Lucid Dreaming by Lisa Morton

Chapter 2
    Â 
    I think I know what you were before, but know what I was? A violent paranoid schizophrenic. They also said I was “delusional” just because I said “Sure” when they asked me if I wanted to be President of the United States. “Sure,” I said, “who doesn’t?”
    They asked me shit like that while I was an inmate in this dilapidated, overcrowded state facility, out in Oxnard. You’ve probably never heard of Oxnard. Stupid name—sounds like it should be in the Midwest, right? Except it’s in California, maybe an hour west of Los Angeles. I was there because they said I had attacked a man with a knife, for no reason. I knew the reason: I’d forgotten to get my prescription re-filled. I’d been taking Prolixin for a couple of years, and everything had been fine, but then I got busy and forgot and you know how all that goes. Obviously the insanity plea wasn’t a tough one for the judge to buy. So I wound up in place where they just tranked me up instead of treating me. Doped to the fucking gills, stuck in a day ward with a bunch of fat middle-aged nutcases who drooled a lot and talked to themselves. Yippee, let’s hear it for the fucking system.
    I was twenty-three. Don’t get me wrong, I knew I was sick. I never heard voices telling me to do weird shit, or thought bugs were crawling on me, or anything, but without medication pictures would flash in my head and I’d find myself doing whatever I saw. Without even knowing it. Like when I got in an argument with my mom, I saw myself pounding this meatloaf she was making, pounding it with my fists over and over and over until the kitchen was covered with raw ground round. I didn’t mean to do it, it just happened. Or another time, I think I was like fourteen, I saw myself walking up to this girl at school I didn’t like, pulling up my shirt and using a black felt-tip to scrawl obscenities across my bare skin. Took months to get that crap off, too.
    For ten years I listened to the psych’s gabble about “biochemical imbalances” and “nutritional therapy.” The Prolixin helped, as long as I took it. I couldn’t get into a college, and mom pretty much kicked me out at nineteen, but I actually held a job as a salesgirl in a record store for four years, Final Vinyl in Hollywood. Ever heard of it? No, sorry, that was a dumb question—of course you’ve never heard of it, any more than you would have heard of any of the bands we stocked. I had a best friend named Tommy, who was a computer geek, and I had my own tiny studio apartment. I owned a refrigerator and a television I got at a garage sale and an old computer Tommy gave me. I stole internet access from a neighbor’s Wi-Fi. I played my stereo too loud sometimes, and other times I was happy to just be quiet and read. I had my little life, like everybody else.
    Then I missed one trip to the drugstore and it all fell apart.
    It was late at night. I had to take the trash out. It wasn’t the greatest area of town, especially not when you were a fucked-up paranoid schizophrenic off her meds. I had a knife with me when I went outside. He was a drunken homeless guy digging through our trash bin.
    You know the rest. The good news is that he survived. I like to think maybe it woke him up, got him to clean up and get a life.
    I got a life out of it. At the California State Facility at Oxnard.
    I’d been at the hospital for about three months, I think— it’s hard to reckon time when you can barely fucking lift your head—when it all started. Even I noticed there were a lot more people showing up in the day room, new faces and not typical loons either—some were younger than me, some obviously had money or prestige. But you couldn’t ask them what was going on; they were a lot more doped than I was.
    Next thing I remember, though this part’s kind of vague, was seeing a report on TV