Inside A Darkened Mind

SCHIZOPHRENIA
noun
"any of several psychotic disorders characterized by distortions of reality and disturbances of thought and language and withdrawal from social contact"

I work for a not-for-profit human service agency and in the course of my work day I meet and talk to people with many personal roadblocks - things that I can't imagine having to live with on a daily basis. One of the people I have met is a woman in her mid-40's or early 50's named Kathy. She has schizophrenia and, though she consistently takes the prescribed medication, her illness is such that it barely responds. I've known her for 12 years and she never gets any better. Every morning when I arrive to work she is there waiting for the nurse to arrive to get her morning meds. She waits for over two hours every morning. She sits at the side of our building rocking back and forth and talking to the voices only she can hear. Her personal hygiene is horrible. She's dirty and has a pronounced body odor though she is fully capable of showering and taking care of herself. Her illness makes her afraid of water. I speak to her every day and each time I am struck with how "normal" she can sound. I also see other people walk past her either ignoring her or looking at her with disgust.

Kathy started out the same way we all did. A normal birth to normal parents. Somewhere in her early life, her brain become cross wired. She started hearing voices telling her to do things that she normally wouldn't which led to her incarceration and several years in prison. The thing that strikes me when I talk to her is that she is always positive. She is happy when she sees me. She takes joy in what she might be doing on any given day - shopping, watching a movie, seeing a friend. She delights in those same things we all find happiness in. It's evident when I speak to her that she is struggling to hear me over what is going on in her head. She has taught herself to shut them out if someone in the real world is speaking to her. Despite her appearance and blatant symptoms, she is nice and likable person.

It bothers me that people don't know this about her, that there are co-workers at the agency that complain that she is there every morning. Her presence disturbs them. I think I know why. I think it's because that we all feel, somewhere inside, that Kathy could be any one of us. Then we would be that person, rocking back and forth, talking to inner demons, who gets ignored and spat upon. To me, Kathy is the face of who we all could be given other circumstances. She scares us. That in itself makes us uncomfortable because we know that we should respond to her in a more decent humane way. She makes us see ourselves and we don't like what we see.