Joe was mostly right regarding the quality of literature on the big bookshelf in the rec room. Still, I am literally picking up every book and reading descriptions, because I want to see if anything catches my eye. Some of these books are Harlequin and historical romance but there are some thrillers in the mix as well and, as I settle into this new normal, I realize some of these books sound really good. If I wind up retaining my memories from here on out, I’ll consider reading some of these just to pass the time.
The old forties and fifties movies playing in the other room hold absolutely no interest for me.
After I’ve made it through half of the books on the top shelf, Joe says, “Hey, Blocks. Play some foosball with me.”
I turn my head slightly to find the Blocks person Joe is talking to. He’s a really thin guy, scary thin, with light brown hair and sharp dark eyes. Even though he looks really paranoid, he almost smiles at Joe. Joe turns and grins at me and I nod, letting him know I’m good with him being across the room instead of close by.
My arm is getting tired from reaching this high up to the top shelf, but I want to leave literally no book unexamined. This is all seemingly new to me, and I don’t want to miss anything. By the time I make it to the middle shelf, Joe and Blocks are in their second or third game of foosball and I’m getting tired—but I won’t give up. Most of what I’ve looked at is fiction, but there’s been a smattering of nonfiction—a Dave Ramsey book (which I fear wouldn’t help me or any patients in here until we leave this place), a book on marriage, a philosophical tome, and a slim volume covering the topic of copywriting.
Nothing and I mean nothing to help me with my plight.
But now I’m down on the floor looking through books on the fourth shelf before moving to the one on the very bottom, and I find something that might be helpful, although I’m not sure. The cover is green with yellow writing—the DSM-III, also known as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. I’ve heard of this before, I think, but the book in my hand is really old. When I open it, I also see that it’s missing lots of pages, maybe torn out by patients like me who want some information about their disorders. I leaf through it some and then put it back on the shelf, making a note that it’s there, just in case I want to access it later.
In the meantime, there might be even better resources for me to access. I’m starting to feel like I’m striking out.
On the bottom shelf, I’m finding some cookbooks of all things, along with an old treatise on economics and something focused on interior design. Why are these books here? It’s not like patients can enjoy any of them.
I stand back up and take the DSM, hoping that maybe I can at least learn more about myself.
After dinner, Joe’s walking me back to my room and tells me that it’s lights out in about an hour. I have no concept of time in this place, but I do have a vague recollection of that notion. Not that it matters here.
I sit on the floor, cross-legged, and Joe joins me here. He’s really cute and he doesn’t seem crazy at all. Which makes me think about that whole dilemma again.
“Why are you here, Joe?”
He frowns and looks up at the wall behind me. Already, I know he’s not going to give me all the details. Not yet. Maybe later. And I have nothing to give in return. “Bottom line—bipolar disorder.”
Maybe I can look that up later in that old DSM book I snuck in my room. It’s not like I could really sneak it in. There’s no place I can hide it. Maybe I could get away with hiding it under my bed for a day or so, but I don’t see that happening. So I have it out in the open and they can do with it what they will—but not after I dig through it a little bit.
“What’s that like?”
He frowns a little. “Some days I’m really depressed but then I have days where I have high energy—like what I figure meth makes a person feel like, and I can go for days on end. But when I crash, I crash hard.”
“And the medication makes you feel bad?”
“It’s supposed to keep me stable, but it makes me feel sick and I can’t concentrate. I hate feeling like I’m going to vomit all the time.”
“Yeah.” I know what he means, even though I can’t remember feeling that way. “What about me, Joe? Do you know why I’m here? What I’ve been diagnosed with?”
“Nope. You never told me and you were so drugged up, I couldn’t even guess.”
I lean over and pull the big green book off the bed. “Maybe we should go through this and pick something for me to be.”
“See, that’s the thing, Anna. What if they’re wrong? What if they’re just labeling us because we don’t conform to whatever their expectations for us are? So they dig through a stupid book to find something that maybe describes part of our personality and call it good. Seriously. Have you ever looked at the description for schizophrenia?” He touches the cover of the book, tapping it with his index finger. “Besides, this thing’s as old as Moses. I know, ‘cause I looked at it a while back when they first brought it out.” Before I can crack the book open, he says, “May I?”
“Sure.”
The way he leafs through the pages, I know he’s familiar with this book. “Before today, Anna, you had good days and bad days. On the good days, you said a few words and your eyes told me a story. On your bad days, it was like your soul had been ripped out of your body, like you were just an empty husk. Sometimes the cure’s worse than the disease. I know it is for me. When I feel lifeless, like I don’t want to do anything, I know the meds can’t be good for me. But let me read you some stuff about schizophrenia. Incoherence and catatonic behavior. And you know what? When you were heavily medicated, that could have described you to a T. If you’d talk, I couldn’t understand you, but most of the time, you were like a vegetable, just staring off into space for hours.”
“On the medicine?”
“Yeah. I don’t know if they gave you too much or what, but you’d be like that some days. Most days. Maybe that’s how they keep their funding is by keeping us all locked up here—and if they can give us medicine that makes us mentally ill, then they keep their jobs.”
I like Joe, but that seems pretty farfetched. I don’t know that I want to say that out loud, though, because he really is my only friend here—and he seems so sincere.
“But what if, Joe, what if instead I’m like that all the time and the medicine makes me better?”
He tilts his head, almost looking at me like I’m a naïve little kid who doesn’t understand the ways of the world. “Except I’m pretty fuckin’ sure you listened to me and haven’t been taking your meds. And, if that’s true, then you’re comin’ out of a drug-induced haze and waking up to the world. There’s only one sure way to find out.”
“How’s that?”
“You keep not taking your medicine. You stay clear and sharp like this, then we’ll know.”
There are other possibilities, though, and they scare me. They scare me so much, I have to say it out loud. “But what if I get bad? What if I really do start, uh, displaying symptoms of schizophrenia or something else?”