Ink Drift - July

Madness
Issue 12 - Fear
laughing and sipping tea, my father’s
laughter ringing in my ears so clearly, it
all felt so real and surreal and when I went
to catch on to my father, to feel his touch
once again, I fell down, my mother coming
to my aid. There were also unknown
voices that I heard at night, low unintelligible
sounds and then the one time when
I could clearly see the swing in our backyard
swinging all by itself on a hot summer
day. But all these are just my imaginations.
As I enter my house, my mom
is sitting on the sofa with a determined
look, she stands and plainly says – “we are
going to meet the psychiatrist, get ready”.
My protestations fall on deaf ears.
An hour later, mom and I are sitting in
the waiting room, I feeling disgusted with
my mother, on her lack of belief over me,
thinking that I am mad. At the same time
that feeling of anxiety again creeps up on
me. Two hours later, the doctor establishes
that I have schizophrenia, that I am
on an advanced stage and writes down a
list full of medications. I see my mother
fall apart with every word the psychiatrist
utters, for me; I’m lost in a daydream, this
big word only heard about in newspapers
and as statistics. “13.7% of India’s population
is mentally ill.” the headline said,
I uttered a low laugh, the headline that
seemed so distant for me, was now my
living reality. On the way home, my mom
spoke some words of encouragement but
they blurred out in the distance for me,
I was lost in the running trees, racing
with our car, which then started swirling
in front of my eyes and then in my head,
my head felt heavy again. I looked at my
mom, pitying her, at this age she’ll have to
deal with a schizo—or whatever the word
is, basically, a mad child, she was right
I guess, I had turned mad. As we enter
into the parking lot, I casually look into
the rear view mirror and suddenly catch
a glimpse of something black standing at
the gate of our house. I immediately pop
my head outside to look, but see nothing,
maybe one of my imaginations again.
My life changed again, in a matter of few
days, repeated consultation sessions with
my doctor and heavy medications became a
part of me. My imaginations, or what they
called – delusions, grew intense, weirder
and vivid by the day, often ending up with
me shrieking, and my mother half controlling
me, half controlling her tears. Differentiating
between what was real and what
was not became hard; my mind felt mushed
most of the time, only the remembrance of
the times with my father made me smile.
But the sounds at night and the feeling of a
presence constantly near me felt different,
they didn’t feel like my delusions, but felt
concrete. My mother of course looked on
me with pity, thinking it to be another of my
schizophrenic bouts.
Mom used to keep a strip of medicine near
my bedside table for immediate access, the
medicines did of course keep me sane till it’s
effect lasted, the only time I felt sane, the
other being, when I used to have delusions
about my father and me, at least he felt real
and near me during those times. During
one of these nights, as I was half awake-half
asleep, I again heard the eerie noises that
I always hear, now myself believing that
it’s only my mind playing with me but they
always could be heard at a distance, today
they felt like they were coming nearer…nearer
and nearer, almost at the foot of my bed
and then suddenly I saw the same black apparition
that I saw at the gate of our house
that day, the shadowy spectre, just standing
there, instead of getting frightened I was all
the more sure that this was my schizophrenia
talking, I moved to the side to get my
tablet, thinking that I might have missed
the dose and hence these voices and apparition,
I turned over in the dark to grab the
strip and feel the medicine but something
was not quite right, instead of expecting
to hold a new, unused medicine strip, my
hands felt a hollow in the strip, one single
hollow in the whole strip. The voices grew
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