TheBanyanTree: The Schizophrenia Diaries, 4/15/04

[Monique]

Tax Day 2004

I loathe tax day. Partly because I'm in the wrong line of work, partly
because, well, doesn't everyone? I'm not myself anyway, I don't know who I
am, but I'm off lately, haven't been well for several days, my spectacular
crash of last week, while past and done with, created a lag in the
space-time continuum (that describes it as well as anything else I can come
up with). I've felt sick, I've had a change of meds, I've been weak and
dizzy and exhausted, yet I feel emotionally strong. If befuddled. Definitely
befuddled. Overwhelmed at times, definitely overwhelmed.

And it's tax season. Yay. I am, of course, behind on all the tax work, and
since I refuse to do taxes myself this comes as no surprise to me. I am at
work early, though not necessarily productive. Extensions, last-minute
things, payrolls, and I just did not feel well.

He came over about mid-morning, he and the dog. She stayed with him last
night because I wanted to try to get some sleep. I haven't been sleeping the
best, and I thought it would help if she weren't waking me up at odd hours
of the night. Not that it seems to have mattered . . . 

I'm scattered today, doing too many things at once, just wanting to get
things in the mail so I can move on to the next project. He wants to help,
and the help I need is just to be here -- the first three hours of the day I
worked in solitude, and sometimes I could do with a bit less of that. I love
working for myself, but sometimes there is a lot of solitude. Especially
since I've trained the clients not to bother me with phone calls.

And I'm not doing the best, but I'm working on it and holding up. 

He does not. What happens has nothing to do with me, it's an external
stimulator, but I won't go into that here. And he breaks down. I tell him
it'll be okay, and when he goes to leave to go back to his place he gets
worse. I tell him to stay, to sit down, that I'll be done soon and we can
get out for a bit. I know what's wrong, but there's no fix for it. He thinks
it's silly, but I tell him he can tell me anything because nothing is really
all that silly. And it isn't. It never is, really. Irrational, maybe, but
not silly. 

I'm still incredibly stressed. 

I finish what I have, I make a couple of calls, I need to get out of the
house for a bit. We leave to go to the post office and Kinko's, and to drop
off a tax return at a client's, a tax return that did not come to me in the
mail from my tax preparer on time so she had to fax it to me this morning.
And I feel like crap, I really do. I wonder if I have the flu. Dengue fever.
Malaria. Entropy. Something.

We go. He drives. I know what's wrong, and I can't fix it, I can only tell
him that there is nothing wrong with his feelings because there isn't
anything wrong with his feelings. I emphathize, for all the good that does.
We drop off the mail, we make the copies, we head towards the client's. He
loses it in traffic, becoming angry and impatient, frustrated. And it
concerns me, of course it does, and I begin to feel the familiar note of
hopelessness rise within me.

So I tell him we'll drop off the tax return at the client's, then we'll get
some clam chowder at the waterfront. When in doubt, call on food. 

Lunch does not appear to be going well. He's morose, sad, angry, very angry,
though he can't define it or say why. He's ready to explode at any time. And
he breaks down at the table. He takes his knife, it's only a butter knife,
but he takes his knife and he presses the blade against his arm, and I know
he can't hurt himself that way and he won't, but I make him give me the
knife anyway, and he does, and then he breaks down. I ask if he's okay, or
if he needs to leave, and he says he's okay. He goes to the restroom to beat
up on things. 

When he comes back he says he's okay. And he takes some of the focaccia from
the basket and squeezes it tightly in his hand and then gobbles it down. And
he does it again. And I laugh. He puts pepper in his Pepsi. He puts his
bread in his Pepsi, then eats it. When he eats his quesadilla (shrimp, we
are at a seafood place after all) the cheese falls down the front of his
shirt and he cleans it off by putting his jacket into his mouth. I can't
help laughing. The jacket is subjected to this abuse several times. I take
the ketchup away from him once, unsure what he's going to do with it, but
certain it won't be a good thing. Indeed, he had planned on putting it into
his Pepsi to see how that would taste.

"You're back, aren't you?" I ask him, unsure if he is or not. 

"I'm having a psychotic break," he announces, and his behavior would seem to
indicate some sort of psychotic episode. But all in all, it's better than he
was, it's life of an eccentric sort but it's life. 

"Are you laughing at me?" he asks, and of course I am, but I'm laughing
because he's THERE, because the anger has been released and because he is
THERE, and I don't care if the other patrons are finding anything about us
odd or not, it doesn't matter.

He's there, back from the precipice. We eat dark chocolate cake with ice
cream for dessert, so dense I can only eat a few bites. And when we leave
the restaurant I yell out "Tax Day 2004!" I don't know why. I'm just wanting
it to be over, another tax day survived. 

I've felt better. I plan on feeling better again soon. I planned on it
today. I'll plan on it for tomorrow. Until then, I'll just continue to do
what I've been doing. Keeping my distance from the precipice, and helping
him keep his distance as well.

Monique