Sergey Vassiliev - The realm of tormenting dreams

These kinds of ideas were already believed from those books of the magician Castaneda, being in love with whom, we dreamed to go in our entire company to Mexico and find there the teacher of magic called Don Juan. This idea is evidently not much crazier than the one I was infected with, but we were all very much attached to each other, sharing the most secret thoughts and hidden dreams, undoubtedly merging in our search and reasoning into a unity, where the idea of one person could immediately become the idea of another without the intervention of any criticism, or for the sake of that other person, especially due to my deification, which assumed an important role for my great destiny and my friends. And they all believed almost out of habit, because I often took a leading position in relations with friends, who gathered in crowds in the garden to help in hard work, and heard from them no complaints, forcing them to believe that it was the best way to spend time. And if your belief is shared, it has a much greater chance of continuing to exist, and I must say that the guy who woke up the first suspicions of my madness was not from our company. And when a man is already called mad by the community, this makes him a stranger to everyone, because if you do not show your difference in comparison with the sick person, joining the almost direct condemnation, then you are treated like him, and many of them did so, at once forgetting their recent respect as a terrible mistake in their life. Like Pushkin’s: “But truth is: be my mind not clear, a plague will merit as much fear.”

Most of all I was surprised that they suddenly began to reproach me, for example, “leave me alone,” you know, treating me like a dog. After all, this caused a sharp, profound resentment, and besides, to me personally, it was completely unclear why suddenly such insolent anger and rudeness occurred, and most of all, it is not clear how a God can be treated by everyone in such an obviously offensive tone. I could not understand why they mocked at me, considering me crazy, while I’m really so smart and cool. The girl whom fell in love with in, made me even suffer when, I repeat, she said that everybody mocked at me, I just did not believe it and decided to leave the village company with a heavy sense of insult, having already decided to visit a psychiatrist on the advise of my parents (this advice being also silly), because it was difficult already to show to those spoiled evil people the correctness of my idea. And I got into the hospital. I think it was quite simple to persuade me to go there; for me, with grief in my soul, was indifferent where to hide. Although with resentment, but still with a maniacal rise, whose whirlwind was not going to subside, I left the free community. And my views, together with the love of the ideas of my new world, together with the extremely fantastic inner movements inside me, and the terrible passion of crazy despair… Already being settled in the psychiatric clinic, in this swirl of countless anxieties of those who are no longer needed by anyone, those terrible and crazy people, in their irritable and horrible company, of which I became the participant for an indefinite time. Not understanding all the horror of what was happening to me, I was seeking for my place here, but I did not tell anyone about the divine ideas, which here were completely inappropriate among all the anguish that reigned in the feelings of the people around me. I was going to somehow escape; I still did not believe that my freedom was now cut off, that I was away from my home for a long time, and the iron grills threatened the fire of my life, reminding me of this terrible limitation of will.

Of course, under such conditions it is very difficult to save one’s life, and everyone here only broke down more, disfiguring, and devastated by the memories of his/her life in the free world. The main thing was that cruel irritation, distorting one’s soul; I remember that many years later I dreamed of it in a nightmare, in that crowded room, crowded so tightly, standing each other’s presence with a great effort, experiencing a cruel incredibly agony of neighborhood with their own kind – emotionally unbalanced comrades, beyond the limits of self-control. And this stay among such people brings everyone, who lives there, a strong mental injury, anger, and most importantly, as I later realized basing on my own example, entails the contamination of the symptoms of their diseases: you begin to think and feel like one who’s next to you, borrowing from him even the process of abnormal behavior that had seemed to you completely alien. I remember my fear of such transformation into a man with almost no traces of sanity, whose face bears uncovered repulsive beastliness, an eerie creature, hammered and trained by local personnel. And the first time when I got to the hospital, and, running ahead, I must say that I got there many times and for a long time, frankly, half a lifetime, for the first time there was not so hard, for at least, no one hurt me, and I was treated by others with quite a respect. But life passed in the grip of irritation, pain and despair, I must say, the maniacal energy does not guarantee total comfort, but at the same time I did not calm down and was drunk and merry. But yet, which is still nice – smart people. Yes, here you can meet them, gifted, talented, very interesting, highly cultured, which I had not met and certainly had not communicated in real life, even very short one. I was overfilled with delight of communicating with them; I admired those individuals: writers, translators who had more than one higher education diploma, wise, charming, even if drunk with their illness. I could be for them a sympathetic kind smart boy, whom they soon loved and began to consider as equal. In addition to the attraction, erudition and even charm, these people were exposed to torments which heavily burdened their lives. And the tortures of psychosis in some stages are enormous.

I did not even supposed then that I after some time I will have to suffer such pain which no one can stand, believe me; it can only be hatefully tolerated, coming to heavy madnesses. These madnesses happened to these people, and I could not understand all these nightmares, but I really wanted to support them somehow in difficult minutes. I was confused by the gusts of acute disease inside those who had only recently been in an idle mood. But people are various here. There are drug addicts, one can encounter good guys among them, but they are rare, most of them are all vile and completely immoral. That was here when I first saw drug addicts, they were few at that time. One of these guys was very attentive to me and even found something to admire in me during our intimate conversations with him. I had a kind of “trick”: I thought that I was capable of parapsychology.

A writer and a translator wrote a poem to me:

“Maître Sergei Mikhailovich Vassiliev, praise St. Petersburg and the whole country, having mastered parapsychology, on Basil Island.” ( no rhyme preserved – Translator’s note ) This sounds well, does not it? I was proud. Only one rascal spoiled my the festival of my life drunk with psychosis, which never left me within the walls of the house of sorrow. This manipulator got acquainted, gained trust, and when I was dismissed, called me at home, promised videotapes, but did not bring them, took money promising to bring them later, and left. I suspected a hidden catch, I told him that I really needed that money, to make him have the hiccups later, but already completely realizing that I was cheated, still gave a ten-ruble note to that sick poor addict. Hoodwinkers just started to appear, and I already hated them.

A maniacal exultation itself can be seen as an incredible joy from a huge success, which, with its enthusiasm, does not allow any grief to knock you sideways out of this happiness. But, unfortunately, this behavior has no proper path. Since it can only anchor a little. I shall explain: I thought earlier that if the issue with skin disease is resolved, I’ll be completely free me, there will be no barriers in my way. And this factual deliberation from appearance issues – a kind of maturity, on the one hand, was also a tragic impetus to a new disease; it first gave me that pleasing relief of which I had been dreamed for almost all my life. Freud just supposed similar ways of developing maniacal psychoses. It turns out that all this mood, overfilled with freedom, can generally drive mad a person who, in principle, was very close to such an explosion of emotions due to his/her temperament, which was not the best since early childhood, and this is the second and the most important cause of the disease. It is like this, and it’s not far to seek, one should only see its root causes originating from the past of a person, his/her childhood, his/her sinister memories, escaping from which he/she creates a world of illusions. But I became aware that it all happens in such way a very, very long time later, because all the horror of my past was hidden from me, forgotten and controlled by me.