Nothing General About It

by Maurice Benard

  After spending another long dark night in isolation, fighting the fears that always haunted me when the sun went down, I was put back into the general psych ward population. But with no visits from my girlfriend and my best friends blacklisted from entry to the premises, I was as determined as ever to get the hell out of this place. I immediately tried to convince another patient, a tall guy with a busted lip, to call my mother.

  “Just say you’re Dr. Hicks and Mauricio is ready to come home.”

  “I don’t know . . .”

  “Come on, I’ll owe ya,” I kept pressing, and, after some coaxing, I finally convinced him to do it. To my dismay, my mom didn’t buy the story and instead she called the doctor, who had no idea what she was talking about—so, as hard as it was for her, she denied me freedom once again.

  It wasn’t long before I was back in seclusion, strapped to the bed again and, like before, determined to free myself by any means necessary. But this time there were more restraints, so after hours of rubbing my skin raw without any lubricant I only got my hands free and as the sunlight poured through the window, I heard footsteps in the hallway and I knew I was doomed. As I looked out the window at the world I didn’t think I would ever be a part of again, I noticed one of the latches was loose, so I tore it off.

  The only way out of this hellhole and all my problems was to slit my wrists.

  Please, God, please help me, I prayed in the darkness.

  Still full of despair, I held the latch over my wrist, but as it hovered there, shaking with my trembling hand, the latch suddenly, inexplicably, broke in two. It stunned me and I felt a divine presence in the room and, looking up, I was certain I could see God. Instead of slicing into my skin, I put the two halves down by my side and when I looked at them again, I realized they formed a cross. I knew, I really knew, God had been there.

  And so the days dragged on. A small blessing during that time was one of the male nurses who sat with me and paid extra attention when I was distressed or gloomy.

  “What’s troubling you today?” he always asked.

  “I don’t think I can survive in here,” I always said. “I don’t think I’ll make it out.”

  “Be strong,” he encouraged me over and over again. I think I clung to that.

  Part of my days was taken up by therapy sessions with Dr. Hicks, which did not go well. The doctor would stare at me for long periods of time, and when I didn’t say anything, he would prod.

  “How do you feel?”

  “How do you think I feel? I feel like shit,” I answered.

  As the days passed, I lost track of time. Minutes stretched like hours and days blurred together, so I wasn’t certain even what day it was. One afternoon my friends and family came to surprise me with a cake because my twenty-second birthday had even crept up on me without me realizing it. I felt so pathetic, with everyone trying to pretend like nothing was wrong, like they weren’t eating cake in a hospital with bars on the windows and singing “Happy Birthday” to a crazy person. It was the worst birthday I’d ever had.

  I began to go along with the program, and, miraculously, another week went by without me being thrown in seclusion again. I wanted to be past the barred windows and locked doors so badly, to feel the sunshine and be free. Since I was now behaving like a good citizen, I was successful in convincing the hospital authorities that I could follow the rules outside the building as well.

  I also missed my running. Before the nurses finally came to escort me outside, I asked another patient to trade the leather jacket I’d been admitted to the hospital in for the guy’s tennis shoes. I only had shoes with hard soles and didn’t think I could run easily in them. The guy’s feet were clearly way bigger than mine, but I didn’t care, and I finally convinced him to make the trade.

  When the locked doors separating me from the world finally opened, there was the wide outside expanse before me, and my heart beat faster as the fresh air washed over me. The nurses guided me through the doors, watching as I slowly started walking around the lawn. As they engaged in an argument over a sports game, I continued to walk, unnoticed by them, up a hill, and then before they could stop me I broke into a dead run as if my life depended on it. I ran so fast I almost lost one of the oversized shoes.

  I sprinted at breakneck speed until I got to a real estate firm and asked to use the phone, calling Manny and Jeff and telling them where they could locate me. I waited and waited, and when I finally saw them coming across the way I was ecstatic, but that elation soon faded when I realized they had gotten the address wrong and passed by me. I yelled frantically at them, waving my arms, but they couldn’t see me and kept speeding in the wrong direction. I ran as fast as I could after them, but I couldn’t catch up, and, out of breath and disappointed, I stopped to rest at a Denny’s. However, as I got inside, I realized I had nothing but the clothes on my back, not even a dollar for a soft drink or a quarter for a pay phone.

  I splashed water in my mouth in the bathroom, feeling helpless, and looked at my bedraggled reflection. I had no choice but to beg for a quarter from several women I had passed on the way to the bathroom, which they were kind enough to give me. I thanked them and made my way to the pay phone to again call Jeff and Manny, who by now had gone back home when they couldn’t find me.

  This time, they found me sitting outside on the curb at the restaurant, but to their surprise I didn’t want to go home or even eat; I just wanted to go find Anna, and succeeded in talking Manny and Jeff into driving me to her high school. The only way for me to feel good was to be with a girl, or so I thought at the time. I never seemed to remember that after I was with them, I still felt like shit. Once again, I was self-medicating—whether it was women or alcohol, it would take a long time for me to figure that out.

  When I entered Anna’s high school and started walking down the halls, peering in the classrooms, I was unaware of how frightening I looked. A teacher saw me and, disturbed, told the principal, who in turn was alarmed and came to ask me what I was doing. I was honest and told the principal I’d had a breakdown, was just out of a mental institution, and wanted to see my girlfriend. As the principal considered calling security, I looked through the glass into Anna’s classroom and when she glanced up and saw me our eyes locked, but then she slowly turned away, as if I weren’t there.

  I had never felt so low.

  Jeff and Manny tried to persuade me to leave, but I wanted to wait for Anna after school. I couldn’t believe what had happened; I was sure it was a mistake, it had to be that Anna just didn’t realize it was me. So we waited, but when Anna finally appeared outside and saw me, she immediately walked the other way. Now I was getting angry and wanted to make her understand, so I followed her, but instead of throwing her arms around me to welcome me back, she seemed uncomfortable and aloof, and asked me why I was there. I went for broke; I bared my soul and told her I had escaped to see her, and that I needed to be with her. I was speechless when she told me she didn’t want to ever see me again, and I watched her walk away from me forever.

  Now completely spent physically and exhausted emotionally, I finally let Manny and Jeff take me home. I was ready to argue with my parents, threatening to move out if I had to go back to that godforsaken place that hadn’t helped me one bit. To my surprise, they were just relieved I was okay and my mother said the doctor thought if I wanted to be out that badly, being in a hospital wouldn’t help me, and she and my father agreed. She was shocked that I looked thinner than when she had seen me last and made me sit down while she fixed me food. My father was also alarmed that I looked so gaunt.

  I now tipped the scale at only 129—I had lost thirty pounds in three weeks in the hospital because I wouldn’t eat. When I looked in the mirror, it was like seeing a ghost.

  Chapter Four

  Doctor My Eyes

  The first two weeks I was home I was afraid to go to sleep, afraid of the dark and the nightmares, and afraid that I wouldn’t wake up. Manny stayed at the house, sleeping on top of
the covers next to me so I would feel safe and could finally drift off.

  Although I had hated the confining psych ward, being by myself all day while my parents went to work was just as bad, if not worse, because I was taking the meds they gave me in the institution and they made me feel like a zombie. They also weren’t working and I was in a major depression. Even the light hurt my eyes, so I never even opened the shades, let alone went outside. All alone, I found myself having conversations with God and often yelled at Him, “God, why did You do this to me? What the fuck did I do to You?”

  I never got an answer.

  One night I was in a bad state and called Kelly in Hawaii. “Hi, how are you?” I asked, craving comfort.

  “Hi, Mauricio,” she said hesitantly, “I’m good. How are you?”

  “It’s been bad, Kelly, I’ve been going through some shit.”

  There was another long pause on the other end before she answered. “Yeah, I heard you had a breakdown.” Before she could say anything else, I heard a guy’s voice in the background asking her a question.

  “Who’s that?” I inquired, my heart sinking.

  “That’s my boyfriend.”

  I suddenly felt ridiculous and put on my tough everything-is-okay voice. “It was good talking to you, I gotta ago. Manny’s waiting for me. We’re going out.”

  “Me, too,” she said.

  When I got off the phone I went upstairs and slouched past my dad, who instantly noticed my despair and was worried.

  “What’s wrong, Mauricio?” he asked.

  “Kelly’s got a new boyfriend,” I said.

  “She’s nothing, don’t think about her,” he said.

  “If she’s nothing, then why do I want to take a gun and blow my head off?” I asked him.

  His face registered shock and he tried to calm me down. “Don’t talk like that, Mauricio. Don’t talk like that, you don’t mean it. Everything will be okay.”

  Man, I wanted to believe that, but I couldn’t feel any hope. My mood got progressively darker. After a few days, I finally went out and I saw a hot chick at the bar named Mandy. I recognized her from the gym where I had worked out before the whole mental institution nightmare, and it was clear every other guy in the place was looking at her, too. I kept looking at her and she kept looking at me until finally she came up to me and we started drinking, and we were still drinking together when the joint closed down.

  After we left the bar, she drove me to a park in her big-ass Cadillac and we jumped over the fence, sitting on lounge chairs by a big pool. When we began making out, I started to forget about everything else that was going wrong; all the dark thoughts in my head faded. After we had messed around a while, we jumped the fence again and I asked her to let me drive her car even though I was wasted—I should never have gotten behind that wheel, but back then I didn’t think about things like that. I wasn’t driving, I was weaving. We heard sirens and saw red lights flashing in the rearview, so I slowly pulled over to what I thought was the side of the highway. When the cop asked me to get out of the car, however, I realized it was actually parked closer to the middle of the road, and when he asked me to spell California, try as I might, I couldn’t. It took all my effort but I couldn’t even stand up straight, let alone get from point A to point B without falling down to walk a straight line as instructed. Mandy explained to the cop that it was her fault for letting me drive and asked if she could just drive me home, but instead the cop cuffed me and took me to jail. I was put in a cell alone to wait. And wait.

  I was supposed to go to Disneyland in the morning with Manny and my mom and dad, and I was certain they weren’t going to be happy about this wrinkle. Meanwhile, I had to appear in night court before a judge that was not sympathetic to my plea that I would never do it again, and I was then sentenced to several days of community service. I also had to go to class and watch a movie about drunk driving, but the worst part of all of it was losing my license for a while.

  At six in the morning my mom and dad showed up with Manny in tow and the paperwork was processed for my release. My dad was furious, and not only that, but the whole reason I had hooked up with Mandy in the first place was to shake my despair—and it hadn’t worked. I was coming to understand that sex and alcohol weren’t making me happier, they were just changing the highs and lows I experienced. So me and my hangover went right from the jail to Disneyland and I’ve never been so miserable in my life waiting in the long lines in the heat.

  When I showed up a few days later to put in my hours for community service I was not prepared for the dirty, hard physical labor in store for me. Sweating and cursing, I picked up trash and debris along the highway for hours while people stopped and stared, passing judgment of their own. Even my buddies drove by and made fun of me, which didn’t help. I began spiraling downward even more.

  My parents were afraid I was suicidal and didn’t want me to be alone for hours on end, so they decided to get me to reconnect with something I loved—acting. Mom looked around, found the Drama Studio London at Berkeley, and signed me up for a three-month course that was eight hours a day, five days a week. It was brutal because even though I was still in a major depression I had to do voice, singing, and acting assignments in front of forty people. I could hardly get myself out of the house but somehow I got through my classes. I gave my performances, including a tough monologue, and received a diploma.

  After that experience, I started venturing from the house again and began going to the mall for a yogurt, then like clockwork walking up and down the rows of stores, trying to ease back into the world and get my head right. It’s amazing to think about it now, and hard to believe, but I had by that time been out of the hospital for a few months with no formal diagnosis. I was just wandering, relying on my own devices.

  Finally my parents decided I needed to go see a psychiatrist. Even though I was sure it was pointless, my mother finally got me to agree to attending at least one session. For such a random entry into my life, the guy they picked, Dr. Noonan, could not have been more laser-perfect for me. He was a small Asian man who spoke very softly and rarely looked at me, focusing instead on the paper and pen as he wrote down notes. It was an instant connection, in part because he had a presence that made me feel safe for the first time in a long time. Unlike during my experience in the mental institution, I started talking to Dr. Noonan and couldn’t stop.

  I told him everything that had happened, how depressed I was, the events leading up to my incarceration in the mental institution, and that being there hadn’t helped. I told him I had entertained suicide and had seen God and God had talked to me. I told him the devil talked to me sometimes, too.

  After listening to me for a while, he was convinced I was bipolar and wrote out my diagnosis. No one had been able to relieve my misery so far, no one had figured out why I was broken, but Dr. Noonan was so sure of himself. I had a chemical imbalance in my brain and there was medicine I could take to even that out and keep me on an even keel. It was such a relief to know that my illness had a name and that there seemed to be a way to control my symptoms.

  Dr. Noonan prescribed lithium, a heavy-duty drug for those at the high end of the bipolar disorder spectrum—in my case, it was a miracle drug. On lithium, I could function and I didn’t experience harmful side effects. In addition to the new drug, I saw Dr. Noonan once a week for a while and it was like I had found the missing piece of a mysterious puzzle I had been trying to solve for years. It’s true that lithium saved my life—but so did Dr. Noonan.

  Chapter Five

  Free Fallin’

  Now that this piece had fallen into place, the universe seemed to open up and send possibility, instead of more inertia, my way. It started with the America’s Most Watchable Man contest. I had automatically been entered by virtue of winning the San Francisco’s Most Watchable Man contest, but the original date of the contest—which precluded my participation because I was locked up in the mental institution—had been postponed until October f
or some unknown reason. Just like with my diagnosis, fate had seemed to step in.

  Finally, for the first time in a while, I felt capable of really wanting something. And I wanted to win more than anything. Manny and my parents attended the award ceremony with me, and as we waited for the winner to be announced, they were all more nervous than I was. My father chain-smoked, drinking his way through multiple cocktails, until finally the presenter brought the envelope containing the winner’s name to the podium.

  “And the next America’s Most Watchable Man is . . . Mauricio Morales.” The words rang in the air. I was in shock for a moment—it felt like a huge weight had been lifted off me. I needed a win, and this was the first step in bringing back my confidence.

  I kept up my usual routines, but with a little more swagger. Even walking around the mall eating my usual yogurt, I felt more confident about my future.

  It was about a month later, while I was doing just that, that I saw a pretty girl whose face I couldn’t have forgotten. It was Paula, the beautiful girl I had asked out and blown off all in the same day a year ago. Even though I had stood her up, that same strong inexplicable force was pulling me back into the store. Since I was walking in as a potential customer, I figured she wouldn’t be vindictive, so I nervously entered the store, and as I did Paula looked up and flashed me that same amazing smile.

  That surprised me. I wanted to be straight with her, not bullshit her about why I had never shown up after her shift that night a year ago. I didn’t even say hello, instead I just dove right in. “I’m really sorry I stood you up,” I said.