Quiet Room - Lori Schiller [97]
Still, they didn't seem afraid, and they didn't seem put off. Instead, they kept on working hard to reinforce the doctors’ message: that I was not helpless before the onslaught of my Voices. We can't make the Voices go away, they told me. We can't ease the maelstrom of your feelings. But we can teach you ways to feel less out of control when the storm hits. We can even teach you ways to feel the storm before it arrives, and prepare yourself to weather it better.
There was one nurse in particular, an Israeli man named Sorin, who seemed to work especially hard to help me get the upper hand against my Voices and fears. Sorin worked hard at everything. Although he was always putting in sixteen-hour double shifts, I never saw him enough to suit me. He always seemed especially creative in helping me deal with my ugly impulses.
He arranged to have a professional punching bag brought into the unit. When I felt like punching windows and walls or the trees in the courtyard, he encouraged me to do battle with the punching bag instead. I'd pummel the bag until I was hot and perspiring. I boxed the Voices, the sounds. I punched the invisible airwaves that carried the torturers to me. I punched my family. I punched the staff and I punched myself. I punched everything that hurt me, everything that enraged me. I punched until I was exhausted and ready to crawl.
I was also prescribed a once-a-week racquetball game. A staffer from therapeutic activities was assigned to be my partner. She brought me rulebooks, and tried to teach me a kind of yoga to cool back down from the exercise.
Sometimes I really felt I had to destroy things. The staff tried to teach me to channel even those impulses. When the Voices were especially disturbing, the staff would put me in the Quiet Room with a stack of magazines. I'd rip those suckers to bits, venting the violence of my emotions on every page. Then I kicked the piles of shreds like autumn leaves. When I was calmed down, I'd wad them up and play basketball with them, into the garbage can with the remains of the mangled magazines.
The score: Voices 0. Lori 1.
But still the Voices did not want to let me go. The closer I got to confiding in Dr. Fischer, the more the Voices tormented me. The more I trusted her, the more the Voices conspired to drive me away.
I kept on struggling to meet Dr. Fischer, and she kept struggling to get inside my head. From time to time, when the Voices cleared, she tried to coax me to talk about my experiences.
“How's it been going for you?” she said.
“Not so hot,” I said.
“What's been happening? ”
“I was in a peer group meeting and I found out that they all hate me.”
“So everyone hates you? When did you start thinking that? ”
“Since yesterday.”
“What happened yesterday? ”
“I was bringing up a point about the party that we were planning, and no one responded to me, and then the Voices told me to strangle Claire.”
Dr. Fischer looked concerned. “It seems like a lot has been happening to you since we last met. Let's try to figure out what's been happening. At the very least it seems like you feel very criticized ...”
“Yeah, but it was only because Claire was staring in a way that made me realize that she was going to kill me and so I had to strangle her first.”
Little by little, bit by bit, she probed my mind, gently climbing deeper and deeper in. The closer in she got to me, the stranger I began to feel.
Meeting with her on the unit had the advantage of the male staff I could count on to protect both of us. But it had disadvantages too. For one thing, there was no privacy. I was easily distracted by the other patients’ wandering by. Some of them didn't wander. They hovered. One guy in particular gravitated toward us. He hung out behind Dr. Fischer so that I could see him and Dr. Fischer could not. I got terribly upset at him. I broke off what I was saying to thrust him away.
“These are private conversations!” I shouted at him and, agitated, dragged Dr. Fischer further down the hall where we could be alone. He'd leave us for a