Debbie Claire

I can't seem to stay alseep for more than 30 minutes. I wake up frightened--not terrified--but as if something isn't right and I need to do something right away. No nightmares that I can recall. I  like blogging--perhaps that's the "something" I need to do? And writing to no one in particular feels okay. It's really no different than most of the writing I've done over the years: newpapers, magazines, greeting card companies, even sociological journals. Well, maybe a little different. Those "no ones" were just 'someones' I didn't know. If a "someone" is reading thuis, perhaps a someone who stumbles across my blog by accident, stays to read a paragraph or two, then goes on his or her way to do what bloggers do when they're not blogging I really don't think you're a "no one." If you are there, HI! I hope you're having a good life. A couple days ago I said I would write about Maggie Anne. Like most schizophrenics, she doesn't go around beating up on people. I've worked with hunderds--maybe more than a 1000--over the years and only one has ever tried to hurt me.

Maggie Anne

Maggie Anne hadn’t expected the weather at the coast to be so Bipolar. Earlier that day, walking along the shore, she’d felt swaddled by the warm breeze, energized by rays of sun sneaking through the ever present cloud layer hovering over the cold, cement gray waves. Now, only hours later, the sky roared with rage, thunder and lighting exploded across the horizon.  By evening, power and phone lines slithered like snakes across roadways, snapping and sparking to the rhythm of the wind. Houses sat dark and humbled beneath straining roofs and cowering trees.

In the days following that storm, Maggie Anne had questioned her decision to move to the Washington coast. A week later, when electricity and phone service were restored, her sisters had encouraged her to move inland, closer to them and closer to her cardiologist. They’d tried to use her heart condition as a lever; she lived a hundred miles from the nearest heart speciaist. That argument hadn't worked. Neverthelkess, Maggie had considered moving back to Portland, Oregon. The storm had frightened her badly. But it wasn’t the fear that had had her considering the move, either. Maggie had lived with a bad heart for 15 years. She’d lived with fear even longer. As with many schizophrenics, there were things in her reality to be afraid of: "things" you and probably even I can't truly understand. For an unfortunate few, monsters, devils and demons do exist. But it wasn't a bad heart, or the vicious storm or terrifying hallucinations that made her think of fleeing from the coast. Instead, it was profound sadness--too much sadness for her diseased heart to cope with..

Stepping outside her cabin the day after the storm was like stepping into a different world, so drastically had the landscape been altered.  Maggie walked around her neighborhood, looking for old friends. So many had not survived. Uprooted, their once magnificent shapes were now tortured and twisted, broken by the wind. Still living, still dignified, she’d wanted to cradle them in her arms to make their deaths easier. But she was too weak, too broken herself. All she could do was go back to her cabin and cry.

I found Maggie Anne in her living room later that day, sitting on the floor, sobbing. I sat down next to her and waited for her to realize that I was there. I didn’t have any idea how long that would take but she was my friend so it didn’t really matter. We were both aware of the friendship that grown since our first meeting, in my office, nearly two years before. We didn’t speak of it—couldn’t acknowledge or, God forbid, celebrate it. To like a client was against the rules. I was an educated professional. Maggie Anne was a crazy person.

I’d read Maggie’s chart, and listened to other therapists and crisis workers talking about her mental health issues for a week or so before I met her. She was still in a psychiatric hospital at the time and, upon discharge, was to be assigned to me.  Her name wasn’t Maggie Anne back then, just plain old Margaret. The woman I met during our first “session” had a lot in common with the chronically mentally ill schizophrenic I was prepared to meet. Mental health charts do an excellent job of describing a condition and its history. In the months to follow, however, I learned that charts fail miserably at describing the human being afflicted with the condition. Margaret was, just as Maggie Anne is, so much more than her chart suggested. The mental illness she has struggled with since early adulthood is such a small part of the woman she has become: as descriptive of Maggie Anne as a planter’s wart would be of you or I.

Maggie said little during our first meeting. She politely explained: “I don’t do very well meeting new people so if I get up and leave don’t think you’ve done something wrong.  I don’t mean to be rude. I’ll try to stay10 minutes.” A nervous smile flickered across her face, and then she became quiet. I tried several times to engage her in conversation—get her to “open up,” so to speak. But it was soon clear that Maggie didn’t talk when she didn’t have something of substance to say. So we sat in what I would have described as "silence" at the time; that was before I learned that there's really no such thing. Five, perhaps six minutes passed—an eternity when quiet feels dead. Then she looked up at the ceiling and smiled. This time, her smile was an expression of genuine delight.

“Do you hear it?” she finally asked.

“Hear what? I don’t hear anything.” I didn’t.

“That’s too bad,” she whispered, still staring at the ceiling. She pointed to one of the florescent lights. “It’s playing music. I hear 17 different notes. My refrigerator makes 10. It’s really quite lovely in its own way. I wish you could hear it, too.”

            I concentrated on the light, listening as hard as I could. And guess what? I did hear something—not 17 different notes but soft, fuzzy, staticky noise. More annoying than melodious. Certainly not “lovely” to my ears but then I enjoy Eminem, Boy George and Wayne Newton; I’m probably not a good judge of what is and what isn’t music. Maggie stayed for 25 minutes that day, then stood up and walked out. Later, in writing the progress note describing the session for Maggie's chart, I kept dwelling on the musical florescent lights. Not a hallucination--I'd heard it, too and I don't hallucinate. Clearly, this strange woman had a much  different relationship with the world around her than I did. I didn’t know it yet, but Maggie Anne had already introduced me to Listening 101. And thus began a professional relationship that was destined to be discarded in favor of a friendship that was destined to grow.
      Mental health professionals are supposed to maintain some pretty rigid professional boundaries. That's never been my strong point, to begin with. First of all, I'm not a psychologist--not even close. I'm a sociologist. In school, I took psych 101. In 9 weeks I learned about long-dead shrinks and their obscure theories. Everythings I know about mental illness I've learned from the people I've worked with over the years. Of course, I've attended a lot of seminars and workshops, and read many books but again, if I'm honest, the hours I dedicated to expanding my education would have been better spent listening to the stories individuals have to tell, and asking questions. I consider myself nothing more than a guide. I don't have anyone's answers but maybe I can help as people in pain attempt to identify their own demons and then figure out how to live with them. Besides, I'm not really nice enough to be a therapist. I have little patience with whiners; I don't care if the whiner is a schizophrenic, manic depressive, coworkjer or next door neighbor. But what I do have is an ability to connect with people. I think it's that ability which precludes admirable professional boundaries.  

Anyway, I believed Maggie Anne about the musiccoming from the ceiling, as well as the musical refrigerator sitting in her kitchen at home, probably singing its little heart out. And over the next few months, I came to believe a lot of things I’d never given much thought to before. By the end of a year, I had started thinking of Maggie's condition as a mental difference rather than a mental illness.

            Maggie Anne is different from most of the people I know, or have ever known. A graduate of Reed College, she’s brilliant. She composes and plays classical music, has studied dance, she writes and sings and paints with such passion that experiencing  her art actually opens doors to an alternative world. But mental health professionals don’t want to walk through those doors. Instead, we medicate the hell out of schizophrenics trying to make them more like us. If I had been formally trained as a therapist, I never would have stepped foot inside a schizophrenic’s reality. Our job, as therapists, is to lure crazy people out of their worlds and back into ours; we aren’t supposed to go on field trips into uncharted and dangerous territories.                                                                                                                                         
        But once inside Maggie Anne's world I got to know a beautiful, kind and gentle soul, who loves God, cries for the less fortunate, adores animals, makes lasting friendships with trees, and can even feel the warm dignity radiating from a rock lying at her feet: a rock that others would step over without even noticing. Maggie Anne has the unique ability to absorb the beauty surrounding us all by truly engaging in the smallest nuances of the world outside ourselves. She celebrates it’s music and her soul dances to melodies most of us never hear. We should all be so crazy.