who were listening intently as well as supporting and protecting me. In the end, the battle to protect me was futile. Martin was my size and height, six foot one and my father was even bigger at six foot three. Not only were they large and strong, but the weapons they were wielding were intimidating. They had disappeared briefly. They must have used these moments to go back to their car to get them. In doing this they frightened my mother so much that she began to scream hysterically. Her scream would never be wrenched from my mind. It stayed there despite my futile attempts to block it out. In fact, I didn’t even know if she was still screaming or if it had become part of my insanity. The scream was so disturbing that it felt like an icepick driven into my temple.

Martin had a tire iron, and my father carried a three-foot long iron pipe. It was ironic that two men who had arrived under the guise of a loving gesture of kindness and support, my nightly visit, would eventually turn on me and try to kill me. That night they saw similarities from the incident four years ago. They listened to my monologue. The crowd was becoming fervid, which only got worse when I asked them to join me in chanting phrases about inequality. My tirade erupted when I began to talk about child abuse in particular sexual abuse. Both my father and Martin hated what I was espousing, and exposing. My mother and Matthew continued to avoid the violence by waiting in the car. My father and Martin were adamant that I had gone too far. Once they saw me bringing the crowd of subjugated individuals to a high degree of intense agitation, they realized that I needed to be stopped, once and for all. They began to swing at my arms and hands, which I held up protectively to shield my face. Their tools of destruction, which were a twisted and disturbing form of societal censorship, ripped through the air inevitably arriving at their ultimate target. I literally wore my politics on my arms. My strength of spirit also took a major blow, but soon my passionate beliefs returned in the form of white hot lava coursing threw my veins.

The collision of their iron pipes with my forearms left my upper limbs tattered. Their terror of being exposed by my tirade became all encompassing. Maybe on one level they realized that I was talking about them and becoming a visionary while doing it; on another level they knew I was also exposing others like them in the process. Guilty members of the crowd grew frightened and began to arm themselves as well. They grabbed for anything close by just in case the crazy disabled woman and her followers turned on them.

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