My first time in heaven

My First Time in Heaven

 

February 2, 1999

 

Losing my mind was a slow process until one day it took over rapidly. I went madly insane. My family became worried. By now my brother Junior was stable. He went back to work and was on medication. His acne was clearing up and now he was the one reaching out to me. One day he said we had to go somewhere. We didn’t say anything to each other all through the car ride. It was silent, yet so loud. Everything just kept getting louder and louder and my world was spinning. It was the silence of the night that became so loud in my head. It was all the traffic lights that blinded me. I leaned my head against the glass window and tried to find peace.

We arrived at the glass house and walked in through the automatic glass doors. I noticed that there was a dining room to my left. It was dark but the bright light from the hallway gleamed into the dining room and I could see the white daisies that were in vases on each table. There was also a fireplace with a black protective cover. I thought the devil was in the fireplace and he could see me. I wandered away from Junior and went into the dining room. I went in and just stood before the fireplace and said, “I hate you, Satan!” I thought I was the chosen one. God chose me to save the world. Then I went to each table and started collecting the white daisies; skipping as I went from table to table. I felt like a little girl. I wanted to collect all the flowers and give them to God.

When Junior realized that I wasn’t behind him, he came to me, touched my hand softly and said, “Come on Mari. We have to go over there.”

An Asian lady dressed in white came to greet us. We went into her office and sat down. Her desk was cluttered but on the corner there was a little stuffed angel doll holding a sign that said, “There is an angel helping you.”

“Oh my God!” I thought. “That lady is a real angel and she came to protect me.”

I sat next to Junior and he was talking to the nurse while I was completely zoned out staring at the paintings of clowns. They reminded me of the clown in Stephen King’s It. The paintings covered the whole office. I thought the clowns were scary and their smiles were wicked. They were holding balloons. Some of them were hanging out of cars or fire trucks. I thought they were working for Satan. I was in a battle between good and evil.

Then Junior turned to me and touched my hand and said, “Mari, you have to sign these.”

I signed the papers and voluntarily checked myself into a mental hospital but didn’t even realize that it was any type of hospital. All I saw was glossy white walls and a shiny gray floor. It was immaculate; so perfectly clean I thought surely its perfection and soft colors was heaven.

The lady in white was a nurse. She told me I had to go with her but Junior couldn’t come with me. I had to say goodbye to him. It was sad to let go. I wanted him to come with me. His eyes looked so troubled like it was tearing his heart to leave me there. His eyes became teary and he said, “I have to go, Mari. I’ll come back to see you.”

The nurse touched my shoulder and guided me through the doors of the psychiatric ward. She showed me to a white room. She said that that would be my room. She handed me a gray gown and a thin, blue blanket. She said I had to go to bed. I went into the room and changed into the white gown. I lay on the bed and put the thin blue blanket over me. It barely made me feel warm. I tossed and turned for a long time and finally fell asleep. When I woke up, I realized that I was in a strange bed. I panicked for a moment and then went out of the room to see where I was. “That’s right,” I thought. I’m in heaven and now I had to look for Jesus. I walked around the hospital and ran into a male patient with a brown beard. He was wearing blue jeans and a polo shirt.

“Oh my God! It’s you. You’re Jesus.”

He smiled at me and began to speak but I couldn’t understand him because he didn’t speak English. I thought surely I couldn’t understand him because he spoke the language of God. Still, I followed him everywhere. He would smile at me so warmly that I knew it was because he was the son of God. I couldn’t imagine what he was thinking. I don’t know what took him to that mental hospital. He didn’t blend in—most of us were wearing white hospital gowns but there were others who wore sweats and old T-shirts or tattered clothing. He must have felt sorry for me because I was so delusional or maybe he liked the attention of being called Jesus. I don’t know. Until this day, I wonder what went through his mind. He seemed very humble. He didn’t seem to mind that I would follow him around everywhere. He seemed to enjoy my company.

When the nurses called for breakfast, I got my meal and sat next to the patient I called Jesus. I looked around me and thought that we were having the last supper. I ate peacefully but kept my guard up because I knew that Judas would come to betray Jesus with a kiss. I looked around cautiously and saw a patient looking at me. She had pale skin, gray-and-white hair, and was missing a lot of teeth. I assumed by her appearance that she was evil. I started screaming that she was the devil and got up and threw oatmeal on her face. She looked so afraid she started to cry but I didn’t understand. I was just protecting Jesus. I felt so confused. I became paranoid and began throwing chairs on the floor. Two male nurses of strong build rushed over and pinned me down.

I started screaming louder and kicking but the nurses only grabbed my arms tighter. They gave me a shot in my arm and pushed me into a small room. It was the Time Out Room. The Time Out Room was used to punish patients who were misbehaving. There was a camera in the corner of the ceiling to see what the patients were doing while they were being punished. I thought I was a prisoner and they were going to crucify me. I was screaming hysterically as they shut the door. I started banging on the door but soon gave up with the hope that Jesus would come and save me.

I felt like I was in the Time Out Room for hours. I sat in the corner of the room and rocked my body back and forth while I hummed the song Amazing Grace. I felt so much pain within me. I just wanted to pull the pain from its roots. I pulled my hair hoping to pull it from the roots hoping that if I pulled hard enough the pain inside would go away. It must have been ten thousand times that I hummed Amazing Grace; I started all over again when suddenly I heard the rattling of keys. I saw the knob turn. A nurse walked in and told me I had visitors. I got off the floor and followed her to the living room and saw my mother and sister Rosa. I was so happy to see them and couldn’t wait to tell them the news. I told them that I found Jesus but the demons were trying to hurt me. My mom and Rosa looked at me with troubled faces. They looked so sad. I didn’t understand why they weren’t rejoicing that Jesus was keeping me company. It all didn’t make sense to me. They looked so worried. I couldn’t imagine what was going through their minds. I rambled in Spanish about Jesus and demons and they just looked at me as if I was tearing their heart.

The definition of a delusion is a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence. It was evident that I was not the “chosen one” and I was certainly not in heaven with Jesus and demons, but in my mind it was the only truth I knew. It’s funny that I remember all of this. While I’m delusional I don’t know it, but when I come back to reality I remember almost everything that happened.

How do you watch your child go insane? How do you watch your little sister lose her mind? What goes through your mind? How do you feel? I imagine that it feels like your heart is getting pierced and you just can’t believe that this is happening to someone with your own blood. I imagine that you feel so helpless and distressed. And what about me? I wasn’t even aware that I was causing them to feel this way. I didn’t mean to hurt them. I would never want to hurt anyone. It just happened that I slowly lost my mind.

My mother handed me a brown paper bag full of clothes. I wondered if it was going to be a long stay. Would this be my new home? What was happening? But it didn’t bother me because I thought I was in heaven and I had to save the world. When Junior came to visit me, I yet again rambled on with my delusion. He just nodded at all my nonsense and I honestly thought he believed me. He was just feeding into the delusion and making me feel like it was all true, but he didn’t know any better. Back then, I got upset if somebody tried to contradict me.

I was in the mental hospital for one week on a medication regimen of mood-stabilizers and anti-psychotics. I was delusional the entire time; that is, until Melissa came to see me and gave me a profound awakening. I remember how she looked when she came to see me. I saw her come from a distance. She walked quickly toward me. She looked so funny walking really fast because she was so short and tiny that she bounced. She looked around the hospital with deep concern until she spotted me.

The first thing she did was give me a very tight hug. We sat down and she started telling me how concerned everyone was about me but I didn’t understand why; I just rambled on with my delusion. Melissa looked at me with a very puzzled expression like she was trying really hard to make sense of what I was saying. As we were sitting down and talking in the dining area, the patient I called the devil walked by. I got up from my chair and yelled, “That’s her!” I pointed. “That’s her! That’s the devil!”

The woman looked down at the floor and started walking fast away from me. Melissa gently put my hand down and insisted that the lady was a patient and I was scaring her. I thought, “A patient? Am I in a hospital?” Gradually, my mind journeyed back to reality and I realized that I was not only in a hospital, but in a mental hospital. I went into a state of shock.

I slowly sat back; my heart was racing. Melissa just sat next to me. Her lips were moving but I couldn’t make out what she was saying. It was like everything was going in slow motion. I think she was trying to comfort me. I knew by her facial expression and the way her eyebrows shifted with compassion.

I still couldn’t hear what she was saying because I was screaming so loudly in my head, “No! No! No! No!”

Suddenly, I started seeing everything that I had lived for that whole week that I had been staying there. It was all a routine, our walking around like over-drugged zombies at breakfast time, vitals time, medication time, and visiting time. I had been doing the same thing every day. I just didn’t know where I was. I was in another world far from sanity. Suddenly, everything wasn’t in slow motion anymore, and I looked around me at all the patients walking around in white gowns barefoot or with white vinyl slippers while nurses were supervising.

I looked at Melissa. She touched my hand softly, saying, “Mari, you have bipolar disorder.”

Bipolar disorder? How can this be? This can’t be happening to me? What am I doing here? What are you talking about? I just couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t think back on the events that took me there. All I knew was that my life would never be the same. I couldn’t understand what I had become. I never imagined that something like this could happen to me because I always felt that I would have a successful future. I didn’t know back then that I could still be successful despite my mental illness. I felt like,where would I go from here? What would I do? How would I live my life? It was all too perplexing. I felt so weak. I wanted to run away but was behind the closed doors of the mental hospital and even if I escaped, this bipolar disorder would follow me forever. It is an incurable illness. I would be labeled as crazy for the rest of my life and I was not ready to take on such a stigma.