Missing the Big Picture (11 page)

On Saturday, my mother decided to take me out for breakfast. I knew that she was worried, as it seemed like I was always staring into space. She asked me what was wrong, but I didn’t tell her anything. I just said that I was having some trouble in school and didn’t want to talk about it. On Saturday, the voices continued. Eric told me that he was eating at McDonald’s with Carmine and Evan and Dustin, their two friends from Saint John’s. Eric’s voice kept telling me, “Tell me something that would make me believe that I’m reading your mind.” In reply, I told Eric to tell Dustin and Evan that the young brother at Saint John’s, Brother Raymond, used to watch
South Park
. Eric told me that Dustin and Evan still didn’t believe him.

On Sunday, I woke up again—not to an alarm clock, but to Eric’s and Carmine’s voices. My mother and I went to church together, and when my mother encouraged me to pass the church bulletin, she told me to pay attention because she knew I was distracted. I finally told my mom that when we got home from church, I needed to talk to her. She could never imagine what I was going to tell her.

I gave my mom a hug, and the two of us sat on the couch together. I told her that I started hearing Carmine’s voice in January, and then in March other voices joined in, until the conversations in my mind had lately been occurring nonstop. My mother listened in silence, her eyes growing bigger in disbelief. When I was finished, she told me, “Well, at least you can’t get in trouble for talking.” Then she told me that people can’t read my minds, that telepathic communication has never occurred, and that I should see a psychologist. I agreed to see a psychologist, but I argued that the voices were real and that the whole school knew this had been going on. She tried to reassure me that this couldn’t be so, but I didn’t believe her. I even told her that my cousin knew, and she got angrier with me and said that was impossible.

I had no choice but to go to school on Monday. Once again, I was talking telepathically to three or four people in all of my classes. I was so behind on my schoolwork, and I just wanted to get out of high school as fast as I could. That Monday night, I went out with my mother, Anthony, his mother, and his children to celebrate his mother’s eighty-sixth birthday. Also in attendance were Eric’s and Carmine’s voices in my head. Once everyone was eating his or her meal, my mother took me aside and said, “You’re not really here, are you?” Even though I could hear everybody laughing and joking, I was paying little attention to about the conversation; the voices of Eric and Carmine occluded my mind.

The next day—Tuesday, May 1—I woke up again to the voices. I got up and told my mother that I just couldn’t go back to school. I wasn’t even focused in my classes; I was always somewhere else in my mind and hardly learning anything to begin with. My mother agreed. We talked about seeing a psychiatrist, and after I finished showering, I quickly opened the telephone book, and found the number for Capital District Psychiatric Center (CDPC). I was soon talking to a psychiatric nurse. I was very considerate, respectful, and calm as I began explaining what had been happening in my mind since January. The woman was sincere and listened attentively to all my concerns. At the end of the conversation, I was hoping that she would believe me. The nurse responded, “Well, I’m sure that this is all real to you, but that can’t happen,” and she encouraged me to come to the psych center. I called my mother at work and told her that I wanted to go to the CDPC. My mother had a meeting, and I knew she was scared and nervous for me when she decided to leave work early. As we were walking into the building, we saw a man walking outside, smoking a cigarette, and yelling, “Why do you hate all of the Jews, God?”

I was expecting the unit at the psychiatric center to help me, but the receptionist told me that since I wasn’t actively homicidal or suicidal, I would just need counseling. I did lie when they asked if I was suicidal. I already had a plan mapped out, but I couldn’t tell my mother that I wanted to kill myself. So, I went home and my mother and I tried to find a psychiatrist that was covered under our insurance. My mother recognized the name of Dr. Roberts, the same psychiatrist that my grandmother had been seeing for years. My mother called him, briefly described what had been happening, and said that I was convinced I was talking telepathically to my peers every day at school. Dr. Roberts said that I needed to be seen immediately, and I made an appointment for Friday morning.

After my mother hung up the phone, she began to cry—the first time I ever saw her do so. My mother was always the source of strength in my family. Before my grandfather’s death, she and my grandfather would joke about the time my cousins called my grandfather because my uncle, their father, had too much to drink and had started hitting them. My mother drove with my grandfather to my uncle’s house. As soon as my uncle opened the door, my mother started beating him up until my grandfather restrained her. When she was growing up, my uncle would tell me that when he was playing baseball with his friends, everybody would yell, “Move in!” when it was his turn to bat. When it was my mother’s turn, all of the boys her age would yell, “Move back!” So I was shocked to see my mother cry and knew that she couldn’t handle what was going on. She wanted to make things better, but for weeks now I had been consumed with the voices in my mind and it had affected everything—school, my grades, my job, my social life—everything. Seeing her cry ended my suicidal thoughts. My mother cried and told me, “please don’t leave me.” No matter how much I wanted to end my life, I realized I could never put my mother through that.

That night I went to Friendly’s and served ice cream. On Wednesday, May 2, Eric’s and Carmine’s voices were still with me when I awoke—for the seventh day in a row. My mother told me that I had to go to school and that June was only a month away. I knew she was right, as much as I didn’t want her to be. I was pleased when Sam and Gabe were absent. During those classes, I still heard both Eric’s and Carmine’s voices; they were always in my mind. During the middle of AP Chemistry, I heard Tyler’s voice say, “I think they left us.” It was only Tyler’s voice that I heard. I didn’t eat anything the entire day. After class was over, I went home to get some money, and then I went to McDonald’s since I had used my lunch money to pay one of my fellow students to do an upcoming math project. During the drive home, I never heard Eric’s or Carmine’s voice. When I got in the house, I called my mother and asked her to say a prayer that the voices were gone, since it had been about forty-five minutes since I had heard one.

About half an hour later, I heard Eric’s laugh in my mind. I tried to fight Eric’s and Carmine’s voices, as I had a seven-page sociology paper due the next day and hadn’t been able to put any research into it. I drove to the Colonie Town Library to start. Soon Eric’s voice left, but Carmine’s remained. I told Carmine that I was hoping to be his friend and that Eric and all his drama was just stupid. After my admission, I saw a green sign in my mind that said, “Game over.” I felt the white presence and the voices leave. It was 6:45 p.m. After a few minutes, I realized the voices had gone, and I ran out of the library so excited. When I got home, I was so happy that I actually started dancing and jumping up and down. My mother even found it funny, and it was nice to see her laugh and smile. I didn’t turn in my sociology paper, but it was only a day late and luckily the teacher still accepted it.

When I woke up the next day—Thursday, May 3—I was so enthusiastic that I had a clear mind. I just sat at the edge of my bed before getting in the shower, savoring the knowledge that my life was back to normal. No more voices echoed in my mind. When I got to school, since I could now pay attention to what was going around me and not just in my mind, I decided to walk around and see if I could talk to anybody. I ran into Taylor, Melanie’s friend. Taylor once openly asked all of her male friends how many times they masturbated. She thought that most boys masturbated five or six times a day. Another time when Taylor was in line at the cafeteria, she pointed to me and told the woman running the cash register, “He loves penis.”

After a brief conversation with Taylor that morning, I went to my homeroom and saw that Gabe was present. As soon as the math teacher was done taking attendance, I had another telepathic conversation with Gabe. I was so crushed as I thought the voices in my mind were gone. He told me that he knew beforehand that the weeklong telepathic charade was over. All the voices had told me that there were a large number of students who knew what was going on. In government, Eric was there, but my mind was clear and experienced no unusual activity. For the first time since March, I was fully paying attention and answered some of the teacher’s questions. There were only two people whose voices I had heard in my mind that day: Tyler and Gabe. Even though I felt like I was still communicating telepathically, I was so happy that the voices in my mind had been drastically reduced.

The strangest thing about May 3 was that I was extremely happy even though I followed the same daily routine that in January and February had made me completely miserable. I always wanted more out of life, instead of just appreciating what I had. On May 3, I was content with having a semi-clear mind.

On Friday, I had my first psychiatrist appointment. I had to go to school in the morning to turn in my sociology paper, which was already a day late. I was surprised that for the first time since March, Gabe was in math but I didn’t hear his voice at all. This was also the second time during my government class that I didn’t hear Eric’s voice. For the first time since March, I actually didn’t mind government class. The notes that I took were clear; normally when I heard the voices, all of my notes looked as if a preschooler had gone haywire with a pen and a notebook.

I was very intimidated about my psychiatrist appointment because Dr. Roberts was older, very serious, and had a stern appearance. I went through all the different voices that I heard in my mind. I told him about the “range” and how for the last week I continually heard Eric’s and Carmine’s voices. I described how each voice in my mind was different because I thought I was talking to each person. Dr. Roberts wrote everything down. Then he told me, “Well, it sounds like you’re convinced, but this is not real.”

I just wouldn’t settle. I was convinced that this was real—that when I walked into each classroom, there was another male student with whom I was sharing my thoughts. After a few minutes, my mother came into the room and tried to explain that I had a mental illness; this wasn’t some psychic mind-reading game. My mother explained that we had a history of mental illness in our family, and Dr. Roberts shared experiences from his thirty-seven years of practice—how some individuals thought that they were talking to ghosts or saw things that weren’t real. The voices in my mind kept saying that they were real, so I would listen to them more than my psychiatrist or my mother. Dr. Roberts ordered an MRI and started me on Zyprexa, an antipsychotic. I willingly took the medication because I would do anything to make the voices in my mind end.

On Saturday, I continued to hear Eric’s and Carmine’s voices from my house, but it was intermittent. They would only last for a few hours at a time, after which I would be able to focus on something else. Still, I recognized it as a problem and wanted it to end. During every class that week, I still heard everyone’s voices. On Wednesday, I went to my grandfather’s grave site and prayed for him to make the voices stop. I was out of ideas. When at the grave site, I heard Eric’s voice. “Why did you leave your house? You could have just prayed from your room.” He also said that praying didn’t work, and I called him an asshole.

The following Saturday, May 12, I had a night off from Friendly’s and my mother was out with Anthony. This meant that I could spend all night masturbating alone, which I was looking forward to. Just as I had planted the pornographic magazines on my bed, I suddenly noticed three people jumping and bouncing around my yard. To my surprise, it was Taylor, Melanie, and Taylor’s pal, Dennis. They had stopped by unexpectedly and were planning to go to a party at a boy named Mike’s, who lived next door to Melanie and was a good friend of Eric’s. Taylor and Melanie thought it would be hilarious for me to show up, except they didn’t want the social repercussions of bringing me to such an elite high school party. The plan was for me to go through the front door and try to sneak in without anybody noticing. If there was a problem, the three friends would be in the car a few doors down.

It seemed that one of my biggest high school wishes might come true that night. Colonie Central was a large high school with nineteen hundred students, but the social networks within the school overlapped such that certain parties could claim attendants from the majority of one class. Often on Monday mornings, rumors abounded that somebody puked all over the bathroom mirror, or somebody had sex with somebody else and another person walked in on it, or somebody left her underwear at the party. The most exciting thing that happened to me on a weekend was finding a freshly clean sock to masturbate in. Now I was only seconds away from walking in and claiming that I was at a party where the most popular and influential figures of Colonie Central were socializing.

As soon as I got to the door, I heard some of the kids inside talking. “Yo, dude—the cops are coming.” But another kid asked, “Yo, who is that?” Then somebody screamed, “I think it’s Luke!” I was just on the porch, and I didn’t even make it inside before the plan failed.

I saw two boys walking toward me, and I heard one of them saying, “It is.” Before I knew it, at least five people were chasing me. Taylor, Dennis, and Melanie were parked behind a bush, and I was relieved to see their car. Taylor and Melanie didn’t share my relief, though, and kept the door locked so I couldn’t get in. I was pounding on the door, saying, “Yo! Let me in!” Finally, as the kids running after me approached the car, Taylor and Melanie let me in and we drove away. My dream to go to a party where all the high school seniors were never came true.