Quiet Room - Lori Schiller [75]
I tried to clean up my act as quickly and as completely as possible. I tried to obey all the rules, to attend every community meeting, to take my medication without protest. And I tried to endure silently the fear that accompanied the raging Voices. It was my will against theirs: I held firm and refused to heed their commands, refused to become lost in their screaming, refused the relief of screaming myself.
Slowly, I began earning off-unit privileges. I walked one day, alone, to the dental clinic to have my wisdom teeth extracted. Back again, without incident. I began attending therapeutic activities with the other patients, and participating in a cooking group. I started going for walks with other patients and a mental health worker and then on my own. Then came passes off the grounds. I went with another patient into White Plains to see a movie. The very next day I went shopping. Then a weekend home with my parents.
Meanwhile, we were all discussing where I should go. All along I had refused halfway houses, or day hospital programs. Now, however, I went along with their ideas. My dim new self-awareness told me that I couldn't survive otherwise. I couldn't go back home and take care of myself. I couldn't face a day without structure. For the first time since the Voices leaped into my life so long ago, I was beginning to realize vaguely that I needed help.
A day hospital program would give me somewhere to go during the day, as well as therapy and guidance. My hospital treatment team, Dr. Rockland and I all agreed that the day program at St. Vincent's Hospital in Harrison was best for me. The halfway house I chose, Futura House, laid down ground rules: I had to be out of the hospital for two months, and on my best behavior for that time, before they would permit me to enter. My reputation had preceded me, and they didn't want any troublemakers. When I was discharged on March 21, 1986, I set myself a challenge: to get into Futura House early. With that goal in mind, I was a model of good behavior. So five weeks later, in late April, I moved into Futura House.
My doctor on the unit and the social worker congratulated themselves. Their plan had worked. My bad behavior had turned out to be just that—bad behavior. Their threats and entreaties had pushed me into getting “better.”
Only I knew the cost of my newfound appearance of health. I felt caught in a crazy bind. On the one hand, after many long years of therapy I was beginning to understand the importance of expressing my feelings and thoughts. On the other, expressing the way I really felt to a psychiatric team meant being locked up in a loony bin forever. I couldn't act on anything that was really in my brain. If I dared to, I'd be threatened with a state hospital. Either way, I would lose.
Everything they did to me in the hospital was a form of control. Medicine helped contain me, but not my thoughts. Sodium amytal helped mellow my behavior, but did not tame my brain. Cold wet packs restrained my impulsive and explosive behaviors, but did not muffle all the clamor and upheaval going on inside.
And as for my newfound “cure,” that was all a matter of control too. Everyone needs to breathe, but people can still hold their breath underwater. If you practice, you can hold your breath for much longer than you ever believed possible. That's what holding my Voices inside was like. Sure, I could hold it for a few seconds longer. But the explosive rage was building inside all the more for not being allowed to be expressed.
If you go underwater, and take a big breath and hold it in longer than you think you should, when you come up for air you will be gasping for breath, and more desperate for air than if you had come up sooner.
Futura House