I get a symptom that makes it difficult for me to focus my eyes. I have tried to explain it to people, but it is not easy. Suffice to say that it is like having a boiling blister on my psyche. It can happen during the day, when I am alone, at work, or worse when I am out with people at social events. I cringe at that slight mental movement that means it is starting. Every time it is ruthless and leaves my mind torn and tattered.
One day last July, I was walking toward my volunteer job at POTS (Part of the Solution), and the symptom kicked in out of nowhere. It is a soup kitchen and shelter which operates in the Bronx near Fordham Road. During the spring and summer, I volunteered as a vocational counselor, helping indigent clients find work. I only volunteered one day a week, to spend time productively on a day off from my peer specialist position. On this particular day, the symptom kicked in.
With stoic resolve I gritted my teeth and headed toward the soup kitchen anyway. Tashana, my supervisor, and Elizabeth Alice, the nun, greeted me warmly as I made my way to my cubicle. “They have no idea that at this moment I am crazier than a bed bug,” I thought. Luckily no one was the wiser. At my desk, I turned on the computer and opened my Diet Pepsi. “At least no one can watch me,” I comforted myself, but the respite would not be long. Soon my appointments would be sitting there, believing I could work miracles and find them viable work.
I almost blew a gasket, a blood vessel, when a shady-looking client with a too-friendly smile came in for help. I had to access his email. “What’s your password?” I asked him. The text on the computer was jumping wildly in front of my eyes, and I had a hard time focusing.
“L-U-C-I-F-E-R,” the little man recited to me. Suddenly there were tongues of fire leaping out of those dancing letters on the computer screen. The symptom and panic that went along with it intensified tenfold. I was sure he was the devil come to get me and it was all I could do not to push him out of my space. He would not leave! I suffered so bad I thought my eyes would pop.
After an agonizing ten minutes, which seemed like eternity, I got rid of him. He went into Tashana’s space and started bothering her. In retrospect I can say he was harmless, but in that state of mind a penny candy can carry all sorts of threats for me. I heard him making conversation. Trembling, I ducked into the bathroom. Lucifer was not so easily gotten rid of. When I came out of the bathroom I thought he might be gone, but his black bag was leaning against the cubicle wall. I sat down at my desk and tried to pull my thoughts together. After he was finally gone, Tashana came by. She took a look at me and asked me to come upstairs and talk.
I told her about the Lucifer password, and she said that I shouldn’t let it get to me. She gave me a pep talk and told me I was great and that I would do well. She also said she would miss me after I leave and to please stay in touch.
I remember looking at Tashana the social worker. Tashana, dark skinned Tashana. I thought how beautiful and non-racist she was [since I am white]. Tashana treats me like a person, like a Christian and like a human being. This particular summer’s day, she sported strawberry blonde braids, black eyeliner and wore Capri’s and heels. I thought to myself, “either Tashana is in love or has a man or is looking for one.” She deserves a good one, but the ones who deserve the best usually end-up alone with only their careers.
Maybe Tashana will end up meeting a guy from Jamaica or Norway or something and she will quit social work and leave America and have babies. Otherwise, a career in social services can be a life-sentence, especially if you are beautiful, brilliant, dedicated and young.
Tashana’s well-meaning pep-talk, unfortunately, did little to comfort me. As she was leaving the room where we had our counseling session, she told me to take the rest of the day off. Gratefully, I got my bag, half-drunk Pepsi and headed out the door.
As spaced-out as I was with this symptom, I went to my dental appointment, which was across the street from my ex-boyfriend Nolan’s apartment. As I walked there I wondered if I would see Nolan and have to talk to him. I looked down at my toes. They were manicured but dirty from walking through grass. What if Nolan talks to me and then looks down and sees my dirty toes and makes a comment about them? No such thing would happen, I assured myself. There’s not a chance in hell such a thing would happen. This is what I thought as I went to the dentist.
In the dentist’s office the drill sounded and I read a magazine to calm my nerves. I called my friend Billy on my cell phone to check on the cat I had given him. Graymoor, the cat, had proven too much for me, especially after he infested the house with fleas. I had given him to Billy, who truly loved the little furry thing
“Do you miss Greymoor?” Billy asked me. My heart was pounding and my hands were sweating. The symptom made me feel like I was in a war-zone even though I was sitting in a quiet waiting room furnished with plastic chairs, surrounded by plants and magazines. I wiped my hands on my jeans and tried to stop my legs from shaking.
“Not really,” I answered him.
There was a silence before Billy commented, “You don’t have any love in your heart.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I retorted darkly, as if to give Billy’s opinion credence. But sometimes when I am reeling in agony from psychosis, I wonder if it is because I don’t have love that I suffer the way I do.
In the dentist’s chair I laid back and opened my mouth. The tall blonde dentist checked me out carefully for cavities. Then she started cleaning my gums. In my mentally compromised state I took solace in staring up at the ceiling and watching, out of the corner of my eye, the Greek dentist at work, listening to her comment in heavily accented English how bad Colgate is for your teeth, and I am better off using Sensodyne.
As I rinsed, she pontificated on the nobility of flossing. Vaguely, I remembered that at that particular moment in time my Medicaid wasn’t working. Did that fact make my psychotic state worse? I don’t know. I stuffed that worry way back in my mind and told her, “Yes, I will floss.”
I left the dentist and was faced with the problem of getting home by a safe, anonymous route. I walked this way and that, thinking how to avoid Nolan should he be walking home from work. There is nothing like a self-fulfilling prophecy to frighten you on your way.
I walked down the side-streets and there, oh my Lord, no, my worst fear at that moment was realized. There he was. No….No…Nolan was walking toward me on THE SAME side of the street. There was nothing I could do.
Three-quarters of the way out of my mind as I was, I had the feeling we were both cornering each other. In such a situation, there is no one to blame nor is there any way out. He smiled at me and stopped.
We talked. He looked down at my toes, poked them with his foot, smiled and asked, “Were you walking through the fields or the park? Where’d the toes get so dirty?”
I kid you not. Then there was a goodbye hug.
“I miss you,” Nolan purred, hugging me hard. I was too psychotic to enjoy it.
“Do you miss me?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. With a smile as big as I could make it, I added, “And we will be great friends.” The irony was lost on him.
“I need to return your earrings,” he said, letting go. “Can I come over tonight?”
“I am going out,” I told him in a strained voice. We were standing in front of a fruit-stand. The reds, yellows and greens were dancing around us. The smile was frozen on my face.
“So I will come some other night. I will call you,” he told me.
I parted as gracefully as possible with a twist to the hip and a wave. The fruit on the stand was still jumping around me. I remember looking at bruised pomegranates.
I walked away as psychotic as ever, wondering how I would integrate this into my already-sore psyche. It is not like I planned the encounter, though it worked out just as I thought it would. “I am NOT a psychic,” I told myself as I crossed the park.
At home, I put down my bag and hurried into the bathroom. An extra five milligrams of Stelazine might ease the pain. I popped the little blue pill and took a look at myself in the mirror. My hair was a little wild, my eyes dark with just a hint of insanity in them. “No,” I thought, “You would have to look at me really hard to figure out that I had had a storm of a day.”
Then I took off my sandals, turned on the bath faucet and eased my feet into the warm, running stream. Still incoherent, but sure that the worst of the day was over, I watched as the water washed mud down the drain.