Eyes of the Insane

© Sean N. Zelda
           “Are you hungry?” I asked the limping bearded man as he hobbled north on Division St. It was a chilly October Saturday morning in 2009. From twenty feet away, I could see two streaks of dried blood stretching from his nostrils down to his upper lip. His glassy eyes were filled with tears and he was hunched over, every grueling step a battle for his struggling legs.

            “I’m… starving…” he answered, his soft breathy voice dissipating into the bitter Ann Arbor air.

            I flicked my cigarette, jumped up from the couch on the porch and ran inside to find some food. I opened my cupboard to find two boxes of Pasta-Roni, an orange, some green tea bags, and a box of Club crackers. I grabbed the crackers and a bottle of water which I had stashed on top of the fridge and emerged from the front door to find that the man had approached the house. He was waiting for me on the brick walkway leading from the front door stairs to the small fence that lined the sidewalk.

            “Here you go,” I said and handed him the green box of crackers. I gestured the water in his direction but he shooed it away. “Would you like to have a seat?”

            We sat on the steps in silence, apart from the man’s jaws delicately crunching the crackers at the pace of a beating heart. It was 40° out and I was wearing a t-shirt and “M” gym shorts; no socks, no shoes.

            “Do you have a real drink?” he implored. It was 8:30 in the morning.

            “I have a better idea,” I countered. “Why don’t we go for a walk?”

            The man clutched the crackers as we hiked up Division. “I’m very important,” I declared. He informed me that he had a daughter whom he no longer spoke with. I told him he should call her. I learned that this man had been roaming the streets of Ann Arbor for days. It became clear that he knew no one in town and had nowhere to go. We walked and talked and walked and talked and when we got to the corner of Catherine and Glen, I had planned on making a left toward the hospital, but the man had other ideas.

            “I’m going—,” he said through hard pressured breaths and pointed south toward the University of Michigan’s central campus, probably hoping to somehow score some booze.

            “You need to go to the hospital,” I insisted, and pointed northeast. We argued for a split second before he lost interest and turned, heading south.

            “Who are you calling?” he asked me as I caught up to him.

            “My dad. We’re going to the football game today.” It wasn’t a total lie. I was really going to the game, but I wasn’t calling my dad; I was calling 9-1-1.

            “We are walking east on Huron toward Division, please just send someone,” I said to the lady who answered my call. The man paid no attention to the conversation. He just staggered and stared straight ahead, chomping the carbs in rhythm with his footsteps.

            We trekked on. After about five minutes, a police car pulled up to us.

The officer was confused. “You mean you just gave this man food and tried to walk with him to the hospital out of your own good will?” he challenged, his dark brown eyes piercing through mine suspiciously.

            “Just trying to be a Good Samaritan,” I grinned.

He pointed at me and said, “You, young man, see the bigger picture.” Or at least that’s what my mind reported. Behind him I could see a lady cop gently depositing the man into the backseat.
            “Now put some clothes on. You’re making me cold just looking at you,” he said.

            This was only the beginning of my odd behavior. You see, I hadn’t slept that night, and my sleep had been minimal-to-nonexistent the previous three to four nights. My thoughts had been zipping through my head, racing at a ridiculous speed. Even still, I felt strong. I felt invincible.

My roommates and I had thrown a party the night before, and as the host, I wanted to make sure the premises were secure at the end of the night. So I stayed up. All night. Pacing. Thinking. Stretching my exhausted muscles. My body was desperate for sleep, but my mind was alive.

The party was rowdy. Our house (a historic mansion built in 1901 for the mayor of Ann Arbor) accommodated what seemed like 200 people. No matter how much beer I drank, I couldn’t get drunk. In fact, drinking made me feel more sober, more alert, more aware. I mingled with everyone. I was the life of the party.

An unfamiliar guy stood by the fireplace alone, nursing a red cup, so I casually asked him who he knew. When he merely stood there, blinking slowly, I cordially asked him to leave. Slurring vowels, he wouldn’t comply, so a few of us tried to escort him out, but not before he attempted to kick me through the front door. I managed to push him and he tumbled out the door and down the stairs. He chucked a boulder at us and we pounced like cheetahs on a gazelle. Suddenly, he was on the ground and I was beating his face with a plastic snow shovel while my friends booted his defenseless torso. Thank God the shovel was plastic. The whole scene was surreal; my mind was sprinting and a voice in my head egged me on. Beat his ass, Sean. Pound him! Psychotic mania had me in its grip and I was in a whole new reality, a whole new state of mind. My hellish spiral into manic psychosis had only just begun.

***

Mania, the “up” of bipolar disorder, according to the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, is defined as “a distinct period of abnormally and persistently elevated, expansive, or irritable mood, lasting at least a week (or any duration if hospitalization is necessary). During the period of mood disturbance, three (or more) of the following symptoms have persisted (four if the mood is only irritable) and have been present to a significant degree. 1. inflated self-esteem or grandiosity, 2. decreased need for sleep (e.g., feels rested after only three hours of sleep) 3. more talkative than usual or pressure to keep talking, 4. flight of ideas or subjective experience that thoughts are racing, 5. distractibility (i.e., attention too easily drawn to unimportant or irrelevant external stimuli), 6. increase in goal-directed activity (either socially, at work or school, or sexually) or psychomotor agitation, 7. excessive involvement in pleasurable activities that have a high potential for painful consequences (e.g., engaging in unrestrained buying sprees, sexual indiscretions, or foolish business investments).” And this doesn’t even mention anything about psychosis (losing touch with reality), which for me, goes hand in hand with manic symptoms.

The U of M vs. MSU football game was in East Lansing that year, and my dad had acquired tickets for himself, his friend, and me. I sat in the front seat, rambling about the party and God knows what else. We got there, watched the game; I couldn’t tell you who won. I was too busy asking questions.

“How do you know the players?” I asked my dad.

“I don’t, son, what are you talking about?” He always calls me “son” when he’s concerned or put off by how I’m acting.

“The players, Dad, how do you know them? You know all of them. I need to know how. Did you know that all of these MSU fans are actually Michigan fans? When I graduate, I’m going to be very important. U of M rules the world and they need me to help them. I’m the guy, Dad. I am really, really important.”

I stood up. No one else was standing. My arms were at my sides. Slowly, I reached for the sky. My mind said I needed to get oxygen into my muscles, since I was running on zero hours of sleep. I separated my legs and reached down between them, feeling the cold metal below the bleachers on my hot sweaty hands.

“Are you feeling okay, son?” my Dad asked.

“I feel great! I’m amazing. Trust me Dad, you’ll see.”

We drove back to Ann Arbor and I talked a mile a minute about anything and everything. When we returned, my mom was already at the mansion.

“Oh hey mom,” I said nonchalantly, as if it were normal for her to be there. She wasn’t supposed to be there. She was supposed to be at home. This concept flew right over my head.

“Sean, it seems like you’re not feeling well. How about we take a trip to the hospital?” she asked.

“Okay!”

As my parents walked me out the front door, I could read the concern written on my housemates’ faces like a Shakespeare tragedy. When we got to the ER, I continued to ask funny questions and make outrageous claims.

“LOST is real,” I started. “The island, everything, it’s all real. U of M runs the island. They’re going to send me there. I’m really important.”

My parents said nothing. They just stared straight ahead like they had never heard me, awaiting the news of my ill fate and simply wondering which hospital I’d be sent off to. I had no idea I was going anywhere. I thought I was getting medical marijuana.

“Your son is psychotic. He’s being admitted. We need to find a psychiatric ward that has a bed available for him,” the doctor explained to my parents.

After 14 hours of waiting in the ER, an ambulance transported me from U of M Psychiatric Emergency to Chelsea Community Hospital, where I spent nine days struggling to recover from the first of many manic episodes. I learned about bipolar disorder and how to manage it, although at the time I certainly didn’t believe or accept it. They force-fed me drugs and expected me to continue taking them when I left. I didn’t want to take drugs. Depakote? Risperdal? Geodon? Lithium? Somehow none of them seemed appetizing.

My battle with bipolar continued for the next four and half years and continues as we speak (although I am in a much better place these days). There is hardly any rest when it comes to living with severe mental illness.