Sergey Vassiliev - The realm of tormenting dreams

The existence and the pain of the disease can be sensibly understood if you try to imagine a severe violent mockery of a person, a real monster reigning in the mentality, a torturer clutching the most painful emotions and thereby tearing the string of the soul, magically twisting all the thoughts, depriving them of life and you of clarity and freedom, provoking sharp conflicts with yourself, causing you to beg for mercy from fate and this deadly evil-doer, who represents parents, was had once absolutely, completely ruled you in this way, so cold-blooded and indifferent to your sensual world. Although at that time I could not imagine that these symptoms were the memories of my interaction with parents at the very beginning of my life, so to say, the story of the child’s sensual world, which is already so acutely recalled and shows me all the anguish of my past. Therefore, such brutality, ruling the soul of a mentally sick person, is not new to him, and now it was executed repeatedly, when I was twenty years old, and all these resurrected memories, so disturbing to live peacefully, is the core of psychosis.

But everyone’s not well here in the hospital, everyone tries to find a way out, but believe me, no one finds, everyone firmly knows that one just have to wait and rely on, unfortunately, drug treatment which is to many respects completely useless. No one could understand this grief which I expressed only as a simple complaint of not feeling my thoughts, and I had not the mood that should accompany the above, and it makes me feel very bad, and everything, that’s it; and, believe me, what I said is very important. No one, of course, could understand, basing on these words, the grief that raged inside my soul, but I could not find other words, which made it even more painful. All this evil, which guided me, was absolutely not going to retreat, and, on the contrary, it was effectuating terrible steps, which inspired me with the bitterest outcome. My mother’s friend came, and I, knowing her from childhood, rushed to pour out my heart, saying that I had become so stupid that I can really compare myself to a mentally retarded guy in our village. As for myself, of course, I sincerely believed in my complaint, but this woman began to lead me away from such conclusions, she, already in another visit, when the disease had continued to torment me for years, proposed a treatment by electric shock, about which I will speak later.

My parents came to visit, and I burst into scalding tears, telling them that the cause was the glue that I had once breathed. In general, there was something to think about. Every morning of every day was an ordeal; waking up, I was filled with incredibly heavy feelings, and their heaviness was not causeless, they engrossed, depriving me of my usual ability to chatter, I was as if emotionally torn, afraid that something in me was to break and thus to be lost forever, and you need to keep everything inside yourself, otherwise you will simply perish, and this is the most important. I was trying hard to live in such conditions. In order to accomplish this task, doing something else is simply impossible, it is for sure. Even starting a simple conversation with someone needed enough courage, because it seemed to me, if I distract from the main task to keep the remaining pieces of mind together, then I would loose the fight spending the last will of my mind. The weakness of thinking processes, or may be not this, but rather its constant strengthening, but your inner world in which everything happens does not have the same laws, and you seem to be completely lost in a strange realm of tormenting dreams, an alien world of horror. And here you can not find not only the familiar logic, the order of the flow of internal psychic reactions, but even the mandatory presence of chaos here comes in the first rank, the incredible intricacies of everything, either after or at the time of treacherously intervening forces, whose purpose was a direct violence and simply the destruction of your comfort, of everything inside you, in particular, of the emotions once associated and pleasant to many respects.

But we must live somehow, and I felt already calm, knowing that I was not the inly one to be subject to such a catastrophe, that means there is salvation, since there are a lot of us here and all gathered to get help and comfort, and most importantly, there are those who suffered just like you here. And so I made friends with a kid who looked at me with a perfectly clear understanding, answered my exclamation with his “How bad!”; i.e. he neither felt better than I did, as it seemed to me. Then our attention to each other began to support both of us, and thus we recovered, I think. The healing power of friendship made the necessary spiritual upheavals inside us, pulling one after another out of depression. In addition, I was prescribed to take lithium to balance my mood. More importantly, I began reading a book about the exploits of a man who got in the world of animals and survived there, finding his place. Tarzan struck me with his courage in such a terrible situation, and I must say, comparing my sorrows and problems to his, I was replenished with determination and necessary courage, which, of course, contributed to my internal stability. But anyhow I recovered not in the way one can imagine, I swapped the psychosis depression to a slight maniacal rise, i.e., a remission. Doctors in our clinics are still convinced, and this is taught even in universities, that only remissions are possible in cases of maniacal-depressive psychosis, but it’s out of the question to think about completely good health, if once gone mad, it’s forever. And it was absolutely extended for that part of my lifetime, following the depression I was staying now in a somewhat cheerful mood, but, I must say, my behavior was quite efficient.

I was discharged, telling my parents that I had to take care of the jokes that I began to let go off. Everything favored now building a career and my personal life. Remission is still a process of the disease, its continuation, but the calmest interval. Specialists explained to me that some people even live their life to the end in this state. At that time, I think it was health and basically thought that I had completely recovered, having left the hospital, after all, I could easily get acquainted with girls and without much difficulty studied at the university in legal department. Is it necessary to do something else to recognize the legal capacity? Yes, as it turns out to be. My relations with a partner could not be long, and our union could not stand a single year. In general, as it turned out, no psychotic patient is able to have a lasting relationship. Probably, I felt this and ran away from one girl, having just tasted the first fruit of love relationship, to another. Thus, I was an ordinary womanizer, and this, you know, is a weakness. But I had nothing else to do, because it was very necessary to fall in love, this need is mandatory, otherwise you become depressed, while you need to maintain your health that was for me the equivalent of remission. But the deadlock was that any relationship absolutely can not do without tension, and someone who is overwhelmed with the weight of feelings which drags him out of the normal limits, either into a mania or into a depression, can simply not stay within the love ties. And no intellect, no willpower or natural optimism can help a person cope with this difficult task if he is sick with psychosis. Apart from his basic tasks of life, it is necessary for him to withstand the regular disturbances brought by his memories, from the past that I’ve recently told you about in warm blood, these memories monstrously incapacitate one’s inner world. But, it is to say, all the horror of the disease is also hidden from yourself during the periods of remission, i.e. you have no obvious direct emotional stresses, all this soul torment is hidden from you and carries out its dirty deeds in a different way, it simply takes away the ability to endure the heavy feelings which fall onto an unhappy person suffering psychosis, in difficult periods of life. Let me explain more detailed how it happens.