Quiet Room - Lori Schiller [77]
And then sometimes I would stop at a bakery in White Plains. There I would sit, eating a bagel with cream cheese and lox. I looked out the window, and wondered why I got sick. I felt so alone. Life just didn't seem worth it. All by myself in a world of billions of people.
The more I began to realize I was really sick, the more I became aware of the vast gulf separating me from everyone else, and the lonelier I became.
My old college friends Lori Winters and Tara were still off doing their own thing. Gail was caught up in her home and her husband. My brother Mark was in Chicago for his new job, and Steven was at college. I was even feeling distant from Mom and Dad. They didn't come very often to visit me at Futura House. I felt they were ashamed of me, their freak daughter. I went to visit them at home, often hanging out all weekend with no particular purpose. But I wouldn't go to the country club with them to be scrutinized by all their cronies the way I was the last time I came out of the hospital.
I resumed seeing Dr. Rockland. But nothing in our sessions did anything to overcome my loneliness. Despite meeting three times a week, I didn't feel that we were getting anywhere. I felt he cared about me. I felt he wanted me to get well. But somehow we just weren't clicking together. We continued to have long silences punctuated by discussions about medication.
As for my fellow residents at Futura House, I just couldn't relate to them. My roommate was as involved in music as I was, but her tastes were unbelievably old-fashioned and nerdy. She was mostly hooked on Broadway musicals, which she played over and over and over again. I felt she was torturing me.
I mean, how many times can you listen to “The Impossible Dream”? “Oklahoma”? “If I Were a Rich Man”? The King and I? West Side Story? And Annie. By the end of the day, I wanted to smack that twerp Annie.
When I got my turn, I put on the most intense songs I could think of, like Pink Floyd's “The Wall,” fierce music about rebellion, pain, suicide and death. I played them loud, until she finally left the room with her Pollyanna music and gave me more quality time with my own wild strange brand of tunes.
Many of the other women were quite talented. One was a superb artist, her work hanging in local galleries. One woman played the piano. One knew how to cook. One had been out of the hospital and holding down the same job for years. They all seemed more adept at relating to other people than I did. I envied the free and easy way they had of talking with the staff people.
I didn't seem to be able to relate normally to anyone. Instead, I engaged them in a continual game of “Can you top this?” What else did I have to offer or make intelligent conversation about? I saw my psychiatrist three times a week, more than any of them did. So I offered that as conversation. We swapped stories of the times we were sickest. I talked about cold-wet-packing. Someone else talked about eloping to Boston. I talked about liquid Thora-zine burning holes in my tongue, someone else would talk about cheeking her medicine for a week.
In the end, I just couldn't deal with them. I plopped myself down on the couch in front of the TV. The Voices were shouting at me so that all I could do to try to muffle them was turn the TV volume up loud and giggle uncontrollably. I sat on the sofa and laughed and laughed and laughed to myself until my fellow residents rebelled. They didn't understand my pain at all. They just wanted some peace and quiet. So I felt all alone, with no friends, no one to talk to, no one to help distract me.
No one, that is, but Deanna and Robin.