As the bus cruises along the smooth asphalt road, jade green hills and stony mountains emerge on all sides, filling up the wide expanse of the sky. I’m on my way north, to the farm I’ve chosen to stay at. I’m temporarily hungover from the city life. After two straight weeks of partying in Boston at Tvisha’s place, I’m ready to touch some grass. Upstate New York is so beautiful, it takes my breath away. It’s quiet, and the clouds are all gently gray. We drive through almost an hour of pattering rain before the bus drops me off at the lone bus stop in the tiniest little town. All it has is a marble chapel and a strip mall with local stores, all shuttered down at this hour. One of the farmhands, Daniel, comes to pick me up. It’s a half an hour drive to the farm. It really is the absolute middle of nowhere. So much so that the velvet night sky is intoxicated with stars, all glimmering like giant diamonds. I can’t stop staring at it. It’s been years since I’ve seen such a night sky.
The first disaster strikes before I even get to the farm. Daniel tells me there’s no Internet. Not a drop. I didn’t expect that. I’m adamant that I asked Aiden, the guy who owns the farm, about that before I went up there. I can’t survive without the Internet. My entire life is online. From the freelancing projects I do, to my daily social interactions and inspirations, to the well-worn rants on TikTok.
There are many aspects of modern life I’ve taken for granted, I realize.
The farmhouse is ancient, built by some Amish people, so there was no electricity, or running water, or air conditioning, until Aiden fixed it all up. Aiden is an ex-finance guy who quit his Wall Street job to run the farm and jump into the hippie lifestyle. He’s a good-tempered person, with shaggy hair, all lanky and tan from days spent laboring under the summer sun. Even though the house has six or seven bedrooms, most nights he sleeps out in the sunflower field, under the stars.
Aiden runs a very loose ship. There isn’t a lot to do. I was nervous he might want to work us to the bone, but most of the days are filled with lounging, sunbathing, playing boardgames, exploring the streams and orchards around the farm. After the cows are milked, the chickens are fed, and orders packed up, we’re left to our own devices.
The people on the farm are on this curious thing called the primal diet. They don’t cook anything. Not eggs, not fish, not meat. Even the milk that comes from the cows is raw, unlike the pasteurized stuff you find at the supermarket. They make cream and whey and cheese with it. I didn’t know there was a difference until I tried some of the cherry ice-cream they made with it and it made me violently ill.
My obsession with Anne of Green Gables and Kerouac’s On the Road has led me astray. They make the rural life sound very romantic, full of adventure, all carefree, without the sharpness of the civilized world to stab at you day and night. But in real life, the floorboards are green with rot, the fireplace burns ash and smoke, there’s no dishwasher or microwave, the roosters scream all day, the mosquitos hang in thick, low clouds, and the farm cats eat their litters, sporting what Aiden calls: blood moustaches. I daren’t go into the stinky chicken coop, or the dung filled barn, or the snake infested pond where the grass grows up to the waist and you can’t see what might come and bite you. All my clothes are too nice to get muddy in, so I go into town and get myself overalls, boots, cargo pants, and a hilarious black and white checkered bucket hat.
I shall give it a chance, I will mingle with people I usually wouldn’t come across, I’m here to expand my horizons, I’m ready for adventure, I have come for the story.
As the days go by, my spirits get chipped away, one shrapnel at a time. Most everyone on the farm are non-believers, conspiracy theorists who reject medicine, science, and common sense. I suspect all that raw beef is rotting their brains. I have countless arguments with them. It’s not a healthy distrust of authority either. They flatly say the most ridiculous things, that the Kennedys are reptilian overlords, Jewish people control the Mason’s New World Order, that chemtrails are real, and the government puts mind control chips in our phones, and water. Also, that the frogs are gay.
I’ll put up with quite a lot in exchange for room and board.
This is a new start for me. A healthy break from my overbearing doctors and therapists and support system (all of whom are necessary to my survival). But the weird things slip out of my mouth when I’m not looking. I hide them in plainclothes as jokes. About machetes, and believing in ghosts, about how my meds make me dull and too sleepy, the creepy adventures I’ve been on, the weird burn scars on my arms, needing blood drawn all the time. I suppress all my natural instincts with my teeth clenched so hard I taste blood. I shall be normal, normal, normal.
It’s very Kafkaesque: “I could have built the Pyramids with the effort it takes me to cling on to life and reason.” I convince my doctor to let me off the nasty Clozapine. Clozapine is a very serious medication, in a oh-shit-I’ve-fucked-up kind of way. Like, given to people with treatment-resistant schizophrenia. They put you on a national database to take it. It wreaks horror on your immune system, making you sick and nauseous and infected. It dropped my blood pressure so low I couldn’t look up without falling over. I had to move slowly, like an old woman, or my vision would crowd up with green and purple spots and I would faint dead away. The weekly blood draws were a nuisance. It made my hands bloody with a rash that just wouldn’t go away. I was constantly constipated, and my appetite disappeared without a trace. But it worked. It blasted all the whacky stuff out of my brain like a baseball bat.
So when I convinced my doctor to let me off it, the creepy crawlies came out of the shadows once again. I don’t care, they don’t bother me as much. As long as they stay on the periphery of my existence. I still don’t really know what happened with that entity, ze, and I avoid the topic at all costs.
The real trouble starts when this Aussie bitch Elaine gets here. She’s very soft spoken, and is taking a break from her neuroscience job, so I thought she’d be a reasonable person. Not so much. When we play boardgames, she’s sharply competitive, and not in a funny way. We start off good, all laughs and jokes, until she gets more and more passive aggressive and bossy. To avoid conflict, I make every attempt to be civil. It’s taken me years to get a handle on my temper, to stop it from kamikazeing my relationships, and I’m not going to let some random stranger rip the carpet out from under all that progress.
One weekend, I bribe Daniel into giving me a ride to the bus station for a brief trip down to NYC for some meetings and appointments. It’s splendid to be back in civilization again. Cell service everywhere, subway takes me all over the place, working in the public library, pizza places open till 4am, dancing in nightclubs, drinking at my favorite coffee shop, sticking my feet in the penny fountains, people dressed to the nines, in fabulous shoes.
Right before a big client meeting all the way downtown, I get a phone call from Aiden. I pick it up. “Hello?” I say suspiciously.
He tells me that people (he’s very vague about who) went into my room for some reason, something banging (big fat lie), and they went through my sketchbook. My art is pretty creepy, but that’s nobody’s business but my own. They were properly freaked out though. I’m in trouble. I hang up finally, furious, and running late to my meeting.
I tell my friends. They’re incredulous. They went through your stuff???
The day is busy with blood draws and therapy appointments and social worker meetings and work drinks. I go to sleep exhausted. I wake up the next morning to another phone call from Aiden. Apparently Elaine and the other girl are so freaked about some damn drawings that they’ve decided to leave the farm.
“I think it’s best if you don’t come back. I’m going to start over with all new volunteers. I’ll ship you your suitcase.”
I’m speechless and in tears.
There’s nothing colder than the icy douse of a good, old-fashioned reality check. My plans have suddenly and violently been tossed up in the air. I cancel my bus ticket back. Suddenly I have nothing to do and nowhere to go. It’s like I’ve been taken by the scruff of my neck and tossed out into the wind.
Over some sketches? None of which had anything to do with them?
Make it make sense, but no one could. I cut an airplane ticket to Chicago to my aunt’s house for the first plane out.
I like that Latin phrases come handy in times like these. Disco inferno. It translates to, “I learn through suffering”. It makes sense. I’ve been spoilt. Most of the people I’ve come across have high tolerances, good levels of sympathy, or are mentally ill themselves. I know I’m drawn to wackjobs, and the wackjobs are drawn to me. So, meeting the Normal section of society went very badly.
It’s a wakeup call. Most people are afraid of severe mental illnesses. Schizophrenics are stereotyped as violent, as murderers and psychos. It seems I have been stuck in an echo chamber for a bit. Ranting on TikTok, and my followers, as crazy town banana pants as me, all agreeing and cheering me on. Meeting men with savior complexes who want to study me like a lab animal. Living with women who are all prescribed psychotropic drugs. Hanging out at punk bars with writers and freaks and drug addicts.
They’re stupid country bumpkins, who cares what they think, my friends say to cheer me up. But rejection burns my bones to their very marrow, no matter who, or where it’s coming from. Yes, everybody has to like me. Otherwise I will throw up. I need attention and sympathy and validation like I need oxygen. I’m very much a Tinkerbell.
The week I’m staying at Galia and her boyfriend’s house, I spend it at the bars and clubs, drinking myself stupid, doing coke and ketamine and anything I can get my hands on. I get on the plane to Chicago, my head crashing from insomnia and adrenaline, a horrible, gaping ache in my chest. I’m in the abyss of a personality crisis. Have I actually learned anything at all?
Once again, I’m wiping up blood.
Is this really what the general public thinks of us? Is this why we’re so afraid to ask for help? Why we can’t even talk about our illnesses? What if we never come out of the shadows? Are we ever going to be anything more than an episode on a true crime podcast?
Worst of all, am I doomed to a life of loneliness? Which makes me laugh, because one time I told a friend I had schizophrenia, and he went, “at least you’ll never be lonely, right?”
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