Another Lifetime: Jason

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Jason

I worked as a mental health clinician for awhile after I graduated from college. Jason was one of my clients who struggled with schizophrenia. This warm, genuine and intelligent man is someone you would never know is ill. When he would miss a few pills in a row, however, he would start to withdraw into himself. He would become quieter and quieter as he retreated from his surroundings, then gradually his body would stiffen and he would spend the next 48 hours confined to his favorite chair. This is called catatonia. His father would call me, with such alarm in his voice, telling me that Jason wouldn't eat, drink, or speak. I would go to the home to find a man with the face of a boy, still as stone, completely non-communicative. I would arrange for him to go to the hospital, and would then help him pick up the broken pieces of employment and other areas of his life upon discharge.

He would tell me "Sheila, everyone gets so worried about me when this happens, but to me I just start to feel very cozy and peaceful, and I pull back into my own mind for awhile. I prefer to be alone when this happens, and yet my parents try to move me around, they just won't leave me BE".

The doctor and I would try to educate him about his symptoms but he remained convinced that we just didn't get it.

Lately I've been settling into the warm, quiet darkness quite a bit myself. I write of Jason to remember to do what I need to do to take care of myself, to take notice when family members start buzzing around, and to resist the lure of thick, black, sleepy solitude.

3 comments:

Unknown said...: Depression in its myriad paradigms creeps up on all of us at various points. I see it in those around me. I see it in myself. I am not scared to stay there for a while but I agree fully that we need to retain that grip on reality to ensure that life goes on... with meaning that is.; January 29, 2009 at 12:12 AM
Maria said...: Love the pics!
My 1st thought was wonder what he sees there in his mind, why is there more peace there, what is his perception of life on the meds that he prefers to retreat into his mind? This has helped me release my obsession with pointless thoughts, to want to be here now & my mind not stuck in neutral, as they say - life is good; January 29, 2009 at 5:22 PM
in another lifetime said...: Well, that is the million dollar question that people try to answer with ellaborate scientific studies on the "neurotransmitters", whatever that means:)

I do know that he, and many other clients with schizophrenia, would become very wary of people who were constantly pressuring them to take their medication. I can understand that, I wouldn't like it much either I imagine (especially because of the awful side effects of most of these drugs). The wariness was often extreme, though, and paranoia is a very real symptom that can get in the way of someone's recovery.

It was a long time ago that I worked in that field,so I've forgotten a lot about the diagnoses and theories, I just remember the people and their stories. What a battle they have to fight every day.; January 29, 2009 at 6:22 PM

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What I'm Reading

Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson

The Hour I First Believed, Wally Lamb

The Bookseller of Kabul, Åsne Seierstad

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, Maggie O'Farrell
"Esme stares at the spiked rocks. She stares and stares until they begin to lose their third dimension, until they begin to look unfamiliar, insubstantial. Like the way words said over and over become just a slurry of a sound. She says the word 'word' over and over in her head until she hears only 'dwur-dwur-dwur'. She is aware of those numbers, the two and the eight, trying to find a place to slip back in. They have been lurking at the edges where she pushed them and they are mounting an assault, a break-in. She won't have it. She will not."

The House of Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne
"But as for the old structure of our story, its white-oak frame, and its boards, shingles, and crumbling plaster, and even the huge, clustered chimney in the midst, seemed to constitute only the least and meanest part of its reality. So much of mankind's varied experience had passed there, -so much had been suffered, and something, too, enjoyed,- that the very timbers were oozy, as with the moisture of a heart."

The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
"She was sitting up now. My arm was around her and she was leaning back against me, and we were quite calm. She was looking into my eyes with that way she had of looking that made you wonder whether she really saw out of her own eyes. They would look on and on after every one else's eyes in the world would have stopped looking. She looked as though there were nothing on earth she would not look at like that, and really she was afraid of so many things"

The Life You Can Save: Acting now to end world poverty, Peter Singer
"In the United States, 97 percent of those classified by the Census Bureau as poor own a color TV. Three quarters of them own a car. Three quarters of them have air conditioning. All have access to health care. I am not quoting these figures to deny that the poor in the United States face genuine difficulties. Nevertheless, for most, these difficulties are of a different order than those of the world's poorest people."

Kiss Me Like a Stranger: My search for love and art, Gene Wilder

Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert
"I walked into an office building one afternoon in a hurry, dashed into the waiting elevator. As I rushed in, I caught an unexpected glimpse of myself in a security mirror's reflection. In that moment my brain did an odd thing-it fired off this split second message: 'Hey! You know her! That's a friend of yours!' And I actually ran forward toward my own reflection with a smile, ready to welcome that girl whose name I had lost but whose face was so familiar......Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a friend"

The Kindness of Strangers, Katrina Kittle

The Alchemist, Paolo Coelho, translated by Alan Clarke
"'Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him,' his heart said. 'We, people's hearts, seldom say much about those treasures, because people no longer want to go in search of them. We speak of them only to children. Later, we simply let life proceed, in its own direction, towards its own fate. But, unfortunately, very few follow the path laid out for them- the path to their Personal Legends, and to happiness. Most people see the world as a threatening place. So, we, their hearts, speak more and more softly. We never stop speaking out, but we begin to hope that our words won't be heard: we don't want people to suffer because they don't follow their hearts.'"

Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
"For this is the truth about our soul, he thought, our self, who fish-like inhabits deep seas and plies among obscurities threading her way between the boles of giant weeds, over sun-flickered spaces and on and on into gloom, cold, deep, inscrutable; suddenly she shoots to the surface and sports on the wind-wrinkled waves;"

The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
"The room hovered around me with great gentleness, as if the chairs and the tables and the walls were witholding their weight out of sympathy for my sudden frailty"

Another Lifetime

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Jason

3 comments:

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