1
My name is Rosita Hanson, I have schizoaffective disorder, and I hate my antipsychotics.
I think I’m going to stop taking them.
They make me do nothing. I can’t even think. I’ve changed antipsychotics twelve times, but they either made me fat, or made me tired, or gave me akathisia even with stuff like Cogentin and Inderal that are supposed to stop akathisia.
The house is a mess, people are mad at me, I’m failing in school, I got fired from my job for falling asleep at my desk.
I can do better.
2
“You failure, it’s all your fault. Your meds don’t help a thing, you can still hear me, haha. Just go off them, they make you even more of a loser than you already are.”
“Good idea,” I say to the voice. I call him Mr. Prosecutor because that’s what he acts like, always producing evidence that I’m a loser. But it’s cold hard evidence, and you can’t argue with that.
“Well, what are you waiting for! Get off your fat lazy ass and flush them down the toilet!”
I heave myself up from where I’m seated at the kitchen table in front of my fifth slice of pie of the day. The damn Zyprexa makes me crave carbs. It’s not my fault, I swear!
“Excuses! Everything’s your fault! It’s time you take responsibility! Give the pie to the homeless man outside and then flush the pills.”
“Okay-- okay,” I say. I go outside but can’t find the homeless man. “Where is he?” I ask Mr. Prosecutor.
“He’s a figment of your imagination, dummy. Can’t you take a metaphor? He’s symbolic for all the poor kids you could be feeding in the hood with all that food you’ve been stuffing your fat face with.”
I take the pie back inside and eat it out of sheer stress and guilt, but that just makes me more guilty. I need to do something about this guilt, so I make an online donation of a hundred dollars to UNICEF.
“Cheapo! You’ve stuffed your face with more pie than that!”
“Okay, fine,” I say out loud. I make a few more clicks on my laptop to change the amount to two hundred.
“Nice try, Rosita. Donate one thousand.”
“No.. that’s my grocery and rent money!”
“You don’t need fattening. Get off your lazy ass! Get a job! Then leave this hovel for a better place!”
“Look, I can’t donate now--”
“Excuses! It’s now or never! DO IT! Then do the other thing.”
I should take a PRN; I’m getting anxious.
“No, I don’t think so. It’s now or never. FLUSH THEM! BOTH OF THEM!”
I stumble and waddle and groan and sigh my way into the bathroom with my Zyprexa and dump them into the toilet bowl. Then I open my Ativan to pop one, just--
“DUMP THEM IN!”
“Okay, okay,” I say, and slowly I pour my Ativan out into the toilet.
“FASTER! This is your window! This is your one chance to turn your life around. If you take one more pill there’s no knowing if there’s ever any going back! It could tip you into oblivion! FLUSH THEM!”
I flush the toilet.
3
I feel liberated.
I feel anxious.
I feel scared.
I feel excited.
I feel relieved.
I feel elated.
I feel tired.
“ON YOUR FEET! You have no excuse now that you’re off the pills! Drop and give me a hundred pushups!”
“I can’t even do one!”
“TRY!”
I do two and collapse. I start doing girl pushups, on my knees, because those are easier.
“LARDASS! You need to slim down until you can do five hundred! Do five hundred squats!”
After five hundred squats, my knees hurt, but I have to admit I can feel muscles now that I didn’t know I had.
I’m waking up! I feel it in my bones! Enough to make my systems blow. Welcome to the new age! I’m radioactive! Just like that song by the Imagine Dragons!
“Not so fast! Do three laps around the block.”
I return huffing and puffing but triumphant.
“NOT SO DAMN FAST! This is the Spartan fucking Stampede! Run to McDonalds and get a job!”
I run to McDonalds, then collapse huffing and puffing on the counter.
“Your usual?” my friend France, who works there, says.
“No-- I’ll just have-- a whatchamacallit--”
“IDIOT!” Mr. Prosecutor shouts. “It’s called a job application form!”
It’s good I’m too exhausted to shout, or I would have shouted at Mr. Prosecutor to shut up right there in the crowded McDonalds.
“A job application form,” I finally say.
“Oh, cool! You want to work here! That’s a big step! I hope you get the job! We can work together!”
I fill out the application form and hand it in. Then, because Mr. Prosecutor won’t let me sit down until I do so, I apply for forty jobs at the forty places in the supermall that are looking for people.
That night I get five calls back. Three of the jobs don’t conflict time-wise with each other.
I take all three jobs, because Mr. Prosecutor told me to.
4
I’m happier than I’ve been in years. I mean, Mr. Prosecutor was insulting me even when I was doing nothing, so I might as well do something, right?
I donated a thousand bucks to Doctors Without Borders and feel less guilty now. I have three jobs so I’m earning my keep now, and I’ve even donated to charity!
“NOT SO FAST! You need to volunteer, you lazy ass! One donation doesn’t get you off the hook!”
“I have three--”
“VOLUNTEER IN YOUR SPARE TIME!”
I get a volunteer job at the food bank. I only have enough time at home to sleep and shower, but that’s okay, busy is good.
“Hey, you look tired.”
I turn around where I’m standing sorting food into boxes.
It’s Angelina, the boss.
“I noticed you put nothing but cereal in this box. What gives?”
“Oh-- whoops.”
“IDIOT!” Mr. Prosecutor shouts. “You need to sleep more!”
“I CAN’T!” I shout at Mr. Prosecutor. “SHUT UP!”
I freeze. Oh. My. God. My boss thinks I’m yelling at her. Her concern turns to anger.
I take off running. Well, what would I have said to her? If I’d said I was sorry, she wouldn’t have believed me. And I can’t tell her I’m hearing voices!
Well, at least that wasn’t one of my paid jobs.
“You need to get another volunteer job!” Mr. Prosecutor says. “Otherwise you’re not a good person!”
But I need references for all of them, and nobody’s going to give me more references and the food bank certainly won’t give a reference.
“EXCUSES! DO YOUR OWN VOUNTEERING!”
“Okay-- I’ll think about it later, after I get back from work--”
“Don’t procrastinate!”
I decide to put notices up advertising my free services as a housekeeper.
Then I go home to get ready for work.
There’s an eviction notice on my door. There’s a note pinned to it telling me off for yelling and not paying my rent yet this month.
Oops... I must have yelled at Mr. Prosecutor rather than just talked to him... I should have toned it down.
I have to be out in two days.
“YOU IDIOT! LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE!”
I don’t have time to move my furniture; I have three jobs!
“IDIOT! SELL the furniture! You’ll have to quit your jobs for now while you spend time selling the furniture! It’ll make you more money than the jobs will!”
But I can’t drag that furniture outside for a garage sale all by myself!
So I go door to door asking my neighbors if they’ll buy some of my furniture.
I get doors slammed in my face by some. Others look down their noses at me and pretend to politely say no. I knock on the final door, miserable.
“YOU IDIOT!” Mr. Prosecutor shouts. “You REALLY FUCKED UP THIS TIME!”
“No, YOU fucked up!” I shout at him.
Then I realize I’m staring at the person who just answered the door... the person below me, the person who always complained to the landlord about my yelling and the bed bugs I supposedly gave him.
“Why are you blaming me? You got YOURSELF evicted,” he says.
I hang my head, knowing he’s right.
“YOU PUSHOVER, punch him in the face!” Mr. Prosecutor says.
I do.
5
Horrified, I run away. I run back to my apartment and lock the flimsy wooden door in case he chases me.
I realize he’s gonna call the cops. I run to the kitchen sink to wash my hands. A roach crawls out of the dishes piled high in the sink.
“IDIOT! DO YOUR DISHES-- well actually it’s too late now, you’re fucked!”
I’m so stressed I want to eat.
I eat a whole pie, then Mr. Prosecutor tells me to do fifty pushups.
“I DON’T HAVE TIME!” I shout, stamping my foot. I accidentally stamp on the roach, which has jumped onto the floor.
“PUSHOVER! COWARD! You need to get even!”
“HOW?” I shout back at him.
Mr. Prosecutor’s voice drops a few notches. “Hide the evidence so he doesn’t sue you for wrecking the apartment. Burn it down!”
So I knock down one of the candles on the table (my power got cut off last week) and wait till the wooden table catches. I run around the flaming table and out the door, slamming the flimsy door behind me.
I escape through the alley in case the cops have been called. I go to work; it’s time for my second job of the day, at the used bookstore.
“Hey, are you okay? Your hair and clothes look singed. And what happened to your hand?” It’s the girl I talk to who also works there; Frieda.
I look at my hand. It’s all opened up from when I punched that idiot in the mouth.
“Oh, I got in a fight,” I say. “I was assaulted. I already talked to the cops about it.”
“But how did your hair get burned? Did he try to set you on fire or something?”
“I’d like to see someone try that.” Yes; that’s it. Try to act natural.
“FOOL! WHY DID YOU COME TO WORK! YOU SHOULD BE IN HIDING!” It’s Mr. Prosecutor again.
“Let me go clean up, sorry,” I say. As soon as I’m out of Frieda’s sight I panic.
I just burned out an apartment.
I just assaulted someone too.
I just infested a whole building too.
I just donated my rent money to charity too.
I just went off welfare and then lost my three jobs.
How am I going to survive?
6
I go to my friend Alice’s house.
“YOU WHAT?” she says. She’s got schizoaffective disorder too and hears crazy voices too; she should understand, right?
But no; she doesn’t.
I know she just wants me out of her sight. She’s suddenly nervous around me when she wasn’t before.
Then it hits me... HER voices tell her she’s a slut, a bitch and a whore.
Mine tell me to burn down buildings and punch people.
The next stop, I guess, is the drop-in center for women that offers different services. I need a lawyer.
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