Quiet Room - Lori Schiller [96]
The fire built up inside me. My impatience became anger, my anger became rage. I hated them. I blamed them. My rage bubbled up, then spilled over the walls I had erected. Out it poured with terrifying intensity.
“I hate you! I hate you!” I screamed at my mother. “It's your fault I'm sick. You've done this to me. You're the unbalanced one, not me.”
“Get the fuck out of here!” I screamed at my father. “Get away! Get away!” I couldn't breathe. I thought I would explode into a million pieces.
Then they left, my mother in tears, my father white-lipped and shaking. And then I did spin out of control, ranting and shrieking. Terrible thoughts swamped me, making me feel like a lunatic. I wished them dead. I wished them murdered, or blown to pieces in a plane crash. I wanted to murder them myself. As I looked on helplessly my own raging brain concocted terrible, horrible fantasies. I would stab them. I would shoot them. I would sneak out of the hospital, pour gasoline around their house while they slept and fling out the final match, giving them no way out.
I often spent time in the Quiet Room after their visits. When the rage had finally abated and my sick frenzy had subsided, a new awful emotion would emerge in its place. I would be consumed by guilt and terror. I had killed them. My rage had killed them. They had been killed in a car crash on their way home. Their house was really going to burn down and I would have caused it. I felt terrible, all evil inside, like I was going to crack or break or fall apart and come undone from my own badness.
I wanted to see them. I wanted to hug them. I wanted them to come back. What if they believed me? What if they never came again? What if they really did die?
Whenever I felt myself about to explode, the only thing to do was to hit something, to break something, to punch my hands against the safety screen until they bled, to stab myself with whatever I could find, to strike out: in uncontainable rage, fear and pain.
For years, I had felt such rage was beyond my control. But as time went by, I found allies not only in Dr. Fischer and Dr. Doller, but in the nurses and mental health workers too. During my previous hospitalization, I felt the people stationed outside the door of the Quiet Room were hostile jailers. This time, they became more like buddies. During my calm periods I'd stand near the doorway and rap with my keeper about anything that came into my head: Lucky Charms cereal, the weather, clothes, Chinese restaurants. It was just ordinary day-to-day talk, but it helped keep the terrors in check.
Slowly I found myself feeling friendly toward the staff. Debbie was funny. Margo brought me milk and cookies and showed me pictures of her pet ferret. Cathy was my coach. Barbara was somewhere between mother and grandmother. Rose was like an old friend: She had been with me on all three hospitalizations. I talked “girl talk” with all of them. We discussed men's bodies, blind dates and hockey players. Even that simple talk helped to put some order on the chaos of my inner world.
I knew that even this little bit of closeness was helping to keep me from retreating into the world of the Voices. The Voices must have realized it too. They leaped between me and the staff, trying to sow fear and distrust.
“Strangle her!” the Voices shouted about one volunteer who had been particularly kind. “Pick up that towel and strangle her.” I tried to warn her of what was going to happen, but all I could manage was an impersonal warning.
“Your life is in danger,