Quiet Room - Lori Schiller [69]
It was as if I was stuck and unable to break myself from the chain of commands of the Voices. Within several hours, the pattern repeated. Sometimes even on my way from the Quiet Room back to my own room I would fall apart and have to turn right around and go back. Over and over the cycle repeated.
I began getting more and more sodium amytal, sometimes several doses a day. Soon, the oral doses were no longer working fast enough and I had to receive the drug by injection.
My Quiet Room visits stretched longer and longer. After a while I lost track of time. I could see through the screened window if it was night or day outside, but sometimes even those distinctions blurred. The Quiet Room had to be kept lit even at night, so the staffer on the stool could see inside. I could count the meals brought to me on plastic trays, but usually I was too agitated to keep track. It seemed as if I were captive in there for weeks at a time, left alone to face the Voices that were rising up to consume me like water in a sponge.
It seemed so strange that my fellow patients could enjoy the Voices they heard in their own heads. On my unit one young man had Voices who told him he was the Messiah. Another young woman always sat by herself, laughing happily. Once I asked her what she was laughing about.
“Hubert is telling me jokes,” she said. She called him her playmate, and often talked about how much she liked him.
I was jealous. There was nothing about my Voices that was friendly. I had tried to make them my allies against the hateful staff. But in reality the Voices terrified me. Sometimes I told the staff they were gone, but I was lying. The Voices were with me when I awoke. They were with me when I got dressed. They were with me when I ate. They were with me when I sat around the day room, trying to think of something to do. I could not even find relief in sleep. The Voices yelled so loud they woke me up, leaving me shaking and frightened.
The closest I ever got to a friendly Voice was that of the Narrator. He described my actions instant by instant, not leaving out even the tiniest, most insignificant thing. A hundred times a day, he commented on my movements.
“She is now walking through the door,” the Narrator said. “She's wiping her feet, little ass. Wiping her feet on the rug in the entryway. She's going into the kitchen. Ha! Ha! You fat piece of lard, of lard. Go to hell. Ha! Ha! You look sad. You look like shit. You are shit. She's now walking into the day room. She's going to turn down the TV set. To die, asshole. Ha! Ha! Ha! ...”
The Narrator taunted me, made fun of me, sometimes even threatened me a little. But mostly he just talked about what I was doing. And his manner was less intrusive, his Voice level less loud, and his overall demeanor less scary than the others. I didn't fear him as much as I feared the others. I just wanted his annoying banter to go away.
Sometimes I heard one Voice laughing, a single witchlike Voice that screeched and cackled in derision. Sometimes that Voice would be joined by a second, and then a third. Sometimes they chanted the same thing over and over again, like Voices rehearsing for a play.
“To die!” they chanted. “To die!” I must have heard that a thousand times a day.
Sometimes more and more Voices chimed in, until all the Voices joined into a horrendous crowd, an appalling cheering section that had suddenly turned into a riot. These crowds of Voices were loud, painfully loud. When I heard them coming, I would run for my Walkman. But often it was no use. They would scream and shout over even a rock tape turned up to 10.
But even more than the Narrator and the crowds, the Voices I feared the most were the men who talked to me of hell.
I don't remember thinking much about hell when I was growing up. Jews