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) People are allowed to be people. It is now more acceptable for gender roles to be abstract in today's society. At least, more people are tolerant of it. Unfortunately, this book's author had to spend half of her adolescence in psych wards because our population wasn't always so accepting. This was further exaggerated by the fact that Scholinski was a continuous trouble-maker and rule-breaker. And, oh my god, she's also a lesbian!
Scholinksi wore her hair short and her clothes boyish. She would be allowed privileges in the hospitals when she would wear makeup or socialize more with the boys. There was actually a DSM diagnosis that claimed she was having problems identifying with her gender role. Oh and surprise surprise, they also tried to analyze her in the classic, now debunked Freudian style.
Scholinksi would blame herself for the circumstances surrounding her, since everyone else was. She'd try her best to conform to the program rules only to get certain freedoms. But she knew who she was and that she detested makeup and girly clothes. Also, she recognized that she'd get butterflies in her stomach around certain females.
This book is a story of her growth and the pain she had to endure in this setting. She had to deal with abuse both here and at home around her family. The end goes on to explain where the author is today, and how she pulled herself out of this mess. Also, it briefly explores some of the other patients' lives as well.
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) So there is no argument that severe mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, have genetic bases. Why then, in this case of identical twins, is one twin debilitated by the disease while the other twin grows up to become a well-respected psychiatrist?
In the early part of the book, it gives the idea that the twins may have, in fact, been feeling similar symptoms. However, Pamela's got worse while Carolyn's dissipated completely. This gives us insight into the role of environment and reactions thereto that can help trigger or harvest any predispositions to illness. It also, like the mental disorder memoirs I read before it, keeps with a theme of isolation. The disease is related to the individual disconnecting from all the people around them. They soon lose the ability to feel any sort of human connection, or trust.
It is both sad and rewarding to read. Pamela, the twin diagnosed as schizophrenic, has intelligence and potential. When she was younger, she was more highly appraised and hoped for than Carolyn, her sister. Also, while in and out of mental institutions, she won incredibly high awards for her poetry. She is a talented woman inflicted with horrendous schizophrenia. She carries the guilt of JFK's death; she thinks she's his murderer. There is even a point where she lights herself on fire. But,
"Even in my most evil moments, moments when I feel that I need to destroy myself to save the world, I am still trying to preserve others." (pg. 314 - Pamela)"You keep patients from isolating, because isolation is what has made them sick and, if allowed to continue, isolating will make problems more difficult." (pg.138 - Pamela's doctor)
"I stare into the bright fire and try to open up for the first time. Although I talk in riddles as usual, whenever I clam up, not wanting to bore him, he urges me on. [...] Carefully, I pull away, not because I recoil at the contact but because I'm certain he'd never touch me voluntarily or without disgust if awake. [...] I'm left to wonder what his liking me means. I know he hugged me on impulse and I also understand he will come quickly to regret it. Nevertheless, even the sneers of the voices can't deprive me completely of the bubbly, euphoric feeling in my chest." (pg 156 - Pamela)
"She sounds like she cares and believes what she says. I don't respond, but I'm listening. Something's different - for the first time someone actually wants me to talk about things and doesn't seem prepared to discount or dismiss me as crazy. And so, for the first time in my life, I finally tell another person everything: about the voices and the Strangeness, about my experience of the other dimensions and alternate reality, about Gray Crinkled Paper." (pg. 201-202 - Pamela)
"I am so lonely for human company that I collect stray people as indiscriminatingly as I collect cats. I barely know them, but they seem so needy that I invite them to stay with me, no questions asked. I just want to help. I don't think about who they are or where they came from, even though Lynnie tells me I need to protect myself before I offer the shirt off my back to any thief or con artist. She doesn't understand it makes me feel good when I'm able to rescue people more desperate than I. After all, any one of them could be Jesus Christ. [...] Most of these encounters end badly, though I don't understand why." (pg. 227-228 - Pamela)
"It's like an episode of The Twilight Zone. Am I going crazy? Are they trying to drive me crazy? But no one explains it to me, I can't even ask if I've passed the test or finished the experiment, because that would only bring denials by the very same nurses and aides and doctors who have it set up. Worse, they'd use my questions as an excuse to give me more drugs or impose stricter monitoring. [...] Somebody has tampered with reality, and since I don't know who, no one can be excluded. To be on the safe side I have to assume that everyone is the enemy." (pg. 261 - Pamela)
"I thought I was used to her. I thought I'd gotten used to what schizophrenia, medication, and the years of not taking care of herself had done to her. I thought I was accustomed to the incessant movement of her hands, the sometimes violent rocking of her body. I thought I was used to her chain-smoking and the peculiar self-absorbed habits of her solitary life. [...] It's hard to believe this is the twin sister I kept on a pedestal for years, Pammy the brilliant, creative one, the smarter, more special version of me. It is still impossible to reconcile my memories of her with the person schizophrenia has so wrecked." (pg. 268-269 - Carolyn)
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) Not just bipolar, not just schizophrenic: schizoaffective. Lori, one of the authors and main character of the novel, starts hearing voices and hallucinating in her preteens. She knows something might be wrong, but isn't sure what. At one time she even believes that she must be possessed.
She's able to hide her "voices" and extreme moods fairly well until her late college years. At this time, the symptoms become increasingly worse. She becomes depressed and tortured by the voices. Her 3.9 GPA, highly admired and seemingly sociable, happy life comes to a screeching halt with a suicide attempt. She couldn't take it anymore.
From here on she is transferred in and out of hospitals and clinics. She is put on various medications at different times. She does have a period or two where she seems to get better. (But she began to self-medicate with coke.) Ironically, she even starts working at hospitals, including the one she stayed at. Nonetheless her disease becomes increasingly worse. However, she is brought to an alternative program and given experimental medication. Sorry to spoil the ending, but with therapy, she becomes better. She along with her family, friends, and doctors all compile this book. True story.
"When I heard the Voices yelling such terrible things, I grew afraid to make eye contact with the people I was with. I was afraid they had heard the Voices and now knew the terrible secrets about me that they were revealing. [...] I became extremely self-conscious in front of everyone for fear they too would nail me to a taunting cross." (pg. 22 - Lori)
"'You are going to kill yourself driving like that,' he said. I began to laugh hysterically. Right before my very eyes, the state trooper with his hat and sunglasses and uniform had changed into a fantastic creature with bugged-out eyes and hair standing up wildly on end." (pg. 25 - Lori)
"None of us at college could put our fingers on what was wrong. At first, it simply seemed as if she [Lori] was depressed because she was so fun-loving and we were all such grinds. [...] Some of our friends weren't sympathetic at all. In fact, a lot of guys thought she was just bullshitting us." (pg. 30 - college roommate)
"Poor people are crazy, they say, and rich people are eccentric. My mother was rich, and so she was allowed to be eccentric. But now, looking at Lori, I realized that my mother hadn't been eccentric. She had been sick. And now I saw that sickness repeated in her granddaughter. For if Lori was schizophrenic, then so was my mother." (pg. 82 - Lori's mom)
"In fact, I knew they were trying to trick, trying to torment me into madness. I knew they could read my mind and hear all that the Voices were saying about them. The doctors and nursing staff told me repeatedly that the Voices weren't real. But if they weren't real, then how did the staff know they were there?" (pg. 90 - Lori)
"It seemed so strange that my fellow patients could enjoy the Voices they heard in their own heads. On my unit one young man had Voices who told him he was the Messiah. Another young woman always sat by herself, laughing happily. Once I asked her what she was laughing about. 'Hubert is telling me jokes,' she said. [...] I was jealous. There was nothing about my Voices that was friendly. I had tried to make them my allies against the hateful staff. But in reality the Voices terrified me. Sometimes I told the staff they were gone, but I was lying. [...] The Voices yelled so loud they woke me up, leaving me shaking and frightened." (pg. 149 - Lori)
"And as for my newfound 'cure,' that was all a matter of control too. Everyone needs to breathe, but people can still hold their breath underwater. If you practice, you can hold your breath for much longer than you ever believed possible. That's what holding my Voices inside was like. Sure, I could hold it for a few seconds longer. But the explosive rage was building inside all the more for not being allowed to be expressed." (pg. 165 - Lori)
"Was this really my brain? Was this really the same brain that had achieved for me a 3.9 average at one of the most competitive high schools in the country, and a 3.3 average at one of the most competitive colleges? Was this the same brain that learned to speak Spanish? That wrote papers the professors praised?" (pg. 184 - Lori)
"Dr. Fischer and Dr. Doller explained, there weren't really voices that other people could hear. It was just my own thoughts getting blown up out of proportion inside my brain. I listened. I thought about it. No way, I thought at first. I don't have horrible thoughts like that. Those thoughts aren't me. It's those Voices who are the crazy demons, not me. Besides, the Voices were so clear, so real, so vivid. It seemed impossible to me that they were simply figments of my own imagination." (pg. 221 - Lori)
"Finally out of mental exhaustion I collapsed. But I relaxed. The more times I marched myself into the Quiet Room the easier it was. The Quiet Room became a place to chill out and deescalate, rather than to be punished. Finally, the Quiet Room really became quiet." (pg. 224 - Lori)"Despite all the progress I had made, how could I go out and live in the real world when I couldn't tell what was real from what was not real?" (pg. 227 - Lori)
"We weren't looking for a psychological cause of the illness. None of us disputed the biological cause of schizophrenia. We were, instead, looking to understand the experience of schizophrenia, and to try to help our patients learn to tolerate the experience better. [...] What is there in any human being's experience to prepare him or her to cope with a broken brain? Who can understand what a catastrophe this break is for the human soul? For the thing that is broken is the person's ability to relate to another person." (pg. 237 - Lori's doctor)
"My head kept clearing. Thinking was less of an effort. The scrambled-eggs unscrambled, the mixed-up spaghetti strands of thoughts unraveled. [...] When the Voices reared up and roared, it was as if they hit a glass shield, crashed and fell away. [...] Their noises were muffled and remote. [...] Clozapine was standing between them and my brain. Denied the nourishment of my thoughts, they were perishing. [...] But the biggest change was in the return of something I hadn't realized I was missing: I began to feel connected to other people." (pg. 252 - Lori)
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) People are allowed to be people. It is now more acceptable for gender roles to be abstract in today's society. At least, more people are tolerant of it. Unfortunately, this book's author had to spend half of her adolescence in psych wards because our population wasn't always so accepting. This was further exaggerated by the fact that Scholinski was a continuous trouble-maker and rule-breaker. And, oh my god, she's also a lesbian!
