Zoan’s sobbing grew into a muffled cry, and eventually, he was erratically gasping. The cry of a twenty-three-year old man had been one of the most petrifying and unparalleled experiences I have ever encountered. I had never heard a man cry before. Sob and tear yes, but not whaling like Zoan was. But something was eerie about his cry. It seemed choppy and something else. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. It sounded—it sounded monotonic. But why? He just lost someone who must have meant the world to him. That’s when I realized. Of course, it’s his schizophrenia. He had trouble processing his emotions and often lacked facial expressions. I couldn’t help but remember how I had never seen him smile or frown, or laugh. The irregular range of feelings and behaviors that come along with it—it was a negative symptom of schizophrenia. Psychologists called it the ‘flat affect.’ Under the flat affect, a patient can’t express emotions as normal people would: no smiles, no frowns, and constantly monotonic. I could only imagine the troubles Zoan must be going through. He cried behind that door, and even when he is at his lowest, his schizophrenia had a way of reminding him that he doesn’t own his emotions. No matter how much he is suffering inside, whatever cry comes out of him is laced with his flat affect. Reminding him that no matter how much he suffers, his disorder will never leave him. Our disorder is not insanity; it’s what it does to us that is insanity.
I looked over, and Fidel and the blonde were still staring into space. What are we doing? I asked myself.
“Should we do something?” I asked both of them with a deep concern.
They looked at each other, and the blonde said, “I think Zoan needs time.”
Fidel looked at the blonde and then at me, and murmured “M-hmm,” as to agree with him.
They are just going to leave him like this? I ask myself. He needs help. I thought about approaching the door and knocking on it. But then what? What can an 18-year old with no adulthood experience say to a once self-sufficient, intelligent, San Franciscan twenty-three year old; that could possibly make this all better? When I told myself this, I couldn’t think of anything to say to Zoan, or at least, nothing that would fix the hole in his heart. I couldn’t just walk in there and give him a few words and get him to cheer up. It would take days, weeks, and months even for Zoan to be able to recover. And even then, he might not ever be the confident man that he was yesterday. Not a few words of advice, nor the 24/7 counseling, or anything else in life. Losing someone changes the essence of a person forever.
Sadness overwhelmed me, it coursed through my veins. It was just yesterday that he recited such a beautiful poem to Fidel and I. And we can’t help him when he needs help.
And in spite of having little power to help Zoan, all I could do is hear him be consumed by despair. He’s suffering! I thought to myself. I was afraid of blurting it out because I didn’t want to make myself look manic, but I couldn’t help but feel that we were doing Zoan a wrong.
“But we should do something? He is aching,” I reinforced my first proposition.
“It’s out of respect,” the blonde answered.
“Respect? Ignoring your friend? Is this what men do?” I announced assertively.
“No,” the blonde paused. “It’s not like that. It’s just that if Zoan feels that he needs to be alone right now, he needs to be alone. Dr. Oliver and Helen are both women, and they respected Zoan’s decision to be alone. And Zoan will talk about it when he wants to.”
I felt torn. His response left me depleted of words, and both of them went back to staring into the blank hallway. I felt as if something happened to me, as if I was defeated, as if I was incapable of helping Zoan. The sound of a human being suffering like Zoan was—it made me want to save him. Like if behind that door, something horrible was happening to him. Some sort of gradual and horrible torturing, it made me uneasy. To see him as such a vibrant human being one day, reduced to—to crying. Alone.
I couldn’t help but feel the way that I had felt yesterday. During the group session we had. When Zoan was explaining to us that he was at the prime of his youth and how he was going places, publishing his own compilation of poems and performing, doing what he loved.
Suddenly, the word ‘success’ rang in my ears. This is what my mother meant. Success is not whether you get a Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD degree, but how much enjoyment, self-satisfaction, and happiness you take in your life. Zoan was successful. And once he got through this storm, I know, out of all people, he will not only be successful, but most of all, he will be happy again. The passion and inspiration in that man made me think for a moment, that no matter what disorder, disability, incapacitation, or other debilitation that he might face in his walk of life, nothing will stop him from achieving what he loves.
I walked over to his door, and held the cold, metal handle. I whispered to myself, “If he wants to be alone. He can be alone. When he wants to talk. He will talk.”
He shriveled the word “dad,” and that’s when it struck every living cell in my body. It felt as if my body had been rammed onto a wall when I remembered that Zoan was going to leave in two weeks with his dad. Now what would become of Zoan?
Chapter 57
His only guardian was his dad. That was his only parent here in southern California. From what I overheard last time, his mother was up in northern California with his step dad.
So what did that mean for Zoan?
What will happen to him? He has no guardian now. Will his mother want to claim Zoan as a dependent? Who would help pay for his hospitalization here?
What about if his mom thought it was too much of a burden to come all the way down here to southern California and say ‘I will claim this mentally disturbed man. He will be my responsibility. I will pay for his stay at the Center.’ Or what happens if she can’t, or if she just never shows up and left Zoan to the streets?
The world is too cruel to offer a mentally disturbed person the shelter and treatments they need. People have turned the other way as to not look at people like Zoan and I. Even when I was at the Chickadee hospital, some of the other patients treated me differently because I wasn’t mentally up to par with them. Sometimes, the other patients avoided me because I was abnormal. Because all of a sudden, I would put my hands to my ears, go somewhere alone, and shut my eyes for minutes because I would hear voices that at times, shouted at me, attacked me, told me to do wrongs, but I always restrained myself. And when it would stop, the other kids would stare at me strangely. They treated me differently. They avoided me.
I clutch to the metal handle on Zoan’s door, but I don’t open the door.
He was leaving in two weeks. He was almost done with his treatment. He was going to get a lot better. And then this happens? He must have lost the most valuable person who looked out for him. His father.
This isn’t fair. I wish I could stop this. I wish I could stop his pain. I wish I could stop every wrongful event that has happened to him.
He cried and I could hear it bounce against the door, but it still found it’s way into my ears. It breaks me slowly. It kills me over and over again, like being caught in a riptide and having my body slammed onto the sand floor only to be pulled back in, and slammed again, and again, and again.
I feel heavy and I put my head against the cold and desolate door that concealed a man whose whole world was falling apart.
I whispered to the door, “This is a storm, Zoan. It will pass.” But even I began to doubt myself. I turned to Fidel and the blonde-haired man, but they were still staring into the space. Maybe waiting for Zoan to finally come around to his sanity in a relentless world?
I let go of the cold doorknob to Zoan’s room.
I stepped back and looked at Zoan’s door and at the two men, and then at myself—all of us wearing some pastel green, hospital uniform because we suffer from a brain abnormality. It made me feel that this disorder was beyond us.
I couldn’t help but think, “We have too many tragedies for any of this to be just.”
Chapter 58
I walked to my room and lay on my thin mattress. My face was planted into the covers. I tried my best to process everything. My emotions ran too heavily. I had to take time to reevaluate everything.
Poor Zoan. Poor us. I couldn’t help but feel like we were all fools, the mass that got screwed over. Dr. Lucio once told me that it’s estimated that 1% of the adult population suffers from schizophrenia. And unfortunately, we had the misfortune of being that 1%. We hear voices; we see objects that aren’t real. We feel things that aren’t there. We are delusional. Our memories and thought process get cluttered. We spend too much time being frustrated and have inappropriate outbursts. We have problems conveying the right facial expressions or our speaking is monotone. Our speech declines, and at times, people tell us that we are chattering nonsense. Our damn bodies clamp up. Our movement is erratic. For Christ sake, when things get really bad for Ingrid, the nurses have to dress and shower her because her ability to move completely deteriorates. Where is the virtue in all of this? We suffer and it’s complete crap. There is no justification to why we suffer like this.
God dammit. No, stop. I shouldn’t think like this. Stop, Sam. God dammit.
I began punching my bed. I was so upset. But I stopped quickly when I realized that it wasn’t going to change anything.
“Aghh,” I scream.
After a few minutes, I didn’t feel as frustrated or angered, but I felt a sense of defeat.
Suddenly, I heard Helen’s voice echoing through the hallway, “Art class is starting everyone. We are having the class in one of the conference rooms.”
I relaxed my body. When I was ready, I got up and adjusted some hairpins on my hair so it wouldn’t drop in front of my face, just in case we had to paint.
I opened the door and began making my way down the hall. Some of the other patients were staying, others were making there way too. I passed by Zoan’s room. It was dead silent. Fidel and the blonde were nowhere to be seen.
I reached the end of the hallway and made my way down the flight of stairs. I passed the dining room and the Commons Area. I entered the small hallway where we had our group therapy sessions. These rooms are also called conference rooms, because they can be used for a variety of things. We have four, which is more than enough.
One of them had its door opened, and I made my way inside.
There stood our art instructor, Mr. Enrique. A well dressed man with a crate of art supplies.
The classroom is fairly empty. There were rows of tables and chairs. I found a seat towards the back of the room to myself. A few more patients came in and found seats as well. They assembled as doubles, triples, and quadruples.
Mr. Enrique began preparing his materials.
More and more people kept entering, till finally, there were about fifteen of us. I looked up at the clock that was mounted on the wall. It was 2:28 P.M.
I adjust my gaze down at the surface area of the table. Everything is still replaying in my head.
“Okay class,” Mr. Enrique began. “Today, we are going to be using a special art tool.” He picked up a crate and placed it on top of his table where his materials were laid out. He pulled out some sort of tin tray from the crate. And he opened it, revealing what was inside. “These are oil pastels,” he said.
I had never taken a drawing or painting class, but from what I understood, what he held, were in deed oil pastels. They are similar to a crayon’s shape, but the components of the pastel are much more oily.
He reached into another crate and pulled odd, white rods. “And these are called blending stumps. The tips are shaped like cones, and that’s what artists use to blend different colors. They are used for charcoal drawings, pastel drawings, and with a variety of other art styles too.”
He grabbed a stack of tin boxes and began passing them down the rows of tables. “Today, I want all of you to become familiar with the feeling of the oil pastels, how it looks when you press it hard or soft against your papers,”
Helen walked into the conference room. She offered to help, and Mr. Enrique took up her offer, asking her to pass out white sheets of papers and blending stumps.
Eventually, our row at the very end was given the materials. A few sheets of papers, a tin box of oil pastels, and a blending stump made their way to me.
I opened the box and plucked a white oil pastel out from the tin box. It was almost a waxy consistency, but it didn’t tint my skin. I rolled it back and forth in between my fingers.
I put the pastel back into its tin and decided which one I should begin using. I couldn’t help myself be captured by the wide array of vibrant colors. I had never seen oil pastels this close before, or let alone touch them. They appeared as luscious fruits assorted into a basket. Colors that resembled a rainbow, but the colors weren’t miles away like a rainbow. They were vibrant, rich, and in my hands.
“Now when you are drawing and coloring with them, you can decide if you want to mix the colors together or not. But don’t forget, one of the appeals of oil pastels is that they mix beautifully,” Mr. Enrique informed us.
I picked up shades of blues, greens, and purples, and colored the bottom of the paper. I created an ocean. I picked up the blending stump and blended the colors together.
Next, I drew a far off island. I started off by using a bronze-colored oil pastel and created a blob at first, and then I added a bit of green. I blended the blob and made the color more consistent. Then, I decorated the region with small trees and stones, so as that the island looked like it was very far away.
I grabbed shades of gold and yellow, and at the very top right corner, I filled in a sun. A bright, golden sun.
I grabbed black, white, and peach colored oil pastels. Then I began making an outline of a person on the top section of the page. It started off as small circles and lines, but I kept filling in the spaces with more and more peach. I blended the figure, making it more life like. I gave the figure legs that were off balance, and stretched arms, and the base for a head. I gave the figure long, dark brown hair and added small outlines to indicate lips, eyes, nose, and eyebrows.
I stared at the figure. I felt like it was missing something.
I picked up the white and black pastels. I sketched a black outline around her arms. I began to fill in the space in between her arms and the outline with white. I added more black lines, and blended them together, making sure not to blend the peach colors of the arms onto the white.
I stopped once I felt that the blending and drawing was sufficient. I stared at it.
I had drawn a woman. Wings were attached to her arms. The wings had a pearl white consistency with streaks of silver to give it a feather like pattern.
I wasn’t entirely sure what I had drawn. The woman appeared to be falling. She was plummeting. It was like her wings were almost falling apart. Her face was looking up at the sun. And she was falling, falling, and falling.
I filled in the rest of the drawing with light lavender. I mixed it with a bit of white and yellow, and blended it together. That was the sky.
There. Every bit of the page was covered in color. A sea foam tinted ocean. A far off island of greens. A golden sun that only promised greatness. A sky that could be interpreted as a peculiar sunrise or an eerie sunset. And to complete it—there was the girl who plummeted. Her wings drawn with oil pastels that made the feathers look like they were made of wax. And the feathers disassembled, they fell apart, they melted. And all she could see was that golden sun, the golden paradise that scorched her. It showed her promise and when she reached out, it burned her wings. And what I captured was her fall. Her death.
I called it, “The Female Icarus.”
Chapter 59
The class ended and we turned in our materials. Those who were done were allowed to keep their drawings. I kept mine.
I made my way back to my room, grabbed a roll of tape that I had hidden in my bottom cabinet.
I put the oil pastel drawing against the window in my room. I finally added a p
iece of tape to the top of the drawing.
It’s beautiful. The sun radiates through the window, hitting the back of the paper, and lighting up the colors of the oil pastels.
The rest of the day went by very quickly with little development. I spent what little was left of the day in the Commons and in my room. I didn’t cross paths with anyone else. Fidel and the blonde were nowhere to be seen. When we had dinner, Zoan didn’t come down.
The night grew darker and darker. Eventually, we all had to return to our rooms by 10:00 P.M.
When I returned to my room, I removed my hairpins, took a quick shower, dressed into my pajamas, turned off my bedroom lights, and finally found refugee in the space between the thin bed covers and the thin mattress.
I looked over at the clock. It read 10:30 P.M. The hallways fell silent and their lights went dim.
I closed my eyes.
I sighed.
I remained motionless.
My mind went blank, but I still couldn’t sleep. After what seemed to be an eternity of wasted time trying to lull myself to sleep, I found myself thinking.
Why can’t I ever be happy?
I touched my collarbone and felt the outline. It used to be more noticeable when I was still in high school, but I could still feel it, the way it stuck out. It only reminded me of my younger years, back when—well, I knew when. And how. And why. Why all of this happened.
I thought about my life as a student, and my life as a schizophrenic. A top ten percent student and aspiring UC Berkeley applicant. And now, I’m just ill, living my days in hospitals.
‘Where is the virtue in all of this?’ I ask myself again.
More and more time passed, I kept checking the time on my alarm clock. One moment it was 10:50, and then it was 11:50. And still no progress towards sleeping.
I didn’t have anything that I wanted to talk about. Nothing that I wanted to talk about. Nothing that I haven’t mulled over in my head yet. Just the frightful experience with Zoan this morning. It repeated in my head. His monotonous cry. The cry of a troubled man.
Stand Tall My Sweet Dandelion Girl Page 20