Diagnonsense
Diagnonsense:
a life of sex, drugs, and paranoid schizophrenia
This is a true story. Though I did hallucinate parts of it
Prologue
The nurses’ hands were soft as she smoothed the sticky white pads onto my hands, chest, and head. These were the electrodes. A black switchpad blinked with multicolored lights on the sidewall of the cold cement room. The basement of the hospital had that underground chill, a stillness that came from the sound-dampening earth we were under. An IV had already been placed in the port in my chest, and the paperwork was coming next.
As I had three times a week, I glanced across the page and felt a jolt of nerves go through me. Page one: sign this, in case you die. Page two: sign this, don’t worry, you probably won’t die. Page three: death is but a construct of the mind, now sign the damn form. So, I sign, “Leah Gai,” and the hands that were just so gentle now have to wedge a plastic guard into my mouth, shoving my tongue into an uncomfortable but mostly safe position.
I don’t know what will be gone when I wake up, what chunks of memory will have been carved out of me with a hot ice cream scoop. But as I fade away with the countdown, I just pray that this works. Shock therapy is no one’s first choice.
Electroconvulsive Therapy is kind of like turning the computer off and on again. It’s supposed to reset things, but I wasn’t just experiencing a glitch, I had a brain full of malware. Twenty years in a downward spiral of psychosis is not something you can take to the genius bar.
As the surge went through me, my fragile and fragmented mind could not handle it. Once solid memories turned to dust like a thousand year old corpse, held together by nothing but time in Pompeii, until a hand disturbed its rest. ECT was a last resort. And when my last resort failed after twenty years of experiments, trials, hospitals… When it all came to nothing, I was ready to try anything.
I was a lunatic, a rambling mess. Many nights I woke up thinking I was on fire and dove in the bath to put myself out, but it was all in my mind. When the torment wore me to exhaustion I shook, curled into the fetal position. I wept as my muscles twitched uncontrollably from years of heavy prescriptions. I was desperate. So when my mom told me about the new trials for dementia patients using mushrooms, I was ready to try it.
Psychedelics are not recommended for psychotic patients, or even those with a family history of psychosis. Psychedelics often worsen, or cause breaks in those prone to them. Taking mushrooms was a risky gamble. There was a chance that this would end up going nuclear. But I was out of options, it was time to throw a hail mary.
By the end of that year I held my first job.
Chapter One
God's Eye Syndrome
I was just eleven years old when I first hallucinated. Sitting in my big old blue armchair in my bedroom one afternoon, the world simply dropped from underneath me and began to spin, like a globe slapped by the hand of God.
All I could think was, “Man, puberty’s weird.”
In the room I shared with my sister was a big blue recliner that was all mine. I got it cheap with my allowance from the thriftiest thrift store in Oakland. Most afternoons you could find me in it, playing computer games or reading a book.
It was a random afternoon, nothing special about it, when it struck. One moment I was sitting, and then I was slammed back in my seat, as the world began to rush towards me. The chair stayed in place, yet the ground beneath it sped at a terrifying speed. As the world flew underneath me, all around me I saw… everything.
Blurry at the edges, I saw children pass by, eyes burning with tears, sitting over their mothers, peppered in deep sores. Past the sick, the dying. I saw dry lake beds with emaciated lambs licking rocks in feverish hope, I saw child soldiers rush by, I saw starving bodies rush by, I saw raped girls rush by, I saw, I saw, I saw. Death, pain, starving.
Then slam! I was back in my room, just as fast. I was gasping for air, terrified, with tears in my eyes. The room around me now appeared gray and flat. I felt as though I had just seen through the eyes of God, and now I had the horrible knowledge of a doomed world and was looking through dull human eyes that saw nothing. The information that was stuffed into my head was huge, horrible and incomprehensible. That was the God's Eye experience.
I was just a kid. I had barely left elementary school. I still had my entire Barbie collection in the big wicker toy chest. I still played dress-up. I made mud pies. So I had no idea how to talk about this. Who could I tell and what, what would I say? I had no idea what it was that happened to me, and this was already a weird time. Y’know, I’m growing pubes, my chest always hurts, occasionally I see the death of the world through the eyes of the omnipotent. Kids, am I right?
And honestly, that’s kind of what I thought for a while. This was probably just hormones gone wrong. I probably shouldn’t say anything. I’ve always had an active imagination.
Lies keep us safe, hidden, protected. But this had been brewing for a long time, and no one had recognized the signs.
I seemed like any other kid growing up in Oakland in the 90s. We lived on a quiet block, with little houses that were a storybook kind of cozy. Our houses were older, built in the 20s and and 40s, across what had once been peach groves.
Every evening mom watched the news or the Oakland A’s play at our next door neighbor Betty’s house. She’d been in the house next door since before the Oakland Zoo was built. She said back before the freeway was installed, in the morning you could hear the sound of lions roaring, and the screeching of monkeys just over our little hill.
I went barefoot in the summer, and loved playing in the mud in our backyard. I was a little hippie and a little nerdy right from the outset. When I was just five I had two dreams for myself. I wanted to someday become a neurosurgeon, or become a tree. I couldn’t decide. The year before when mom took me to my annual physical, the doctor asked,
“What is your favorite thing to do at home?”
I answered with all the moxy of a four year old, “I like to take off my clothes and run around naked!”
The coziness of our little house did mean I grew up sharing a room with my big sister, Erica. But she had it harder than I did. By the time I turned twelve she was mostly couch-surfing with her friends in high school. Even with three and a half years between us we were still close. I listened to any music she brought home like it was holy prayer. I said the rosary to Sublime, hailed Mary to TLC, and confessed to the sin of Aqua.
Even my family often felt idyllic. Our family was close-knit, and I grew up with my cousins, it was like having extra siblings! Twice a year or more, we packed our bags, bundled up in the car with pillows and snacks and our tunes, then headed up to Eureka to see the family. It felt like another world deep in the boondocks of Arcada, in the thick forests of ancient redwoods. We were in the same forests they filmed the Ewok scenes in Star Wars, a place that felt lost to time.
I knew we were almost there when the scene out the window changed from the big California freeway to a small highway lined with forested hills. From there we took a turn in the middle of nowhere onto a dark craggy road with steep drop offs on either side. Huge moss covered boulders lay like sleeping giants, covered in soft moss blankets. Behind them the giant redwoods dripped in the same ferns that lined the forest floor.
Up, up, up we went, till the road dipped down and opened onto a large gravel drive with two carports and a garage. To the left was Grandma’s little cabin. Standing on her porch you could see over the thick green mountains all the way out to the bay. To the right was the cousins' big house, covered in wood shingles. It was beautiful, and looked like a piece of the forest around it. These two fairytale homes, the little cabin and the big mysterious house with moss creeping up its windows were the only homes you could see. Beyond the yard, around us on all sides were giant redwood trees, magnificent in size.
The loft at Grandma’s was a haven for kids to be kids. Grandma wanted to get us all play clothes when we were young, but there weren’t a lot of options close by. So she went around to all the neighbors and asked for their donations of old clothes for playing in. Well, out in the woods a lot of people had very old clothing in their attics that they would love to donate to charity, or just get rid of. This seemed like an easy way to clear their closets. So here came grandma, filling the old trunks in the loft with gowns and clothes from the 1800s, alongside play clothes and costumes from Halloween's past. Us cousins used these as our playclothes all throughout our childhood.
Grandma’s house was such a weird and wonderful mix of the old and new. We dressed in the old gowns, and played “sorceress and sorcerers” out in the woods. Sticks became wands, and mud became mysterious potions for crafting magic spells. The big sticks were our swords. We played out elaborate fight scenes, bruising each other with “deadly” blows. When it got cold and started to rain we ran upstairs with fresh cookies in our pockets and played video games. We lounged on the many bean bag chairs or sat on the huge old antique bed with a great big carved wooden headboard. The matching armoire was filled with fur coats, like it was ready to transport us straight to Narnia.
Yes, I seemed to be like any other kid. Even luckier than some. Mom was on the PTA and very involved in school, she read Shel Silverstein and Roald Dahl to me every night. She made salads straight from her garden, and we all gathered in the kitchen for homemade dinners where we talked about our day. On the surface, life was a placid lake. Under the surface, I boiled.
Chapter Two
Cloudy With a Chance of Hurricanes
I was having a fabulous birthday party. I had half the third grade class over. We’d all just come back from a treasure hunt around the neighborhood using the handmade treasure map that mom made. She burnt it at the edges, stained it with tea, and carefully drew landmarks and paths with her artist’s hands. It was time for cake, and I was so excited, but also nervous, I was beginning to feel nervous. The song broke out, “Happy birthday to you…” and everything went black..
In a hail of confusion and overwhelmed senses, I began to shake and stutter, “No! No!! It’s wrong! It’s all wrong!” I knew I was lost. More than that I knew what was going on in my head made absolutely no sense. I felt pathetic. I had heard a different song in my head, and when the happy birthday song began my confusion tumbled quickly into a blind rage. My feelings jumbled up so fast and painful I couldn’t say anything or just tell my friends what I wanted. I ran.
I couldn’t stop, so I shut myself in my room and screamed and screamed, confused and so embarrassed. I yanked clothing out of my drawers and flung them across the room, trying to get this horrible feeling out of my body. I was just eight years old but still I did understand that this made no sense, and that frustrated me even more. I finally sat, spent, tears on my face, wondering why I couldn’t just talk sometimes, why I was so bad at the big fun parties or holidays? They were my favorite! But I couldn’t handle the stimulation, the social situations. It always felt like everyone had a secret password or code to social politics that I just didn’t get. Emotions wrapped around me like warm guiding fingers, puppeteering my body while my mind spit out frothing fear, rage, and panic.
A light knock on my door woke me from my reverie. I was sure it was my mom, here to punish me for the horrible outburst I just had.
“Go away.” I moaned in a painful plea.
But it wasn’t my mom. Well, not just my mom. She had busied the other kids to our wonderful yard to play and eat cake, but someone had wanted to check on me.
Lumell, a sweet boy from my class, knocked again softly, “Hi Leah, I wanted to give you your birthday present?” He posed it as a question, waiting with patience and understanding well beyond his years.
It absolutely broke my heart. I began to cry now, not those burning tears squeezed through tightened lids that blush cheeks red, but a mournful release. The tears poured out of me in a rush of melancholy gratitude. The relief was instantaneous, that my friend would come to check on me, and still want to give me my present? It was the sweetest birthday gift, just the act of kindness in itself, that I have never forgotten.
As a little kid I had an explosive and wildly unpredictable temper. No one expected it from this nerdy, bookish kid that never got into trouble at school. My nose was always in a book. I taught myself to read and walk at the same time, dodging pillars and maneuvering around objects, so I never had to stop the adventure between the pages.
I could keep a damper on my temper when I was outside of the house. Embarrassment was the way to keep me in line and mom was an expert at quietly but angrily making me feel ashamed of my behavior. I flat out refused to let it get the better of me at school. At home however I had a harder time. I continued to have overwhelmed moments where I hit the roof: throwing mom’s papers, slamming doors, screaming and hollering. Every time after it was done, I felt a hole of shame and guilt right down the pit of my stomach. But that shame and guilt just led me to feel angry again, and so the cycle continued.
If I ever wondered where I got such a flair for extreme outbursts, I needed look no further than daddy dearest. My dad was an angry man. We tiptoed around my father if he was in a mood, and he didn’t always approve of the sound of tiptoes. The screaming and yelling that came out of this man shook the house. He never once closed a cabinet, he slammed them so they snapped, hard, and bounced off the frame. And he handed out whoopin’s for free. Sometimes we deserved them, but most of the time it felt as though he was just pissed off and wanted to make it known.
One stands out in my memory because it felt so unfair. I was about five, the whole family was getting dressed up for a fancy lunch out. Us girls, mom and daddy were going to see a show. I had on one of the pretty dresses Mama got us, she got us girls matching outfits for all our picture days back in 1994. Those frilly frocks were old-fashioned even for the time. We had our pictures taken in pretty little posy covered dresses with lace on the collars until third grade, and shiny black shoes that clicked on the floor! It wasn’t comfy but I was so excited because I loved shoes that clicked. I never got to wear them and I couldn’t snap my fingers like my older cousins so I hardly ever heard that lovely satisfying ‘click!’ sound.
I was tap-tap-tapping all over the house in my clicking shoes. I began to get bored waiting for everyone else to get ready. So I wandered out into the backyard and clacketty-clacked all over the deck. Finally tired of prancing about, I sat on one of the porch chairs that had not yet been cleaned for spring. That’s where Mama found me.
“Leah! Oh my gosh what are you doing honey! We’ve been calling and calling! We didn’t know where you were! Have you been out here the whole time? I’m gonna have to wash your dress! Get up, get inside! Oh no.” Mama tsk tsked me and pulled me right up and started brushing off my backside, “This is all dirty, come on we’ll get you in something else.”
Mom pawned me off to Dad to get me in a new dress as she went to put the other in the wash. I was devastated that I had made Mommy mad and was already crying. Dad began putting me in the dress and firmly told me to stop.
“You need to stop that now,” He pulled my arm too hard through one sleeve and I yelped. “Stop that! You can’t be making us late and worrying your mom.”
“B-bb-but I didn’t mean to-”
“C’mon, c’mere.”
I was all dressed and Daddy sat me on the edge of the tub, looked at me and began to lecture me on how to behave, that I can’t cry like that.
I was so nervous, and I didn’t really understand what he was talking about. It all sounded like very serious grown-up things, and he was scaring me a bit. So I stared off blankly, sliding into my own head, so I wouldn’t see or hear anything but white noise, as he laid into me about not wandering off. I couldn’t listen when the grown-ups talked nonsense, I went and sat outside! We have a small house, with a backyard that is all fenced in, there weren’t many places to go. I just wanted to hear the clicking sounds again. I was deep into my own head, trying to get away from daddy and the angry voice, as I began to click my little shoe, tap-tap-tap, I could breathe again, tap-tap-tap, it was ok, tap-tap-tap, I was ok, tap-
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING!” He bellowed in my face.
My five-year-old mind came snapping back to see the face of rage in front of me. I was so scared I peed myself a little.
“ARE YOU TAPPING YOUR FOOT AT ME??”
‘What?’ I thought. I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know what that was. I was five, I had no idea that people tap their feet as a sign of disinterest or disrespect. I just liked the clacking.
In one quick motion he swept me off the edge of the tub and put me under his arm. I started squealing and squirming in terror, I knew what was coming. He laid me out across the end of the dining room table, and yanked up my dress, and exposed my bare ass. Tears were pouring down my face as I begged.
“No please daddy no please don’t do it please please please!”
See he didn’t just spank you, he beat your ass with all his anger, over, and over, and over. The belt came out, I closed my eyes, and I tried to think of shoes that go click and clack.