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.
The next Monday at school I heard one of the seniors say, “It’s a pretty boring party when the only thing that happens is Luke Donovan crashing it.”
On that Monday, things would turn around for me. That Wednesday, May 16, was the AP Chemistry exam. After the test, the class was over, so I knew that I would never hear Tyler’s voice again. One by one, by the end of that Friday, all of my voices were over except three: Carmine, Sam, and Eric.
I used to describe the voices as actual conversations in which I would think something and the voices would respond. I was with most of the voices that I heard for at least six weeks. Some would talk a lot to me; others would say hardly anything, but I could still feel th
eir presence. It was also weird when I would see these kids in the halls because in my mind I’d just been talking to them. In math class, Gabe told me that he was in AP English, that he’d been over to my cousin Alex’s house, that Alex’s friend Dale would steal from Alex, that the two of them would get in physical altercations but still remain friends, that he had sex with one of the girls I had known from church, that how everybody was talking about it, and so on. It was the same with Tyler. I listened to his voice describe his girlfriend, another girl from church. One time I actually told Tyler to raise his hand and ask our chemistry teacher a question about weighted averages. I turned my seat forward and heard him do just that. I did tell Dr. Roberts this, but his explanation was that I was making that up as well. I would still hear Carmine’s voice when I was in the halls and at my house—sometimes by itself or sometimes with Eric’s voice. In government and physical education class, I would still hear Eric’s voice.
I still continued to have weekly psychiatric appointments. All of these appointments followed the same pattern. I acknowledged that I wanted the voices to end, but I would never believe that it wasn’t real. Then Dr. Roberts would reassure me that people talking in my mind wasn’t scientifically possible. During one session, Dr. Roberts asked, “Are you ever going to accept the scientific explanation that this is not happening?” I just shook my head. “No.”
I didn’t just talk about the voices during my time with Dr. Roberts. I talked about how much of an outsider I was at school. I said I knew my mother thought my loneliness in conjunction with my challenging course work caused my mental breakdown. I told Dr. Roberts that if I talked to anybody when I had class with Eric, Eric would then try to befriend that person and discourage him or her from talking to me. Eric and his friends did spread lots of rumors about me—that I was this creepy, quiet kid who had to be gay because I hadn’t had sex by the time I left high school. Unfortunately, a double standard between boys and girls exists in that category. Girls who remain virgins are often see as angelic and pure, while boys who remain virgins are often seen as “losers” or “creeps”; they aren’t real men and must be gay. There are countless teen movies about boys trying to lose their virginity just to please their peers.
One of the few things that helped me keep my sanity was going to the library with Randy and some of his friends during seventh period. We enjoyed talking about Ms. Franklin, our eccentric Spanish teacher, and Randy usually had some quirky anecdotes to share. Randy and I started to get closer, but once again, Eric began talking to Randy about me. Anybody else that Eric would try to discourage would usually tell me what Eric had said about me. Randy, on the other hand, wouldn’t come clean. One time when I saw the two of them socializing, I asked Randy what Eric had said. I knew it was a lie when Randy said they had been talking about music. Eric didn’t really like Randy to begin with.
It was the middle of May when I received my interim report card for the fourth quarter. For the first time in high school, I was actually failing math class, and the rest of my grades had dropped into the C range. Most of the teacher comments, which for the previous thirteen years of school were “pleasure to have in class,” were now “student appears distracted, inattentive.” They also pointed out my high level of absences. I was worried about what my mother was going to say when she saw my report card, as it had only been two months ago that I was admitted to SUNY Geneseo and making plans to go to college. My mother wasn’t too upset, though, and she helped me study so I could improve my grades by the end of the school year.
I didn’t like school to begin with as a senior, and all the mental drama I was going through made it even more difficult. During eleventh grade, I really enjoyed English and writing, but that changed when I got Ms. Carson as an English teacher senior year. Many of Ms. Carson’s students had mixed reviews about her. Most of her students either really liked her or couldn’t tolerate her. She definitely played favorites, and she loved students who had older siblings who were former students of hers. She also only taught advanced-placement and college-level English courses.
In my class, one of Ms. Carson’s favorites was a girl named Stacey—mainly because Stacey had an older sister, Jen, who was another one of Ms. Carson’s favorites. About once a week, Ms. Carson would spend the first three to five minutes of class asking Stacey about her sister and how Jen liked the college she was attending. Similarly, Erin, another one of Ms. Carson’s favorites, had an older sister attending college. Much time was spent discussing how Erin’s sister was adjusting to life at SUNY Albany. One time Ms. Carson asked Erin, “Is your sister going to transfer? Her grades and SAT scores are head and shoulders above what UAlbany requires.”
Ms. Carson showed a different persona to students she didn’t like when she saw them outside of class. Once she approached a former student in the library and told him that he was lucky he passed the final exam, thereby passing the course and avoiding summer school. Even though he did pass her class, Ms. Carson still had to come up to him in the library and yell at him. She had been teaching English for ten years at Colonie, and she didn’t want to teach Regents-level classes. If she did, she would complain to the administration.
In the beginning of one class, a girl named Jen told Ms. Carson that she had just finished touring Union College, where she was hoping to attend. One of most exclusive private schools in New York State, Union College was always very competitive. Ms. Carson walked up to Jen and bent down toward her face. “Well, that’s if you can get into Union,” she said. Jen didn’t attend Union College and went to a public university instead. In 2007, however, Jen ended up graduating with a master’s degree from Union College.
The most surprising point about Ms. Carson was what happened at the end of the year. Ms. Carson came to English class late one day because she was in a meeting in which her supervisor told her that she could only teach freshmen and sophomore English and was banned from teaching advanced-placement or college-level courses. As she told our class about what happened at the meeting, she started sobbing. I wasn’t sympathetic to Ms. Carson’s dilemma at all, though. If Ms. Carson didn’t want to teach courses that didn’t have honors students, why did she want to be an English teacher to begin with?
In response to the administration’s plan to bar Ms. Carson from teaching the accelerated-level classes, many of her students wrote letters of complaint to the board of education. In fact, some of the students were pressured into writing letters, just to make their friends who loved Ms. Carson happy.
The students’ attempts at keeping Ms. Carson as the advanced-placement teacher were unsuccessful. In the past Ms. Carson had taught non-advanced courses. Early in the school year, she talked about teaching regular eleventh-grade English and curled her lip in disgust. She often made fun of what the students were writing. Many English teachers complain that their students have vague and unclear theses. In response, many of Ms. Carson’s students wrote “My thesis is….” But Ms. Carson didn’t appreciate this and often mocked students who wrote that sentence. Ms. Carson, in my opinion, was one of the worst teachers at Colonie. She treated her students very unfairly; she loved her AP students who had older brothers and sisters who were also AP students, and at the same time she often refused to teach lower-level English and blamed the students themselves for their academic problems. Zoey, one of Ms. Carson’s students, wrote a letter to the board of education stating that Ms. Carson should only teach college-level English classes. Then she told her friends that the administration was making Ms. Carson “teach all the dumb kids.”
One of the biggest struggles that I’ve had to overcome during my life is to the tendency to prejudge or stereotype people. To avoid this, you must first ask, “Where do young children learn about stereotypes and labels?” The answer is in the schools. Every school has a reputation or a label, such as “special education” or “honors,” that goes along with each class. Students are separated by class averages, and while this might be the best way to group them, these classifications
play a role in students’ perceptions of one another. When teachers like Ms. Carson only want to teach advanced-placement students, they create a decisive gap among classmates. If Ms. Carson didn’t want to teach average sophomore English students, why did she want to be a teacher? In the fall of 2001, amid all sorts of rumors, Ms. Carson didn’t return to the South Colonie School District. She later went to a nearby school district, where she taught mostly honors students.
In June, the voices in my mind began to clear up again. Occasionally, I would hear Eric’s and Carmine’s voices inside and outside of school. Our senior picnic was held on June 11, 2001. I was glad that six of the seven “mind-readers,” as I referred to them, were present, and I did not hear any of their voices. It wasn’t until later, when I was at home, that I heard Carmine’s voice. I remember saying to Carmine’s voice, “The picnic was fun.” Carmine’s voice responded, “I saw you there. You were just sitting there.”
I never talked to any of the boys in person about the voices I heard. The only person I talked to before I began to hear the voices was Sam, and I stopped talking to him after I began to hear his voice. I was even a little offended that he didn’t ask me to sign his yearbook. I still thought that the voices I heard were real, and I would get in fights over it with my psychiatrist and mother.
On June 20, 2001, two days before high school graduation, eight weeks since the infamous “hell week” when I began to hear voices at home as well as at school, Carmine’s voice suddenly disappeared at five o’clock. I remember it because I thought it was unusual that for eight weeks prior, five o’clock was when I heard Carmine’s voice outside of school. That would be the last time that I would hear any voice in my mind—at least for a while.
Missing the Big Picture Page 9