Psychology Study

Cotton candy shop in mid-March November with Junebugs in the window and fleece falling from the shrubs /a shrubbery! A shrubbery!/ Nick says to me says How do you know you don’t like I don’t know I don’t want to know not again. Nick. Nick Cage Don’t call me that that’s stupid Your mother’s stupid No, your mother’s stupid and a who- Mummy says that’s a bad word Well that’s what your mother is. The homeless man making his cocoon on the street corner beams a half-toothy smile at the messiah with his red brolly but there’s no rain because the rivers haven’t all dried up yet. That’s what Carl said mummy is, and he’s yelling yelling and she holds her bottle closer to her chest but it breaks when he grabs her and the belt goes crack and then her neck and I’m scared it almost goes crack but Carl hears the scared and comes towards me but then Father is there, not Carl, Carl is not Father, Father is Father and Father smashes Carl into the wall and takes my hand and we hide in the cherry tree because it’s just April 17, 20 and it’s cotton candy season. Carl Masters Maslow Rogers Carl hyphenated Mum inebriated red. Detroit was a city of guns and bumblebeed gang executive motions /lol noobz/ Father was always saying stupid humans and Nick would scoff because without any people he wouldn’t have anyone to eat. It’s the murder culture club and everyone eats everyone but you have to be careful that no one’s eating you so you take their teeth out with wires. That’s what the ladies in white are trying to do but I’m on to them and I know and Father knows and Nick reacts and we know they’ll be here at the 1200^th tick past five and white-dress-lady’s arm goes crack because of the centrifugal tirade force which states that sand beats electricity and pills. Dope. But it’s there again on the linoleum, there on the kitchen tiles. There on the white dress, there on my white dress and Nick’s still there always there cackling and Father Kit, you have to run. Past the streetlights and the Blitzkreig and the mailboxes with the red flags in mourning. Past the flowerbeds, not the one Uncle Ted’s lying in, past the candy shop maybe if I keep running I can fly /I believe I can flyyy, I believe I can touch the sky/ I wonder when hobo cocoon man Frank will grow wings and fly so I go up to ask him I think he’s Fred or Frank but it’s hard to hear over Nick what does it matter? One doesn't name cockroaches. “Hey Little girlie, what’s happening?” and Nick’s got that look his omnipresent grin splits like a shark’s. 

/Pay attention to meeee. I’m bored/ 

/She ratchet/

/What if I went around with a Morgan Freeman voice? Like “Luke, I am your Father”/

I don’t think that’s right.

/Your mother isn’t right! She’s actually pretty liberal. And dead. Enjoy/

//You two are ridiculous// 

Father smells like fire and Nick is coarse like a desert /or mountains of cocaine/ with a dash of cinnamon but Uncle Ted was red-faced and smelt of booze crawling smacking his chops, saggy jowls quivering on top but Father’s there and then Uncle Ted’s amongst the daisies but not pushing them up yet just sleeping and we’re outside and the gravel cuts my feet which I’m sure are red red and the winter not yet moon’s staring there’s a way out you know I know if I could fly away like in the cherry candy cotton tree the Junebugs and sparrows can if I jumped I could fly. Nick’s eyes are yellow and his teeth are a jack-o-lantern’s you know what to do and I do I do because Nick’s never been wrong and for once him and Father agree so we reverse. As I walk through the shadow of the valley of death. Fred-Frank doesn’t know we reversed so he’s still being nice “Hey Little girlie, have you got any change?” I’ve got plenty of change, thanks for asking. Know what else I have? Fred-Frank doesn’t want to know but Nick shows him anyway. Nick’s been watching too much T.V because he quotes Tony Montana and the red’s there just like Nick’s always there and now I’m holding it while Nick claps and Father hangs back letting us little uns have our fun just like all the times before that in Detroit, Montana, Pennsylvania. Just like the first, much easier than I thought told you so no different from when Mummy had sliced up the turkey choking back sobs now choking red but of course they hadn’t been expecting it.  The knife waltzing ruby ribbons through Carl and Uncle Ted bits strewn across like roses at a curtain call. Non timebo mala. I will fear no evil. Nick takes a bow. Red on the carpet. Red on my dress. Red on my hands. Red on the pavement. Red on the waterfall of coins from Fred-Frank’s cup. Humans are so stupid cotton candy red say hello to /I think Prince William’s found the one. But if I was him I would Mary-Kate and Ashley/ the Junebugs and sparrows where do they go do the cockroaches go there too or do they just get eaten be careful it’s 17,20 and you have to run so no one’s eating you or you could take their teeth out with wires the sirens are coming but they can’t catch us because we’re the gingerbread man /we can’t all be the gingerbread man/ run you have to run so we ran we always ran can’t catch me they didn’t catch us when we took the money from the floorboards upstairs where it wasn’t red and then ran out into November December January February March but then someone calls and the sirens come here came gone but we’re not gone and they came and now fi fie fo fum  the doctors in white. Run run run run runrunrunrunrunrunrunrunrunrun.

//Kit, you have to run// but a mosquito settles on my arm and the floor walls bed curtains mould start crumbling into a void and 

Reflection:

As someone whose future creative writing major involves a lot of delving into fantasy, I am fascinated by the idea of being split from reality. Every normal person daydreams and fantasizes about various potential scenarios in their life so I am interested to see when the distinction between imagination and reality becomes so blurred to the point that it becomes a reality. My initial picture of schizophrenia comes from what I’ve seen in films and television shows or around the sketchy Waterbury bus stations, which is typically just a person talking to themselves, hearing voices and seeing things. In this chapter we went into depth with the symptoms and different subtypes of schizophrenia, which extended my knowledge beyond what is portrayed in the media. The idea of a “breakdown in the filter” went beyond my initial schema of schizophrenia but helped me envision the disorder in a different way that would be interesting to write.  

A third person or omniscient perspective pertaining to a schizophrenic character is easier because there is some anchor to the reader’s reality; however, to narrate in first person from a person with an abnormal mental is challenging required me to actually put myself in the precarious mental state of the character. In AP English Lit, we are reading Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury where the characters Benjy, who is autistic, and Quentin narrate from a skewered perspective of reality with incessant streams of consciousness that lack distinction between the past and the present. Furthermore Faulkner’s general writing style often rambles on like word salad so I took cues from him to create a voice. 

  For me the aspect of hallucinations easiest to understand because when I was younger I had a lot of imaginary friends and I’ve heard schizophrenia described as what happens when your imaginary friends don’t go away when you grow up. Writing the voices I just imagined that I was interacting with real people because someone with schizophrenia wouldn’t acknowledge that they weren’t actually there. For research, I watched different TV shows and films depicting schizophrenia and hallucinations f, like Criminal Minds and Donnie Darko, However, it was watching a Supernatural episode where one of the characters starts hallucinating Satan, but more as a sassy nuisance than a malignant presence, that I got the idea of having dual voices, like having a devil and an angel on your shoulder, except in this case neither really represent a moral conscience. The textbook details that the auditory hallucinations are insulting or commanding so I used that to create a storyline based on someone acting out what the voices said. I also drew from movies like Black Swan and The Uninvited where the character has delusions of alter egos that perform destructive behaviors when the individual is really the one acting out.  In addition, I researched factors that could contribute to the development of schizophrenia, like obstructed prenatal development and hostile early childhood social environments and incorporated them into narrator’s backstory. 

From this exercise I learnt that schizophrenia goes beyond just seeing or hearing things that may not be there, and is chaotically disruptive and distressful to the person afflicted. My impression of the diagnosis is that symptoms can be highly varied and therefore difficult to treat and manage. I tried to present the disorder as sort of a hodge podge of the lack of selective attention that ADHD presents, the flat effect and lack of conscience that could stray into antisocial-personality disorder, and the delusions and hallucinations from taking psychedelic drugs, all while keeping in mind that someone who has this split from reality may not understand that it is not reality per se.