Stories of a Psychotic Person

#1

This is the first ‘real’ thing I remember about my psychosis. For a long time I’d been pondering what it’d feel like to beat someone up. That soon evolved to killing someone. When I told people this years later, they asked whether I was hearing voices in my head telling me to do this. No, I never heard voices (except my own internal dialogue, but that’s completely unrelated). The best way I can describe it is a mixture of curiosity and need. Like the cliché example of seeing a button that says ‘don’t press’. Ohhh, I really want to press that button... Or an OCD-like need of seeing a book lying on the corner of a table, slightly misaligned, so you need to push the book a little so it’s aligned with the table. It was pretty much like that. I just... needed to do this, both out of curiosity and because I just... well, needed to do it. I took a kitchen knife and went for a stroll along the canal. Cars aren’t allowed there, but cyclists and people simply going for a stroll are common. This was late at night, so there wouldn’t be many people there. The scary thing was that, from the moment I had resolved to go out and do this, I was telling myself over and over and over again that I couldn’t do this, that I needed to stop etc... but my body didn’t listen. My mind was going crazy, but I just couldn’t stop myself. Looking back, that was the most frightening to me: I couldn’t control what I was doing, although I was fully aware of what was going on. Fortunately I didn’t see anyone on my stroll. After half an hour or so, I returned home. I don’t know what happened that returned control over my body back to ‘me’, but I was sure glad for it. My heart was pounding the entire time, and I was screaming at myself to turn back the entire time as well. I came home, put the knife back, and went to bed, shocked at what I’d just done.

#2

This was several days after my first attempt. It had been on my mind constantly and I swore I’d never do it again. But... that curiosity/need returned, and I couldn’t help myself. I hadn’t told anyone about this either. I took a knife again and, for some reason, I thought it wasn’t necessary to get dressed for this. With bare feet and bare chest, I walked out into our suburban neighbourhood and towards the canal. Nothing strange at all. There was no one around, fortunately. Like before, my mind was racing and I was telling myself that I needed to go back. ‘Think of your life. Think of your parents. Think of the person you’d kill.’ But it didn’t help. I walked on until the asphalt bicycle path turned into dirt road and my bare feet were being cut by the stones. I don’t remember, but I think it was that ‘annoying feeling’ that made me turn back rather than the realisation that what I was doing was wrong. There was a small marina right where the neighbourhood and the canal come together. Just when I was about to walk back to the houses, two early cyclists approached. I grabbed my knife, but eventually thought better of it. There were two of them, after all, and I was so close to the houses. I do remember one of them looking very intently at me. Probably because I didn’t have shoes, socks or a shirt on. I went back home, waited for my mother to wake up, and told her about what I’d done.

#3

This was a few weeks after my second prospective-murder stroll. I’d been trying really hard to ‘be good’ and forget about what I’d done. I was walking home alongside a path at the edge of the forest. There were houses with deep gardens to my left and the forest to the right. I knew there was a chicken coop in one of the gardens. I thought, ‘Perhaps if I kill a chicken, I won’t need to kill a human being.’ I snuck into the garden, managed to grab a chicken and tried pulling its head off. That didn’t work and the chicken – as well as its companions – were starting to make a lot of noise, so I tried to bite through its neck. That didn’t work either. By now alarmed that I would get caught, I held the chicken down on the ground and stomped on its head repeatedly. Then I ran. The only thing I felt was fear that I was going to get caught; I didn’t feel any remorse for torturing and killing the chicken, nor any exhilaration from it.

#4

(I went to see a psychologist first, because I feared a psychiatrist would just give me pills, which I didn’t want.) This was during one of our first sessions. I told him, in detail, how I was thinking of sticking my fingers in his mouth and tearing his mouth apart etc. He later showed me pictures and asked me to tell a story based on them. I told short stories, all of which ended badly because I reasoned ‘all stories end badly’. It didn’t strike me as odd until he pointed it out to me.

#5

From time to time, I would suddenly be overcome by a very powerful fear that I couldn’t explain. They weren’t panic attacks, but I just felt... really, really afraid. I didn’t feel any pain or something like that; it was just an inexplicable fear. I ‘knew’ I was going to die within minutes, if not seconds, although I didn’t know exactly how. One time this happened when I was alone late in the evening. My mother was with her boyfriend and my father was at work (night shift). I ran to the telephone and called my mother because... well, she’s my mother, and I wanted my mother to tell me that everything was going to be fine and that she would stay on the phone with me for as long as I wanted her to. Very ‘baby-ish’, perhaps, but at that moment I felt it might be the only thing that could calm me down. My mother picked up, sounded very annoyed, and I told her why I called. She sounded even more annoyed and told me to leave her alone and that I’m always bothering her. She hung up. On the plus side, I was sufficiently shocked that I wasn’t afraid anymore. After a while, I put the phone down, took a seat and just cried until my father came home. I thought it best to then go to my room before I would annoy him too.

#6

My mother? No. My father? No. My friends? No, no and no. It was my religion teacher (I studied at a Catholic school). He visited me once or twice a week, brought me books and CD’s and even smuggled in candy. I was a zombie because of the pills, so his books and CD’s went completely untouched and I didn’t really speak (and stuttered and drooled when I did. Again: pills). He didn’t mind. He always acted cheerful and optimistic and friendly, and I grinned like an idiot when I was told I had a visitor because I knew it would be him. A fantastic man. He pulled me through by just being there. Later when I went to university, he invited me to stay with him during mid-terms so I could study in a peaceful environment rather than at home. I accepted, and it was an amazing time. If it weren’t for him, heavens know what might have happened to me.

#7

I have no idea why I said it. And after I said it, I laughed like an asshole too. He never spoke to me, but from observing his interactions with other patients and with nurses, he clearly was mentally deficient; one of those stereotypical ‘childish-minded adults’. Quiet and shy, but friendly and always smiling... Unless I was around. I think I sometimes felt guilty and I would often ask him whether he wanted to watch anything on the television or whether he wanted to borrow any of my books or my CD-player. He always quickly declined. His mother visited him every day and she was very nice to me as well – and I was very nice to her too. I don’t think he ever told anyone about my threat.

#8

I’m just as much ashamed about this than I am about threatening him. I couldn’t sleep and was feeling extremely restless. For some reason I decided crawling underneath the beds and across the floor all over the room was a good idea. My roommate was fast asleep – or pretended to be, at least. Being a hormonal eighteen-year-old, I decided to masturbate. There was a curtain pulled between our beds, so I had some semblance of privacy (until the nurse would enter for her usual check-up every half hour or so). While masturbating, I thought it might be funny/a turn-on if I finished on my roommate. So I got up, slipped to the edge of the curtain, and climaxed on his pillow. Then I got into bed again. I didn’t even think that was very strange. Of course, now when I think of those days and that instance, I cringe. Badly. I sometimes wonder how that guy is doing. I hope he’s happy. He seemed like a genuinely nice guy.

#9

I crawled across the floor of my room again, hoping that eventually I’d calm down like the previous night – with or without masturbation. I got to my feet and began looking around for a knife. I thought that there would only be one or two night nurses on duty, so if I had a knife, I could kill my roommate first, then the nurses, and then slip into everyone else’s rooms and kill them too. Rummaging through my stuff and my roommate’s stuff, I couldn’t find a knife. New plan: perhaps I could choke the night nurse and then get a knife from the kitchen, so I went to her post. ‘You seem tense,’ she said when I approached her. ‘You’re making fists.’ I looked down and realised my hands were clenched really tightly. That was enough for me to come to my senses. I told her to lock me up because I felt like killing her and everyone else. Then I started to cry. She was very calm. I don’t remember how I got to the isolation chamber. The next thing I know was me sitting on the floor in a corner of the isolation chamber, although the door was open. For some reason I thought it was really cool that I was in there, so I started rolling around across the floor. A doctor and some nurses eventually came in, talked to me, and let me go back to my room and have breakfast there.

#10

This was during a stay at a ‘regular’ hospital. I shared a room with an elderly man who slept a lot, and was very friendly but usually quiet. Sometimes he would tell stories about his youth, which I loved. I remember it was a sunny afternoon and my bed was by the window. I was looking outside and I saw people entering the building from the parking lot. For some reason, that got me really afraid and I began feeling like I was going to die. I said, ‘I’m just going to lie here,’ to no one in particular, but I felt like I had to justify myself. I lay down on the floor between my bed and the window, curled up in a ball, and closed my eyes, waiting to die. A while later, I felt a hand shaking me and my roommate calling my name. He’d left his bed and was on his knees by my side. I don’t know how he did it, because he was hooked up to an IV drip and was very, very weak and sickly. Yet there he was, patting my side and telling me it’d all be okay. A nurse came in and was angry with my roommate because he’d gotten out of bed, which we laughed about later. Afterwards, we talked a little more. But his help was something I’ll never forget. It was just wonderful. A long time later, perhaps two years, he sent me a postcard from Lourdes, saying he’d prayed for me there and hoped that I was feeling better. I never got his address, sadly, so I don’t know what happened to him. But I hope he’s doing well, or at least that he’s in heaven enjoying eternal peace. (And if there’s not a heaven, there should be one just for him.)

#11

I began to grow suspicious of the doctors and nurses. I felt they were treating me like a child and never let me do anything I wanted to do, like sit on the balcony or go for a walk or stay up a little later to watch a movie. I began to suspect they were doing this so they could maintain their fixed schedule to poison me. I stayed up all night, talking out loud to myself to persuade myself that they really were poisoning me and that I was going to fight them. I began to bang on the door (although it was unlocked) and to sing. The nurse came in, left again, and soon returned with a doctor and a second nurse. ‘This is it,’ I thought. ‘They’re going to give me the full dosage now.’ I backed up against the wall and grabbed the lamp, wildly swinging it in front of me. I’m 6’4 and the nurses were small, older women so they were hesitant to approach, to say the least. One of the nurses was smart enough to walk over to my books and said that they’d take the books away and burn them if I didn’t calm down. These were my teacher’s books (see above), so that frightened me. I joined them to the isolation chamber and they injected me with a sedative. The next morning I awoke, feeling very groggy, and ‘realised’ they’d poisoned me. My mouth was very dry too. There was a plastic cup of water by the door, but I refused to touch it. Surely they’d poisoned that too. So I did the only thing that I knew could save my life: I drank from the toilet.

#12

In this particular hospital, there was a room with a ping pong table and a darts board. Very few patients ever used it while I was there. Perhaps because it was a hot summer period and everyone preferred sitting out on the balcony. I enjoyed playing darts by myself: nobody else was around, so I couldn’t be annoyed by anyone. A new patient, a young woman, arrived one day and we started talking and playing darts and ping pong together. We didn’t interact much outside that room. This lasted for a couple of weeks. One day she confided in me that liked spending time with me, because I wasn’t ‘trying to seduce her like all the other patients’ and ‘just talked to her like a friend.’ Meanwhile I’d been making plans to rape her in the ping pong room behind some spare furniture. I remember thinking, ‘Well, I can’t rape her now. She’d get the wrong idea about me.’ We just continued to play darts and ping pong until one day I woke up from an afternoon nap and found a note that said she hadn’t wanted to wake me, but she was released from the hospital and she wanted to thank me for being her friend during this time. I hope she’s doing well.

#13

This guy was great. He used to own a pub and was always cracking jokes. I don’t know why he was in the same wing of the psychiatric hospital (which was for the ‘bad cases’), but I think he’d attacked some police officers while intoxicated/high/distressed. The moment he walked in, I told him he looked like a famous singers. He laughed. He had an amazing, roaring laugh. Everybody told him that, he said, and he began to sing the singer’s most famous hit. I spend a lot of time with him because he always told funny, entertaining stories. He didn’t mind me drooling and being quiet most of the time. Pretty soon, whenever one of us entered the room and saw the other one, we’d burst into song. Most people liked it because we sounded so happy, apparently. The nurses let us be as well. One night the guy fell out of his bed and broke his hip. He was transferred to a regular hospital and I never saw him again.

#14

All the patients had a love/hate relationship with this guy. He was an elderly man, but still full of life and constantly walking around and talking to himself. He would argue with himself, sing, recite poems in Latin, narrate his current activities (like that Family Guy flashback). Sometimes people were amused with his antics, but he never, ever stopped talking, so a lot of people got fed up with him as well. We were having dinner and he, as was his wont, sat by himself but was talking loudly enough for all of us to hear. God knows what he was talking about, but everyone distinctly heard, ‘... jerking off in the… soup’ while we were eating the soup. Everyone burst out laughing.

#15

I spent time in three different psychiatric hospitals and three regular hospitals (on the psychiatric wings) and I always found that the nurses fell into one of three categories: 1) the young, naïve idealist who did their utmost and seemed to genuinely care for their patients but would sometimes waver when under a lot of stress (and some of which had the very, very annoying habit of pretending to side with the patients ‘against the system and the doctors’); 2) the older nurses who were very curt and unforgiving with patients and seemed to be bitter and cynical without a shred of compassion in their body. I assume it was because they either hated their job and only did it because it provided them with a steady income, or because they had been nurses long enough to see so many failures and hardships that they believed an optimistic attitude was pointless; 3) older nurses who acted like mothers and fathers to everyone, no matter the age of the patients. I distinctly remember one of them. I was sitting at a table, just staring like I did a lot, and she approached me from behind and put her hand on my shoulder. I looked up and she gave the kindest, warmest smile I think I’ve ever seen. It struck me that this was probably the kind of genuine, comforting, loving smile a mother would give her child. She didn’t say anything and moved on, but that smile and her hand on my shoulder have always stayed with me... Well, not her actual hand, but you know.

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Quick background: I was seventeen when it started and when I went out for my first ‘stroll’. Eventually I was diagnosed with depression and psychosis. This lasted for nearly two years. Since then (I’m almost thirty-two now), I haven’t had any sensations of curiosity or need or any such urges or thoughts.

I think that’s enough for now. I assume this is going to die in User Sub, anyway, but I have more stories (and clarifications) if people are interested. I just felt like writing some of this down and sharing it.