I have always wondered about my condition. I have a mental illness. Its something that I have been able to deal with thanks to medicine and a decent supportive family. But I have always wondered was my condition something more? I come from a Jewish family. I myself just celebrate the high holidays. I am not kosher and I sometimes think I don't believe in God. This view depends on the time of day and circumstances. My day is going badly? I hate God. My day is going good? Is there a God? Etc. We are all allowed to believe or not believe in God. I am sure if there is a God he understands that all religions, even ones that don't believe in him, are still religions in a way, and he is all accepting. In other-wards it doesn't matter if you believe in Judaism or Catholicism or Muslim-ism, etc. All faiths or non faiths are fine. There are plenty of ways of reaching for God.
So, that's my view on God.
On Schizophrenia: I said before that my family is Jewish. My mom's parents lost there whole family in the holocaust. And my Dad's parents there was never a person who had Schizophrenia. So It is hard to make a judgement as to if Schizophrenia runs in my family line. So, when I tell you my story I want you to understand that there are many ways of looking at my experience. There will be those that say I hallucinated the whole thing or that something happened but I still suffer from Schizophrenia so how much weight can you give to his (my) story?
On Drugs: I have never taken any illegal drugs. The only thing I take is meds prescribed by a Dr. However, since my story starts in college, a week or two after my 19th Birthday, and my side of the dorm was heavy into smoking pot, you can't rule out that I may have been influenced by drug leakage thru he bottom of my dorm door from the hallway where marijuana could be smelled quite strongly.
Okay so let me start with: I am a 19 year old student. I am a crack reporter. I report on anything I feel deserves the college administration's attention. From crumbling sidewalks. To food sources being closed at the wrong times at night, Really, when you read my other blogs, or my Facebook page: that was what I was doing at The State College of Oneonta.
At the time I was a junior. I was excited about being one year away from graduating and I was happy to be writing my articles.
One day I was in one of the computer labs. I was researching the USDA food pyramid. I wanted to write a story on how it is necessary to eat a well balanced meal. I had on numerous occasions seen students eating the most unhealthy of foods and wondering why they had a hard time getting up and going to class. So, my thinking was I'll write a story about eating well and it will help the students.
Well, I had been digging through the USDA's website and getting frustrated because I could not find the food pyramid. I don't know what button I pushed or where I was in the website but I came to a screen that was throwing out names and cities. For ex. Elaine Smith, Boston, Dan Gratter, San Diego etc. I was stunned by this page. Why would a USDA page be throwing out names and places. And that is when I saw my name and city. I got scared. I started punching buttons left and right. Somehow I got out of the screen and returned to the USDA website. I thought about what had just happened. Was I on some kind of government list? What did the names and places mean? I pushed a bunch of buttons again and again the screen came up with names and cities. Any student today would have broken out their cell phone and recorded all of this. But you have to remember this was 1996. The Smart Phone craze hadn't even started yet. So I never was able to find this page again or show it to someone else to collaborate my story.
A few days later I was under intense pressure. My field of study was English and I was reading many long stories by famous English Writers like Shakespeare for one class and U.S. founding fathers for another. It was a lot of stress and at this particular time you could find me down in the study lounge reading and taking meticulous notes. Well, I don't know who I was reading. I think may have been a transcendentalist but I came up with a theory. MY brain was actually two brains. One was the mathematical brain. The part of the brain that computes problems. and the other part of the brain was the creative brain. The part of the brain that reads or writes. Somewhere I got the idea that I could come up with a mathematical equation that my creative side of the brain would feed me the answer to in my dreams. But somewhere along the way I created a mathematical equation that could not be solved and I ended up with Schizophrenia. This is one idea: I thought on what happened to me. That some how I had unintentionally screwed up my brain.
Over the next few days I was getting less and less sleep relying on my new friend,, COFFEE!!!!
I have to admit I never drank coffee until I was in college. Man was I an idiot. All those early morning high school classes that I almost fell asleep in, well, coffee would have been the answer. So I was getting real chummy with coffee. I would go to sleep late at night and be up five or six hours later and my friend coffee helped. Anyway, between my next door dorm mates being pricks and smoking marijuana in the hallway, and my sleeping less, reading and studying more I had the next weirdness.
As in most Oneonta dorms there are two kitchens. Complete with a microwave and sink. There is a table you can sit at and eat your hot morning breakfast and there is even another connecting room where you can watch TV. I sometime would go down and join my fellow dorm mates watching a movie or tv show. Well I came down and a bunch of my dorm mates asked if I wanted to watch Mousetrap. Its a movie about a pesky mouse trying to get rid of new owners of a house and all the crazy life threatening shenanigans that happen to the new owners.
I am watching it and I have to admit it was quite violent on stunts. I mean Home Alone looked tame to this movie. Anyway one of the girl dorm mates came in and started screaming at us. "Don't you know these actors are really getting hurt? Don't you guys feel the least bit sorry?" And she ran off in a huff.
I have to admit. I and my dorm mates were stunned. It was just a movie. Nothing was real in it. But apparently this girl had thought so or had freaked out. Freaked out is a term we gave dorm mates who had lost it to the stress of college life and had to be sent home or to a mental institution. It happened when class work became so intense there was no way to finish it and basically you were two months away from failing out of college. Anyway. We just shruigged and went back to watching the movie.
Later that night I was up late reading. It was quiet for the first time in weeks on my side of the dorm and I got a lot of reading done. I decided to reward myself by turning on the TV and watching a show. I had just tuned into a show but it went to commercial. I was busy blocking out the TV ads when a commercial came on for the Golden Child, The Eddie Murphy movie. There stood Eddie Murphy confronting a flaming demon, which I took to believe was the devil. Eddie was cracking jokes at the devil's expense and the devil was getting pissed. I stopped zoning out and realized this was a scene that had never been in the movie. I watched it more intently now and saw the demon whip out a sword and cut Eddie in half. Eddie stopped laughing and you could see his body slowly separate and slide off onto the floor. I got scared and shut off the TV. I was wondering had I really seen what I had seen? I looked at the coffee pot, looked at the doorway with maybe marijuana might be leaking in and decided I must have just imagined it. I turned the TV back on and not one commercial break later the same commercial came on. Now I was just freaking out. What the hell was going on here? My mom has explained to me that what I saw must have been a hallucination. But it wasn't.
The next day I was passing by the RA's desk. These are people who help solve problems in the dorm and they had on the TV and were watching it. I sometimes went down to the desk, more appropriately called the cage because one RA's had to stay there managing it and they all felt it was like it was a cage. I stopped by to say hello. As I got close I saw the same Eddie Murphy ad on again and the RA's were watching it like it was just a regular commercial. I said to them. "That ad does not frighten you?" The RA just shrugged and said, "Its just a TV ad." I said, "Yeah, well Its not from any scene in the movie. The RA just shrugged and went back to watching the TV. So my second thinking was that it was a real TV ad but not from the movie. But what about that girl who had walked into the kitchen area and screamed at us watching an obvious fake movie? Could there have been more than what I thought was going on. Were the RA's in on it or did they just not know. Had I pissed off the wrong college administration person?
So all this leads up to my running away from college and almost dying.
The next day I was busy studying again and I was tired. Day after Day reading and putting together book reports on what I had read and its significance was starting to have an affect. Also the late nights and early mornings were also starting to have an affect. Then as I finished readings from one English class and opened up the book to the next English class. I snapped. I said, "this is too much work and I need some time away from all of this."
I put on my winter coat. Oneonta has a strange climate .Even in the summer it never reaches farther than the 70's. This being September, the cold had started to seep into the surrounding college hills, and If you were smart, when you went out, you took a coat. Anyway, I made my way down the hill into Oneonta town. The sun was just setting and the wind had kicked up a little bit.
I passed familiar buildings, like the hockey league gym building, and residential houses and found myself watching a construction crew pull up and start digging a trench across from one side of a street to another. I had sat down at a near by bench at a park and was watching the construction wondering what was going on. I heard them mutter ,"This will keep him out of the college. We just sprinkle some holy water on it and he will die if he steps over this trench. They smiled at me and a half hour later left. Now I sat there trying to come to my senses. Did they actually mean it? If I crossed this construction line would I die? I didn't want to find out. I went for a walk around the park. It was getting late. The sun had set around 7:30 pm, and it was getting really dark and cold. I couldn't bring myself to cross this line they had dug. Between the Eddie Murphy commercial and the construction crew laughing at me, I was stuck with few options. I decided to lay down in the park and look at the sky. I figured A few minutes laying down would center myself and bring me a solution. I heard from the tree line of the park. "Aw.. Look at how much he cares. We have to do something for him." I couldn't' see these people talking but their voices seemed quite close. I decided to ignore them and look at the stars. The stars looked normal. I am not a big constellation person so I did not know what I was looking at, only that they were stars in no particular order.
Suddenly, the stars started to spin. It hurt my eyes to watch. I closed them after a few seconds of trying to watch what was going on. The next thing I know they settle into the position of a cross. And I blacked out.
I awoke to a Dr. and nurses holding me down and trying to stick me with a needle. I kept crying, "Let me go back! Let me go back!" A nurse asked, "what is he talking about?" The Dr., said, "He must be delusional. He wants to go back? Here." He gave me a shot of something and I went back to sleep.
I awoke in the park again the star cross was still in the sky and I felt this urge to run and get out of the park. I ran from house to house feeling the need to warn people of an impending attack. I don't know why I thought there was an attack coming. I just felt the urge to get a hold of someone. It must have been 1 am because no one was answering their doors. Finally I got lucky and a guy came to the door. He asked me, "What do you want?" I said, "Someone is coming. You have to leave." He said, "Are you kidding? Are you sick? Its 1 am! Go back to the college!"
I started walking towards the main street thinking, "maybe I am sick?" I saw a police officer in his car. I told him I wasn't feeling right and he drove me to the local hospital.
To be Continued...
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