For Dougie,
who holds my hand so I don’t get lost
INITIAL DOSAGE: 0.5 mg. Adam Petrazelli, 16 years old, is a subject of the clinical trial for ToZaPrex. He is reluctant to engage during therapy sessions. Nonverbal communication only. Not uncommon, given his reluctance to participate in therapy aspect of the drug trial.
AUGUST 15, 2012
My first doctor said it was unusual for the symptoms to manifest in someone so young. Schizophrenic males are more commonly diagnosed in their early to late twenties. I remember thinking, Well, shit, that’s awesome. I’m unusual.
I’m probably not supposed to swear in these entries.
Shit.
But you did say to treat them as confidential and that they would never be used against me, so I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t use whatever language I’m comfortable with. I’m also not going to worry about ending sentences with a preposition. Or starting sentences with a conjunction. If this is, as you put it, “a safe space for me to express myself,” then I’m going to write what I’m thinking exactly as I’m thinking it.
I’ll answer your questions, but I won’t do it during our sessions. I’ll do it here, on paper, where I can look at what I write before I hand it over to you. So I can edit what you see, and avoid saying anything that might get me kicked out of the drug trial.
I don’t always say the things I mean to say when I talk to someone. It’s impossible to swallow words after letting them out, so it’s better for me not to speak at all if I can help it. You’ll just have to deal with that.
But I get that you have questions about my illness. Once people find out, it’s all they can talk about. You probably know that it’s the reason my mom and stepdad picked you. Because you have experience.
Fair enough. I’ve got to say you handled it pretty well. There were maybe two minutes of silence before you handed me a notepad and told me to write about our sessions afterward if I didn’t want to talk, which I don’t. And it’s not because I don’t want to get better—it’s because I don’t want to be here. More specifically, I don’t want this to be real. I’d like to treat therapy the way I treat everything else I’d like to ignore. Like it doesn’t exist. Because I already know that being here isn’t going to fix anything. The drug might, though.
You asked me when I first noticed that something was not quite normal. A change of some kind.
In the beginning I thought it was my glasses. No, not glasses. Spectacles. I like that word better.
I got them when I turned twelve because I couldn’t stop squinting and it drove my mom nuts. Dr. Leung is the one doctor I actually like, because he fixed a problem by giving me something fairly simple. Spectacles.
Problem solved. I could see and my mom was happy.
But that was also when I realized I was seeing things other people couldn’t see. I was the only one jerking my head or squinting my eyes to get a better look. Everyone else was looking at me, not the birds that flew through the open window or the strange people who just sort of appeared in the living room. So I stopped wearing my spectacles and told my mom I’d lost them. For a while that worked and I could pretend, but eventually, she bought so many pairs there was no excuse. I was screwed.
I didn’t tell her I was seeing things for a long time. She’d just married my stepdad and they were happy. When I did finally tell her, it was because I didn’t have a choice. The principal called, and when Mom hung up the phone, she looked at me as if she were seeing me for the first time.
“Mrs. Brizeno said you looked up in the chemistry lab, started screaming, and fell to the floor.” I remember how calm she was. My mom has this Jedi voice that sort of washes over you when she’s trying to get information. “What did you see?”
I didn’t answer her right away. I took off my spectacles and tried to pretend she wasn’t there, that she had faded out of the room after asking the question. I’m good at making myself believe these things, but it was harder this time. She just stood there, waiting for an answer.
“Bats,” I said, looking down at my shoes. “Huge black bats.”
I didn’t tell her that they were twice the size of regular bats or that they had human eyes or that their tiny fangs hung like needles from their mouths.
When she started crying, I wished the bats had been real. That the creepy little bastards had eaten me in the chemistry lab and I’d never had to see the way my mom looked at me in that moment: like I was crazy.
I really didn’t want to be crazy. Nobody wants to be crazy, but now that I know what’s happening to me, now that I understand what’s going on in my head, I don’t want to think about what it means to know you’re crazy. To know that your family knows you’re crazy.
My stepdad, Paul, is a nice guy. He’s good for my mom. They dated for years before they got married, and he always made the effort to keep up with my life, ask me about school, etc. He’s an attorney who can give her the things she’s had to do without since my dad left.
Now that he knows about me, about the illness, things are different. He doesn’t know what to do with me anymore. We’ll still sit and watch TV, but I can almost hear him thinking when I’m in the room. The weirdest feeling, aside from seeing things that aren’t actually there, is sitting on the couch next to a grown man who is suddenly afraid of me. He didn’t used to be afraid. It’s hard not to take that personally.
What am I afraid of? Pass. I’m sure you’ll figure it out soon enough.
The good thing is that he actually does love my mom. And since my mom loves me, he makes an effort. He was the one who suggested the new private school instead of tossing me back into a school where all the kids knew there was something wrong with me.
In two weeks, I start my junior year at St. Agatha’s. It’s a K–12 school. My mom and Paul made the staff aware of my “condition,” and because it’s Catholic, they can’t exactly turn me away. That would be pretty hypocritical. From what I know about the guy, Jesus wouldn’t turn me away.
Paul also made sure that my new school knows not to talk about my illness. As a lawyer, he explained that legally they aren’t allowed to tell anyone what I have, which I appreciate.
It’s hard starting as a junior in a new school. It’s significantly more difficult to make friends when people know you see things you shouldn’t be able to see.
DOSAGE: 0.5 mg. Same dosage. Adam still unwilling to speak.
AUGUST 22, 2012
I became an expert on my condition the second I was diagnosed. I can tell anyone who wants to know all the drugs, the most recent studies, the positive and negative symptoms. When I say “positive” and “negative,” I don’t mean “good” and “bad.” It basically all sucks.
“Positive” refers to symptoms caused by the disorder. Like delusions.
“Negative” symptoms are reduced by the disorder. Like lack of initiative and motivation.
There really is no clear path for the disease to travel. Some people have visions. Some people hear voices. And some people just get paranoid. My mom would also want me to take a minute to tell you about the huge strides in medicine to help people cope with the side effects. She’s a glass-half-full kind of woman.