Lost in Infinity - an excerpt

For reasons, I'm posting this excerpt from Lost in Infinity today. Enjoy.

If you’re still reading, you’ve figured out by now that there are a lot of strange things rattling around up in my head. I have a plethora of issues. Scratch that. I have a plethora of problems. The truth is, I’m not the only one in my family like this. When I was nine a close relative succumbed to her own fears and was diagnosed schizophrenic. Institutionalized at age 35 of her own accord, she would eventually be considered stable, put on a cocktail of meds and shipped out to live on her own among the normal folks making up the rest of society.

I need to make it very clear, she has always been one of the most important people in my life. As far back as I can remember, she is in almost every one of my most vivid memories. Most people have that one influential grownup from their childhood who treated them like the adult they were going to become instead of the kid they were. For some it was an older brother or sister, for others it was a young aunt or uncle. Sometimes it was a neighbor or a stepparent. She has always been there for me and I hope that one day, if needed, I can be there for her.

A few years later, while living on her own, she was traumatized outside her apartment. The incident sent her spiraling back into the confines of her head. A few weeks later she was in the middle of her shift at work, turned to her boss and asked for someone to replace her. She admitted not feeling good, went to her locker, grabbed her purse and drove straight to the hospital. I remember my parents coming into my bedroom that night and telling me that she had checked herself back into the hospital. “It was a good thing though,” they’d told me, “because it meant that she was well enough to recognize the problem.”

I was allowed to visit her just once while she was in residence at the clinic. We walked through the front doors and were met by an invisible wall of antiseptic cleaner and bleach, the quintessential smell of hospital. My dad escorted me to the visitor’s area where she would be waiting for us. The smell is what I remember most. It wasn’t that it was “dirty” as much as it was “too clean”. The kind of clean that smells like its purpose is to hide something much more offensive. All around were other patients, shuffling to and fro harmlessly, in a narcotic haze. We’ve all seen psych wards in films and on television. I’m here to report that in my hometown, the psych ward did not disappoint. Instead it was as if it was designed specifically to keep up the accepted appearances set forth by “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”.

We were directed to a table in the middle of a sunlit room. The tables were filled with loved ones there to see drooling family members, wish them well and then get up and get the fuck out. It was a roomful of necessary obligations. I had a hard time focusing on the visit with the drama commencing all around me.

“Hi little man,” she greeted me as she stood up and accepted a hug from my dad.

“Hi,” I answered shyly.

“How are you doing?” my Dad asked.

She pulled my chair around the table nearest hers. “I’m glad you came to see me. I wanted to explain some things to you.” My father seemed very nervous. He gave her a look that reminded her that she was talking to an eleven year old. She considered for a moment, and then continued. “Do you know why I’m in here?”

I looked at my dad, not wanting to upset her with an incorrect answer. “Go ahead, Travis.” He encouraged my response having discussed the situation with me on the way to the hospital.

I answered tentatively, “You’re in here because you’re hearing voices again?”

“That’s right. You’re so smart.” She spoke slow and deliberate. Thinking back on it now, it was more likely whatever medication they had her on more so than her condescension toward my adolescent age. “The voices in my head are not my own. Sometimes they are nice and don’t bother me. Sometimes they help me. Sometimes they tell me to do bad things. That’s how I knew it was time to get some help.”

“Are they helping you?” My dad asked.

“Yes,” she answered. “I think I’m doing much better already.”

“What kind of bad things do the voices tell you to do?” I asked before I was able to stop myself.

She never answered the question, instead she showed me the ashtray she’d made earlier that day and showed us the bedroom she was in. Because she was a voluntary resident, her accommodations were pretty nice. Shortly after, my Dad and I left. The ride home was silent until we reached our driveway.

“She’s going to be fine ya know.” He stared out the windshield at the garage door in front of us. “They’re taking good care of her.” He was talking to me, but the words were meant for his own benefit.

It didn’t take long for her to come home from the hospital. She’s been living with relatives ever since. I assume she continues to have bouts with her issues, but to look into her eyes and see her smile, you’d never know. She is, and always has been, one of my heroes. I still remember that day, visiting her in the hospital as a kid. The courage that she had to have to first admit there was a problem and second, to seek the necessary help to deal with it has always inspired me. She’s an amazing woman both despite her issues and because of them.

I fear that as I get older, I’ll start to follow in her footsteps. I am now 35, the age she was when she was first hospitalized. It’s a heavy weight to bear. Then, I look at my boys, both of whom are testing in the 150+ IQ range, and I wonder if I make it through this life unscathed, will they?

Whenever I’m seen for my issues or we’re filling out paperwork for my kids there is a question about family history, mental illness and hereditary disorders. I hate that box. I don’t hear voices. Yet. I hear one. My own. I think. He’s my companion; my co-pilot; my conscious.

It’s not so much that I talk to him, as it is that he talks to me. He is me… or so I think. I’m not sure if what I experience is out of the ordinary or if it’s completely normal and I’m just looking into something too deep. How do you ask someone to explain how he or she thinks and what their inner dialogue is like without coming across as totally nuts?

During the summer of my tenth birthday, I became self aware of the conversations that went on within my own head. I don’t know any other way to describe it. One day, I was a normal kid (normal with insomnia, apeirophobia and an antagonistic imaginary accomplice known as The Shadow Man… ok, not so normal). The next day, I had an inner monologue. I think it had always been there but I was too hyper or too preoccupied to recognize it for what it was. It wasn’t until I sat across the table in that sterile hospital and heard the words, “the voices in my head are not my own,” that I started to worry that there may be more going on than I was able to comprehend.

Sigmund Freud’s structural model of the psyche says there are three parts of the psychic apparatus: the Id, ego and super-ego. The Id is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality that drives us toward our instinctual desires. The ego is the mediator between Id and reality. It drives our life through common sense and reason. The super-ego aims for perfection through morality and the influence of the world around it. The super-ego is the portion of the psyche that acts as the father, the patriarch and the decision maker.

After discovering my co-pilot, I began to rethink Freud’s concept of the psyche as it had been previously explained to me by my set of Encyclopedia Britannica. Freud did address the aspects of the psyche in terms of a power struggle between pleasure, morality and order. How do other people wage this war within their own life? Maybe I’m not different than the next guy, only more aware.

I have Rene Descartes’ “I Think Therefore I Am” tattooed down my left arm. The meaning of this quote is very important to me. It keeps me sane. It reminds me that no matter what, my co-pilot is with me. He is me. I am me. Whether or not you all exist is irrelevant to the world I have in my head.

And believe me, the world in my head is a fantastic place.

Lost in Infinity