the ocean beyond. “We kept it from everyone, Tess. Not just you. We didn’t want that stigma hanging over your heads. Mental illness is frowned upon. You know that.”
Yes, I do. Because I take Current Events. Crazy people are a burden to society. And we live in a time where burdens are not tolerated. Burdens make a nation weak. So they are removed, taken away. For everybody’s own good. I’ve never thought to question the logic of it before, but suddenly I’m terrified. What if I become a burden?
Mom relinquishes the twisted towel and wraps her arm around my shoulder. I shrug her away, keeping my attention on Dad. “What was wrong with her?”
“She had frequent episodes of psychosis.”
“Psychosis?”
“She saw things nobody else saw.”
“Things?”
“She called them demons. Spirits.” Dad laughs a humorless laugh and shakes his head, as if trying to rattle away the unpleasant memories. I can only imagine what he thought about his mother’s claims. “When the illness reached its peak, she swore she could fight them.”
Cold fear sinks like an anchor into the pit of my stomach. Mom tries to wrap her arm around me again, but I step away, a single thought echoing in my mind. One I cannot voice. One I can’t even whisper. But inside, it shouts and rattles the walls of my soul. If souls exist.
Is psychosis hereditary?
Chapter Eight
Paranoia
A fter absorbing the bomb my parents dropped in our kitchen on Saturday morning, I spend an hour in my room Googling psychosis. What I find disturbs me.
According to one site, psychosis is a loss of contact with reality that usually includes: false beliefs about what is taking place or who one is, which are referred to as delusions; seeing or hearing things that aren’t there, which are referred to as hallucinations.
It’s the second one that gets me more than the first—seeing or hearing things that aren’t there. I spend the rest of the weekend processing, curled up in an Adirondack chair on our back deck, inhaling the briny sea air, reading Wuthering Heights , pausing occasionally to alternately recall or push away the things I have seen and heard over the past several weeks that nobody else can see or hear.
Mom and Dad give me my space. Pete holes up in his room. And I find that as long as I stay outside, the heaviness is not so oppressive. I tell myself that my grandmother’s insanity means nothing, changes nothing. I start to look forward to Monday, when I will see my new friend and the mysterious boy next door. I sleep relatively better on Saturday and Sunday. I experience no headaches or weird visions.
By the time Monday rolls around, I feel almost normal. The urge I have to ask more questions, to get more answers, ebbs with the tide. I don’t need to know these things. Some people say knowledge is power, but in this case, I’m pretty sure knowledge is paranoia. And let’s say for a minute that I am crazy. Paranoia will not help. So I stay far away from Google and I don’t ask my parents anymore questions and I end up with a big lump of disappointment in my gut when Luka doesn’t show up for Current Events on Monday morning. My hope dwindles even more when he is absent from Ceramics and disappears altogether when I catch sight of his empty seat during lunch.
Leela and the rest of the student body, however, are alight with the exciting afterglow of victory. None of them can stop talking about their unexpected win on Friday night. “I really wish you could have gone,” Leela says, cracking open her Coke. “Matt threw this insane hail Mary at the end. When Marshall jumped up and caught the ball in the end zone, we were all going ballistic.”
This is the third time I have heard the story, so I listen with half my heart, trying to think of a way to turn the conversation toward Luka without being obvious about my burgeoning infatuation. Thankfully, Leela makes it easy.
“And we all thought only Luka could make a pass like that.”
I set my
Yes, I do. Because I take Current Events. Crazy people are a burden to society. And we live in a time where burdens are not tolerated. Burdens make a nation weak. So they are removed, taken away. For everybody’s own good. I’ve never thought to question the logic of it before, but suddenly I’m terrified. What if I become a burden?
Mom relinquishes the twisted towel and wraps her arm around my shoulder. I shrug her away, keeping my attention on Dad. “What was wrong with her?”
“She had frequent episodes of psychosis.”
“Psychosis?”
“She saw things nobody else saw.”
“Things?”
“She called them demons. Spirits.” Dad laughs a humorless laugh and shakes his head, as if trying to rattle away the unpleasant memories. I can only imagine what he thought about his mother’s claims. “When the illness reached its peak, she swore she could fight them.”
Cold fear sinks like an anchor into the pit of my stomach. Mom tries to wrap her arm around me again, but I step away, a single thought echoing in my mind. One I cannot voice. One I can’t even whisper. But inside, it shouts and rattles the walls of my soul. If souls exist.
Is psychosis hereditary?
Chapter Eight
Paranoia
A fter absorbing the bomb my parents dropped in our kitchen on Saturday morning, I spend an hour in my room Googling psychosis. What I find disturbs me.
According to one site, psychosis is a loss of contact with reality that usually includes: false beliefs about what is taking place or who one is, which are referred to as delusions; seeing or hearing things that aren’t there, which are referred to as hallucinations.
It’s the second one that gets me more than the first—seeing or hearing things that aren’t there. I spend the rest of the weekend processing, curled up in an Adirondack chair on our back deck, inhaling the briny sea air, reading Wuthering Heights , pausing occasionally to alternately recall or push away the things I have seen and heard over the past several weeks that nobody else can see or hear.
Mom and Dad give me my space. Pete holes up in his room. And I find that as long as I stay outside, the heaviness is not so oppressive. I tell myself that my grandmother’s insanity means nothing, changes nothing. I start to look forward to Monday, when I will see my new friend and the mysterious boy next door. I sleep relatively better on Saturday and Sunday. I experience no headaches or weird visions.
By the time Monday rolls around, I feel almost normal. The urge I have to ask more questions, to get more answers, ebbs with the tide. I don’t need to know these things. Some people say knowledge is power, but in this case, I’m pretty sure knowledge is paranoia. And let’s say for a minute that I am crazy. Paranoia will not help. So I stay far away from Google and I don’t ask my parents anymore questions and I end up with a big lump of disappointment in my gut when Luka doesn’t show up for Current Events on Monday morning. My hope dwindles even more when he is absent from Ceramics and disappears altogether when I catch sight of his empty seat during lunch.
Leela and the rest of the student body, however, are alight with the exciting afterglow of victory. None of them can stop talking about their unexpected win on Friday night. “I really wish you could have gone,” Leela says, cracking open her Coke. “Matt threw this insane hail Mary at the end. When Marshall jumped up and caught the ball in the end zone, we were all going ballistic.”
This is the third time I have heard the story, so I listen with half my heart, trying to think of a way to turn the conversation toward Luka without being obvious about my burgeoning infatuation. Thankfully, Leela makes it easy.
“And we all thought only Luka could make a pass like that.”
I set my
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