Quiet Room - Lori Schiller [41]
Lori herself was begging to come home. Every time we visited she pleaded to be released. She often threatened to sign herself out against the doctors’ orders, and once or twice she had actually tried to do so. She wasn't hallucinating anymore, she insisted. She wanted to get out of the hospital, and get on with her life. Marvin had promised her she could leave the hospital by her birthday in April. He felt she needed a goal to reach for. She grabbed on to that idea and wouldn't let go. She wanted to be home by her birthday. She would be home by her birthday.
My rational mind was screaming “No! No!” There was still something very wrong with this glazed, dazed stranger I saw before me. Thinking realistically, I could see that Lori was not better. She was drugged.
Still, who was I to argue? Marvin was the expert. If he said she would get better at home, I believed him. And while it was clear that Lori's doctors didn't approve, they were doing nothing to stop us. They did urge that she should be released, not to us at home, but to a halfway house. But when we rejected that option, they didn't press. What's more, it was hard to refuse Lori. She was so unhappy in the hospital, and so desperate to get out. She said she felt better, and who knew better than she?
Besides, all along the doctors had been telling us to face facts. Maybe the fact I had to face was that this remote sleepwalking stranger was my daughter. That this was what she would be like from now on. Maybe my expectations were too high. Maybe the doctors were right. Maybe I had to adjust, and learn to live with this strange new person who used to be my daughter.
So on April 22, 1983, Lori was discharged from New York Hospital, just four days before her twenty-fourth birthday.
Part III
There’ Nothing Wrong with Me
11
Lori Scarsdale, New York, May 1983’August 1983
I was glad to be home.
Daddy had promised me I would be home in time for my birthday. And true to his words, he had brought me back to my old bedroom just in time for cake and ice cream. It wasn't that I cared so much about my birthday. I just couldn't stand the hospital.
Everything about the hospital infuriated me. I didn't know why I was there. I didn't know how I had gotten there. All I knew was that I was trapped. I felt like a prisoner doing my time. I looked out the window every single day and waited for my freedom. Outside was so inviting. I begged for a walk on the hospital grounds. Even with one hospital attendant—or two—at my side, I was so grateful to breathe outside air. I hated being locked up.
Most of all, though, I hated the hospital because everyone there thought I was sick. Well, naturally they thought I was sick! If you are in a mental hospital you must be sick. That was why I wanted to get out. I wanted to get out to be normal again.
There was nothing wrong with me. So why did they keep telling me there was? All these doctors and all these nurses kept saying all these things about me. The words swirled around my head. “There's some bipolar disorder. We should use some antide-pressants.” “I think she's definitely schizophrenic. A paranoid schizophrenic. She needs neuroleptics.” “She seems to be very manic at times. Give her some sedatives to calm her down.” “I believe there are borderline tendencies. She needs more work in psychotherapy.” When they finally settled on a diagnosis of schizo-affective disorder—some schizophrenia, some manic-depression—it felt like one of those everything-on-it bagels they sell in the deli. Poppy seed, sesame seed, onion, garlic, salt, pepper … crazy, loony, insane, cracked, cuckoo. Daffy, demented, lunatic, mad, maniac, nuts, screwy, wacky—use your imagination.
All the time I was in the hospital they told me I was sick. They told me I was psychotic with hallucinations. I hated these two words. I knew they were not true. Psychotic meant like the movie Psycho and Norman Bates, and the Bates Motel. That was scary and