The Antipsychotic Wars

I’m at a time in my life when the creatures for my imagination really want to test the limits of what I could do, and how much others around me could take. The NYU dream, an expensive one, fades from memory as I enter my freshman year at Indiana University, stuck in Bloomington like ants on a log. But Cal comes to visit me from New York all the time, and that’s all I need.

The medicine isn’t working. Most of them, most of the time. I circle through six different antipsychotics, each worse than the last. I throw up almost everything I put in my body, I get blood tests done weekly, I max doses, change drug generations, add this, subtract that, my heartbeat shoots up too fast, my head gets light, my skin gets sallow, my hair is falling out, I have spots in my vision, I stop getting my period, my face gets twitchy, I doze off on the bus, my head lurches in large lecture halls, I nod off while we’re having sex, I fall asleep at the Macy’s register in the dark corner of the home department with my eyes wide open. 

This is the first time I have somebody in my life I cared that deeply about. I can’t breathe without him. I watch him sleep. I imagine dropping a brick on his head. I leave class randomly and often to go home and stick my head under his arms. When Cal isn’t at home I put on his shirts and pose in front of the mirror.

The voices know this. And they have fun with it. 

I had spent most of my sentient life with them shut up so tightly in me I thought I would pass out from the sheer exhaustion of the secret. Who doesn’t have narrative voices and eyeballs watching them from behind windows? Why am I the only one being so strange about it? Why do they want me on medication? Why isn’t anyone else taking Geodon and crying on the harsh white tiles of the bathroom in the doctor’s office? 

My parents and sisters don’t know much about it. Cal is the only one who really knows, who watches me rock on the bedroom floor for hours, eyes glassy, mumbling things, and finds weird drawings stuffed between the bedsheets and chases me down the street in the middle of icy nights, who holds my arms while I scream at the suited men that line up around the bathtub and wrench razor blades out of my shaky fingers. 

One foggy green October afternoon, when the flies have been following me like my corpse had already decayed, I decide I need to see Cal right away. I don’t know what it is or why, but I know it can’t wait. It’s around 1pm, we’re thirty minutes into the painting class I’m taking. There’s a good three hours to go. 

You must go see him. The command is clear. And what worries me is the radio silence after that. The floor isn’t melting into shards of iridescence, nobody is whispering in my ear, no other disturbances in the common reality. I’m frightened, I can feel the skeleton of dread burning up my stomach. I look around. The studio is humming with the silly buzz of mortal life. The girl in front of me is putting finishing touches on a brilliantly red tablecloth. It looks very good. I avoid looking at the unhappily bare graphic lines at my easel and begin shoving things into my bag. Frank Sinatra is playing on the speakers and my teacher is telling the Fifth Avenue bicycling story to one of the anatomy instructors that had dropped in. 

My hands tremble as I scoop wet, paint-caked brushes into my tote bag. One of the brushes falls to the floor, clattering like a gun being shot. Nobody looks up. I try to roll up my canvas, but it keeps unfurling defiantly, until I crush it into an angry triangle. By now my teacher had made her way over. 

“Revati, is everything alright?” 

I look up at her, dismayed to find tears burning in my eyes. “I’m sorry, I have to go home, I don’t feel well.” 

“Are you sure-”

I take off without letting her finish, cradling my glass palette to my chest as I bolt down the hallway of the art building. When I emerge from the doorway, the bus that would take me home, the 6L is pulling up to the curb. The palette had been weighing me down. I toss it into the grass, not hearing the dull shatter as I make for the bus. I hop on and take a seat at the back, panting and wiping my tears. 

The ride to the apartment is brutally silent. Why do I have to see him? Why won’t they tell me more? At this point I know it’s was better to obey first and ask questions later. I keep glancing around for telltale signs – maybe the sky is breaking off into chunks, maybe there are be fingers creeping around the windowsills, maybe they’re after his brain, maybe he’s out of milk or couldn’t find the car keys. 

When I get off the bus I run all the way to our building, nestled all the way in the back of the compound. The air must have been chilly, nipping at the tips of my ears and nose but I’m sweating by the time I had unlocked the front door. The living room looks suspiciously normal. Audrey is napping on one of the dining chairs that I had left my maroon sweater on. The white blinds in front of the porch door are swaying gently, like there’s some kind of graveyard waft moving them. I set my bag down and tapped on some of the walls and open the hall closet before going into the bedroom. 

Cal is asleep, on his back, in a cloud of linen, one of his feet hanging out from under the cave of blankets. I stare at him, watching his chest rise and fall rhythmically. The bedroom looks normal too. A pile of yesterday’s shirts is sprawled on the floor in front of the closet. Two empty beer cans stand at attention on my nightstand. I want to scream. This fake playbook theater setting bullshit isn’t fooling me!

I nudge him, not unkindly. He stirs a bit. 

“Cal!” 

“Hmm.” 

I take a deep breath and try to hold onto my senses, they’re slipping away. “Hey! Wake up!” 

The flies buzz maddeningly in my ear. I curl my fists so hard that little pink crescents carve into my skin. The air in the bedroom feels like we’re underwater, swimming, through filters of sunlight, with dust motes floating everywhere. My vision narrows for a second. 

“Cal! Wake up!” I shake him harder. 

“What the fuck do you want?” he snaps.

I recoil like he had slapped me. “Something is wrong.”