The Quiet Room (28 page)

As soon as they arrived, I herded them into my room. I didn't want anyone watching us. Mom and Dad seemed so out of tune with the world I lived in. My mom liked to stretch out on my bed with her shoes off. I lived in dread that someone would come in the room and see her there like that. There weren't any rules against it, but I knew that the staff disapproved of her making herself quite so comfortable. Meanwhile my dad sat on my desk chair facing the center of the room. I paced. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to act. They seemed to be expecting something I couldn't give.

Their visits were short, usually no more than half an hour or an hour on weekends. They seemed endless to me. We talked about their friends and the country club and about my playing racquetball once a week, and tie-dying T-shirts in therapeutic activities. We talked about Mark and Steven. Everything they had to say seemed so unimportant to me. The world I lived in— a world of medications, nurses, regulations, passes, Voices and buzzers—seemed so monumental, and the world they lived in seemed so far away. I was so self-involved it was nauseating even to me.

Mostly I struggled to conceal the Voices from them. They each wanted so badly to see me well. If I told my dad about some out-of-control episode, he'd retort immediately: “Well, that was yesterday. Today you're fine. And tomorrow you will be too. And if not tomorrow, then the next day.” He was always so positive about everything. I fought to make the picture match. My mother, on the other hand, just couldn't take it. She was always escaping to the smoking room. Sometimes it seemed that the smoking ritual was the only thing I shared with her. I wanted so much to be the daughter she dreamed me to be, but couldn't. It was all I could do to simply put on a normal face for them.

The fire built up inside me. My impatience became anger, my anger became rage. I hated them. I blamed them. My rage bubbled up, then spilled over the walls I had erected. Out it poured with terrifying intensity.

“I hate you! I hate you!” I screamed at my mother. “It's your fault I'm sick. You've done this to me. You're the unbalanced one, not me.”

“Get the fuck out of here!” I screamed at my father. “Get away! Get away!” I couldn't breathe. I thought I would explode into a million pieces.

Then they left, my mother in tears, my father white-lipped and shaking. And then I did spin out of control, ranting and shrieking. Terrible thoughts swamped me, making me feel like a lunatic. I wished them dead. I wished them murdered, or blown to pieces in a plane crash. I wanted to murder them myself. As I looked on helplessly my own raging brain concocted terrible, horrible fantasies. I would stab them. I would shoot them. I would sneak out of the hospital, pour gasoline around their house while they slept and fling out the final match, giving them no way out.

I often spent time in the Quiet Room after their visits. When the rage had finally abated and my sick frenzy had subsided, a new awful emotion would emerge in its place. I would be consumed by guilt and terror. I had killed them. My rage had killed them. They had been killed in a car crash on their way home. Their house was really going to burn down and I would have caused it. I felt terrible, all evil inside, like I was going to crack or break or fall apart and come undone from my own badness.

I wanted to see them. I wanted to hug them. I wanted them to come back. What if they believed me? What if they never came again? What if they really did die?

Whenever I felt myself about to explode, the only thing to do was to hit something, to break something, to punch my hands against the safety screen until they bled, to stab myself with whatever I could find, to strike out: in uncontainable rage, fear and pain.

For years, I had felt such rage was beyond my control. But as time went by, I found allies not only in Dr. Fischer and Dr. Doller, but in the nurses and mental health workers too. During my previous hospitalization, I felt the people stationed outside the door of the Quiet Room were hostile jailers. This time, they became more like buddies. During my calm periods I'd stand near the doorway and rap with my keeper about anything that came into my head: Lucky Charms cereal, the weather, clothes, Chinese restaurants. It was just ordinary day-to-day talk, but it helped keep the terrors in check.

Slowly I found myself feeling friendly toward the staff. Debbie was funny. Margo brought me milk and cookies and showed me pictures of her pet ferret. Cathy was my coach. Barbara was somewhere between mother and grandmother. Rose was like an old friend: She had been with me on all three hospitalizations. I talked “girl talk” with all of them. We discussed men's bodies, blind dates and hockey players. Even that simple talk helped to put some order on the chaos of my inner world.

I knew that even this little bit of closeness was helping to keep me from retreating into the world of the Voices. The Voices must have realized it too. They leaped between me and the staff, trying to sow fear and distrust.

“Strangle her!” the Voices shouted about one volunteer who had been particularly kind. “Pick up that towel and strangle her.” I tried to warn her of what was going to happen, but all I could manage was an impersonal warning.

“Your life is in danger, Fran,” I whispered in a tiny voice.

Still, they didn't seem afraid, and they didn't seem put off. Instead, they kept on working hard to reinforce the doctors’ message: that I was not helpless before the onslaught of my Voices. We can't make the Voices go away, they told me. We can't ease the maelstrom of your feelings. But we can teach you ways to feel less out of control when the storm hits. We can even teach you ways to feel the storm before it arrives, and prepare yourself to weather it better.

There was one nurse in particular, an Israeli man named Sorin, who seemed to work especially hard to help me get the upper hand against my Voices and fears. Sorin worked hard at everything. Although he was always putting in sixteen-hour double shifts, I never saw him enough to suit me. He always seemed especially creative in helping me deal with my ugly impulses.

He arranged to have a professional punching bag brought into the unit. When I felt like punching windows and walls or the trees in the courtyard, he encouraged me to do battle with the punching bag instead. I'd pummel the bag until I was hot and perspiring. I boxed the Voices, the sounds. I punched the invisible airwaves that carried the torturers to me. I punched my family. I punched the staff and I punched myself. I punched everything that hurt me, everything that enraged me. I punched until I was exhausted and ready to crawl.

I was also prescribed a once-a-week racquetball game. A staffer from therapeutic activities was assigned to be my partner. She brought me rulebooks, and tried to teach me a kind of yoga to cool back down from the exercise.

Sometimes I really felt I had to destroy things. The staff tried to teach me to channel even those impulses. When the Voices were especially disturbing, the staff would put me in the Quiet Room with a stack of magazines. I'd rip those suckers to bits, venting the violence of my emotions on every page. Then I kicked the piles of shreds like autumn leaves. When I was calmed down, I'd wad them up and play basketball with them, into the garbage can with the remains of the mangled magazines.

The score: Voices 0. Lori 1.

But still the Voices did not want to let me go. The closer I got to confiding in Dr. Fischer, the more the Voices tormented me. The more I trusted her, the more the Voices conspired to drive me away.

I kept on struggling to meet Dr. Fischer, and she kept struggling to get inside my head. From time to time, when the Voices cleared, she tried to coax me to talk about my experiences.

“How's it been going for you?” she said.

“Not so hot,” I said.

“What's been happening? ”

“I was in a peer group meeting and I found out that they all hate me.”

“So everyone hates you? When did you start thinking that? ”

“Since yesterday.”

“What happened yesterday? ”

“I was bringing up a point about the party that we were planning, and no one responded to me, and then the Voices told me to strangle Claire.”

Dr. Fischer looked concerned. “It seems like a lot has been happening to you since we last met. Let's try to figure out what's been happening. At the very least it seems like you feel very criticized ...”

“Yeah, but it was only because Claire was staring in a way that made me realize that she was going to kill me and so I had to strangle her first.”

Little by little, bit by bit, she probed my mind, gently climbing deeper and deeper in. The closer in she got to me, the stranger I began to feel.

Meeting with her on the unit had the advantage of the male staff I could count on to protect both of us. But it had disadvantages too. For one thing, there was no privacy. I was easily distracted by the other patients’ wandering by. Some of them didn't wander. They hovered. One guy in particular gravitated toward us. He hung out behind Dr. Fischer so that I could see him and Dr. Fischer could not. I got terribly upset at him. I broke off what I was saying to thrust him away.

“These are private conversations!” I shouted at him and, agitated, dragged Dr. Fischer further down the hall where we could be alone. He'd leave us for a while, but then the next day he'd be right back.

I thought about punching him in the face. But finally I decided to confront him instead.

“What are you doing listening in when I'm talking with my therapist?” I demanded.

He wasn't listening to anything, he said. It was Dr. Fischer's feet he was interested in. He was just sitting there watching them. They were so tiny and pretty in her high heels he couldn't help himself. He just had to stare at them.

His revelation didn't make me feel better. It made me feel worse. The guy was a pervert. I didn't like anyone thinking about Dr. Fischer like that. But the truth was, his behavior rang all kinds of uncomfortable bells for me. I was beginning to like Dr. Fischer. I was beginning to find her attractive myself. From being frightened of her, I had begun to obsess about her. I found myself thinking about her a lot. What was wrong with me? If he was a pervert what did that make me?

The strange feelings I was having for Dr. Fischer frightened and revolted me. I had been locked up inside my own crazy world for so long, I didn't know what it felt like to come out. All my feelings of affection and closeness blew up to gigantic proportions. From hating and fearing her, I grew to think I was in love with her.

I tried to tell my journal about the thoughts that were haunting me:

June 18
, 5:40 P.M.
—
I'm still having thoughts about Dr. Fischer. They scare and upset me …

The first time such thoughts popped into my head, I was shocked. I tried to drive the thoughts from my mind, but completely unbidden they kept forcing themselves back.

The Voices jeered at my discomfort.

“You want to touch her, don't you?” they shouted at me while I was trying to stay calm in session. I couldn't look at her face. Sometimes I couldn't look at her at all. I looked at my sneakers, or at the ground, or stared off into space. Sometimes the combination of my own strange thoughts and the Voices’ taunting was too much to bear and I would suddenly cut off the session and flee to the safety of my room.

In the mornings I filled my journals with my lovesick yearnings for her, and counted the hours until I could see her again. By afternoon I refused to see her. I couldn't face her with these perverted thoughts circling through my brain. And then I was consumed with guilt and pain. She would hate me. She would leave me. What could I tell her? What could I say to her?

June 20
, 11:00 P.M.
—
You know what's the worst part about sitting alone in my room all day? It's sitting alone with my crazy, confused thoughts. I don't write them all down because I can't write when I'm feeling so bizarre and because I'm afraid and paranoid that people will know what kind of world I retreat to.

July 1
, 8:00 P.M.
—
I feel like spattering myself on the [highway] after jumping off the bridge … I really feel like having a violent death. Maybe I could use gasoline, pour it over myself, light myself on fire and jump off the bridge onto the highway. I think these thoughts when I'm very angry.

July 2
, 2:50 P.M.
—
Do you know I have to fight to keep from going crazy every day? Who says I don't work at getting better. What should I do, listen to every voice? Act out every impulse? What about my fantasies? Should I make those sick thoughts a reality? I'm working hard, damn hard.

Whenever I was feeling really bad, I turned to Dr. Doller. Because I somehow trusted her, I felt safe telling her my worst fears. With Dr. Fischer I was experimenting with trust. But instead of feeling better, I felt worse than before. I felt invaded, taken over. I felt I didn't know who I was and I didn't know who she was. I swung back and forth with passionate intensity between feelings of love and caring and feelings of fear and hate. All these feelings I brought to Dr. Doller.

Actually, she came to me. It was late in the evening of one day when I had had a troubling session with Dr. Fischer. I was sitting on the unit and I was shaking. Dr. Doller must have seen something on my face, for she stopped and sat down beside me. There was no shrink talk, no therapeutic silences. Just a plain, straightforward blunt question.

“C'mon Lori, what's up? ”

She didn't need to prompt me. It all came pouring out. All my fear and pain and self-loathing for the strange, inexplicable feelings I was having for Dr. Fischer.

Dr. Doller spoke very carefully. What I was feeling wasn't unusual at all, she said. Nor was it wrong or bad. I wasn't sick for feeling that way, and I shouldn't berate myself for it. In fact, my feelings were probably helpful, she said. If I wanted to, I could learn from them. Therapy is like that she said. In the course of therapy, a therapist takes on many different roles to the patient. She can be mother, father, teacher, sister, brother, friend—even lover. The feelings I was feeling were good. They gave me a chance to explore. I should use them, and not feel ashamed of them.