Читать книгу The realm of tormenting dreams - Sergey Vassiliev - Страница 4

Basically, a human already has a readiness for strange deeds; it is to say that a mental disease does not fall on him from nowhere; the ground for deviated behavior is prepared in advance, usually in very childhood. I was already sick being a child, but this news became known to me unfortunately late, when I was undergoing a course of psychotherapy at a fairly adult age and the mental disease manifested in actions already visible to and attracting others’ attention, which then seemed to come from nowhere, breaking out like an ominous protest to something inside me that was waiting for such a reaction which destroyed with a terrible noise all my former life and the previously defined productive missions and goals.

I just finished the first university year and, unfortunately, could no longer continue my studies: its cost abruptly rose, and many students, and me too, were transferred to other educational institutions. This, of course, was a shock, and I remember its wave effect in my soul: suddenly at the moment of farewell, I turned from my closed, quiet, broken somewhere inside, almost constantly dull state, hidden from my friends as much as possible, into a person I had dreamed to be being a student – vigil, easily communicating, self-confident and interesting. These are persons who usually is loved and respected by young people, the persons who are vigil and active. But I lost the world for which all this enthusiasm was expected, and in general, instead of even greater sadness and sorrow at the time of leaving, I rejoiced, on the contrary, showing no sign of my failure to others, as if a happy event occurred to me, thus shining with joy. May be this is the right way?, you may ask. But here’s the point: this euphoria was an inflated, sick mental state, a part of the incoming sorrow of an incredible scale. At that time I have spent the entire limit of tolerance to horrible feelings and was already being destroyed from within, losing control, falling into the abyss of a sorrow that is the worst for a human – the horror of madness. And this leap of mood was the first effective phenomenon, a change in the attitude towards the reality, a harbinger of the disease inception. Filled with this wave of strange idleness, I rushed into another university, having passed the entrance exams, but found myself to have weak erudition, since maniacal exultations strongly weaken attention, the necessary memory properties and assiduity. But somehow, by the power of my new charm, which, as I realized, make proud all the patients with such a disorder, I managed to enter the next year in another university, while my mood was beginning to take on already dashing forms of a real disease.

On vacation I began to calm down a little, but it was a respite before meeting the unthinkable. It happened to me to get acquainted with a strange woman. She came to my village to live her unusual life, anyone understood her intentions, the mood of which she brought from India, having absorbed there a lot of unknown and mysterious, which she decided to share here with everyone who wanted to, especially with us, teenagers. Experienced in rural life, we rushed to help her in household activities, getting from her in return knowledge about what was happening in mystical India. And, I must say, I, as the leader of her helpers, always wanted to get a very good support from this communication and, perhaps, even the healing of my skin disease, which was incurable by official medics; my soul was especially tormented by the fact that the disease was noticeable to girls who cruelly mocked at me. So I waited for the help of this mysterious wisewoman in this very important issue. After all, she had a healing remedy called “prasāda”, a divine powder that was materialized from nothing by the real living Indian god Sai Baba, who was now on the other side of the world and worked miracles, healing people, and also materializing valuable objects, and, in general, performing all kinds of miracles. Of course, I was interested in this, even too much. She did not give me the powder, only teased, but I got the picture of God. And imagine my surprise, when I started meditating, looking at this photo with a prayer for healing, a miracle occurred, suddenly the spots of my illness ran down Sai Baba’s face, and my complex disappeared at once, I felt calm, and I stopped worrying, having developed the indifference to this disease, for the God was smiling, looking at me, covered with vitiligo stains, showing the insignificance of my grief, which I had suffered for almost all my life, trying all possible ways of treatment, and felt myself completely destroyed by this problem. Certainly, I was delighted with such a surprise, it was like a load off my mind, now I had no complex, at least not so much, and it was very important for me.

And then, being sure that the God is real, because he could save me from suffering, which had been so bad, I decided to ask him questions by way of telepathy.

“Why do wars occur in the world? When God appeared on Earth, how could he allow such injustice?” – and so I fell asleep with these thoughts, but in sleep began to see fast my own memories, which suddenly rushed from the depths of my memory along with a flow of strengths unknown to me before, and jitters started to twist inside my mind. “It’s me,” I told himself then, as soon as I recognized myself in the past, “both this and that.”

So everything whirled in my head, and suddenly I got a feeling of great power, I can say, when I quickly recognized myself in the pictures of the past that were falling on me, as if decoding my life in search of something. I was filled with horror, which was hidden behind all these jitters, and this nightmare suddenly burst out like something black as the image of a healthy evil furry dog, in front of my eyes, and I realized that this monster has nothing to do with me, and felt at once a powerful emotional blow, and the breakdown of these incredible forces, which had already driven me mad enough. What was going on in my head and what did really scared me so much? This feature of lightning-fast self-evaluation suddenly became for me a sign of something happening to me, that was, of course, unknown and was definitely based on the mystical environment in which I had been lived lately. I felt such powerful raptures, explosions, bursts of attention across all the coordinates of my soul. Such as like you are flying, not in a dream, but in reality already, and you can smash, disappear, and your life, as they say, would flash in your eyes with the sense of proximity of death, this is exactly the very jitter resembling such kind of horror.

This night, I lost under the weight of emotions my mind, or rather, an important part thereof; I suddenly joined some exciting and dangerous game and became extremely passionate about it. The unusual sensation of some unknown power and horrible freedom which a human feels, falling in a flight which is fatal and final for him, soon altered everything, that was sober, normal and necessary in me, to adhere to the life path that I had built up to this time, and absolutely different things became important. After all, will you agree, if there is God on Earth, and even lives here, then what the hell is the rest going on? All these universities, work, rules and criteria, which had made sense before, are simply ridiculous trifles in comparison with this fact. And the new views on reality, of course, together with the accompanying unusual sensations and at the same time with a mysterious intriguing freedom. Here, in this world, new ideas for self-determination easily emerge, and very soon I decided that it was caused by my inner strength, – an instant, fast thought, as it seemed absolutely clear, and most importantly, that which was the bliss unknown before that had infused me… in general, all this, reassured of the existence of my own divine nature.

Suddenly realizing this involvement in the divine, I felt incredible ease in my whole being and realized that I am also a god. But what kind of God, and what I should do now, since everything for me turned out to be so unexpected and solemn, what should God do? The furious night had not yet passed, when the question of divine destiny had already begun to take possession of me, completely overturning reality with its previous missions and goals. I heard that this woman from India said that Krishna was still showing himself to her, and after she frightened me with a paralysis, if I suddenly decide to avoid meeting her. So I was Krishna appearing to her in my astral form, I thought, to make her pray for me, begging for condescension for the disgusting muck, and she even would not know the initial motive of her prayers, like I would not remember the walks of my divine soul during sleep.

“Exactly, it is Krishna,” I concluded, choosing my status, and the image of a man sitting in the lotus position, which was already hallucinatory inside me and outside at the same time, reminded me of the mission to be performed. I can not remember what thoughts and knowledge brought me to the Bhagavad Gita, but when I looked at the funny pictures therein, I was finally convinced that I was the last reincarnation of this god, by the way, leaping ahead, I would say that I liked better the other god with whom I finally identified myself: it was the parent of all the gods of Brahma, he became the center of my idea of greatness.

Later I remembered that I was losing candies in my childhood, and for sure Sai Baba materialized them in his homeland, as if borrowing items from me a long time ago, so it turned out that he owes me. And I less considered him a god in the shadow of my power, which grew inside me and tended to be known, and then I began to recognize the songs of the Indian god, and more precisely, his voice on a cassette tape from India due to the tones remarkably similar to mine.

“And also borrows the voice,” I thought. Then, Christ was my interlocutor, and I must say, very charming and interesting, I felt his energy, and the rejoicing overflowed my soul, which was the inception and the basis of the energies of all the gods. Of course, this half-crazy, wicked woman looked at me with some suspicion when I introduced her into my emotions. I also revealed to my friends what was happening to me, and since I did not cheat, I spoke the very truth, they completely believed me. I opened my inner world to my parents, who were greatly surprised by the vigor and the passion that were raging inside me. By the way, realizing that I had gone mad, I attacked the Indian woman with the most real curses, figuring out that she was guilty here.

And for me, everything continued to develop further, increased in my audacious fantasies, the ecstasies were replaced one by another, the strength of my speeches and my inadequate behavior was striking. Soon I believed that everyone knows that I am a god, and one of my tasks of responsibility towards everyone was the resurrection of the dead, or rather the awakening of everything that had once died to merge them into a united great entity. Only in order to accomplish this difficult task, I had to accumulate strengths, namely, to get the dream come true as well as the desires of everybody who yearned for their beloved that had passed away. Even I thought and felt about the impatience of others, who almost spoke directly, almost demanded the most prompt performance of my obligations. And I knew deep in my heart that everyone would get into my paradise anyway, and those who know me personally are just infinitely happy, and I wanted to meet each and every man. To transfer everybody one by one to another divine world, leaving the planet empty with its streets and houses, in which I will feel like the owner, left already alone in the whole world… And such happiness of full, unlimited freedom and ownership in the world will be granted to every one. And everything will soon be possible, even while it looked fantastic enough, but there will be no death, diseases and all sorts of suffering, it is only necessary to wait a little for this eternal happiness.

Such views accompanied me, already having made me possessed by that freedom, now, as I thought, in everything, and by an boundless joy for the future peace. That’s how I immersed myself in the ideas of deep insanity that guided my whole being, finally making life terrible, very dangerous and absolutely unnecessary to anyone. I entered the university, being already in many aspects broken by the disease, I remember myself telling a classmate me that I will soon be known to the whole world and have miraculous, yet not completely revealed, superpowers, but, curiously enough, perhaps even due to his high moral qualities, the young man did not betray me then before the other classmates. And even, perhaps, my secret remained with him. However, I worked well enough in classes, and the maniacal activity favored my performance, as I thought, and, even I can say for sure, I gathered around myself a circle of fan girls of my mind and bewitching sociability. But as i was generally weak, on closer examination, he did not tolerate the competition of classmates and was very angry at their attacks, so severe that I could no longer remain in competition, the feelings strangled me, and I was ready to fight, but abandoned the studies and I never saw my class, with whom I had spent however very little time, because it was the second year in my specialty, but, unfortunately, already, as you know, in another college.

Leaping back, I can say that I survived the first year at the college, doing generally not bad there, but unfortunately, in a suppressed state of depression, which, perhaps, was preparing this fantastic rise of mood, exposing its facade. But it still did not deprive me of the opportunity to fall in love with the famous Public Library, where I really enjoyed spending my time, I was delighted with the spirit of this institution, which once had been visited by the top brains. I could sit there for hours and even thought out reasons to stay when my program was exhausted, I helped pass exams to fellow students, but not exactly to help them, but to sit and write here, in the best place on earth. Now let’s return to the situation which rooted away my ability to be a student, and as a result, in general, one of those who are mentally healthy. I turned into something completely unusual, along with other people, into the creatures of this fairy life, and now my intrinsic standard was altered; I was sure of what was happening to me, not only from inside, but also outside. Everything told me about the new order. Here everything was different for me in my idea of greatness, in this complex of Christ. I generally ignored and rejected the postulates of the established ordinary way of life, which, in fact, Christ did in his time, surprising others with the new life laws, claiming to be the king of the new world. But I must say that it was hardly possible to call my life normal, because before, of course, the excitations had not been so striking, but they made me too cheerful and lively teenager, and as time passed I seemed to be exhausted and weak, losing the emotions of that, as they seemed to me, happy life, getting thus in the captivity of depressive feelings and self-reproaches. And this time, I became so cheerful that I was completely in the power of this over cheerful mood, because I was happy with that relief that made me suddenly free and confident, I went crazy, but also took a step towards the development and understanding of myself, the step, which, unfortunately, was a fatal thrust to an excessive jubilation entailing also madness, whose images began to rule everything in me. But in fact, I did not really supposed that it was the feelings in my family, heavy and ferocious, that bothered me, originated the escape into psychosis. What happened at home, the love that came from my parents, completely stopped with the birth of my brother, and it became hard for me, and especially painful. I was not able to stand this alienation, and simply stated that I was a God. And I began to play this role in life, taking all the adversities that could only be resulted by such a rude deviation from the postulates of normal life. After all, I fully believed in this illusion, and like the knight-errant Don Quixote, who passionately believed in his mission as a knight, I, in my turn, was ready to suffer anything in life, remaining faithful to the fate of the god I felt to be, even if this threatened me depriving the prizes of life, understanding of others and in general facing all sorts of misfortunes that would soon just fall upon me for such assurance. But what to do, it was very difficult to dissuade me in this idea, when the psychosis with its turbulent mood and terrible fantasies inside me, did not give me the slightest chance to keep within the world of the old settings and so viciously set me on fire by its intoxication that the road was open only forward. I needed much a very powerful sobering up, a brake on these judgments, directly proportional to their assault force. This counteraction was prepared by my mentality, but the explosions of maniacal ideas continued for a very long time and were incredibly stubborn.

At first I was for many people, perhaps, just a very bright and active person, which confused people in a way that I liked and ensured the triumph of the “mania”, thus suggesting me first of all the rightness of the path which I had taken. My mother decided that I would be a great man, since I am so self-confident. My father said that I was behaving and thinking like a forty-year-old man. Well, of course, the praise of parents is the most important for a child, and I was completely convinced of my normality, I did not seem strange and illogical to myself, but, on the contrary, much smarter than those who surrounded me, and, of course, in such situation I was expecting much more success in everything. My grandmother was overjoyed and surprised at my active mood during our communication, and even totally justified the idea of God by comparing me to Stalin, who spoke, as she knew, that he was also a god or, at least, no worse than a god… On the whole, my behavior was met within my family as a necessary, an accomplished stage of my development towards a strong person. But my parents did not rejoice for long, for I already said that I left the college and started to propagate, i.e. to give my love to those who, in my opinion, needed it so much, and these were all my numerous friends from the village, where I usually spent weekends and vacations. Why should I go to the university when I’m smarter than anyone else? What will they give me there? And in general – soon I will be able to materialize money, and so on… Let learn those who need this education, I have more important things to do: to perform miracles and to lead people is now important, and besides, I will acquire all the knowledge of the world from myself, my hidden potentials, and it was just a question of time to wait. So I quited my favorite college and decided to make quick money on politics.

The pre-election campaign began, my mom saying: “These are the richest people in the city, we only have to take money from them, but how?” I decided to offer them some agitators from among the village youth and so did: I came to them in the office and began to speak, I stunned them, I aroused their interest, they promised to come. I gathered the youth, I explained everything, but all drunken teenagers are unorganized and fearful. I had told my adult friends to come up. A party gathered in which everybody was ruined by alcohol and drugs, also the riches arrived, even they were influenced by the power of maniacal conviction. I almost told them that I was God when convincing. We looked at all that village rabble, said something about football, turned around – and left. Though I disappointed them, but, I must say, surprised the boys from my native village, this was enough for my vanity. The divine is for the God.

These teenagers, to whom I sincerely became attached, began to notice in me something odd because sometimes I gave out my thoughts aloud. “Vasya’s gone crazy”, one of my friends told me, totally sure, in his turn, of my adequacy. I was then busy with the opening the mind’s eye and a similar remark, as I still recall it in my memory, but at that time decided to dissuade others from such a mostly evil assessment of my temperament. But more and more I heard remarks about my insanity, and the girl I was in love with at that time told me, unable to withstand the passions, that everybody mocked at me. They made such assessment not at once; I can say for sure that many people, especially close friends, were for some time undoubtedly convinced that I am a real god, including that girl whose grandmother told my granny that her granddaughter proudly asserted that Serge is a god, and probably she was very pleased that love affairs took place with such an important person. I must say, the fact that I considered myself a god, did not at all controverted the necessary idea of my normality for people who loved me. So unusual were my relations with a huge number of my friends; for almost every work assignment connected with a fairly large farm, I brought with me a whole crowd of teenagers, motivating them with a kind of special power of my inner magnetism, and the kids did the hard work for free to help his so dearly beloved friend. There were cases when over twenty people appeared in the garden fields, and everyone was stimulated by the altruism of the other and, of course, by my special attention, which helped them to feel, I think, happier, and the work seemed to them a fun game. These “walks to Vasya’s garden”, repeated for many years and became a common thing. The nature of this phenomenon was in many respects a mystery to me, and the arisen idea of deification could become an “idée fixe” in such conditions, now the great organizer (in the opinion of many people) Vasya could have really be once that Krishna-boy, who cheerfully had led forward the children of his village in the pictures of Bhagavad Gita. And even after growing up to twenty years old, many of them, even the most stable and intelligent of my comrades, believed that they were friends of a real god. Some day I remembered, being already in deep depression, this suggestion to my friend’s mind, when Vovka expressed quite repulsive sarcasm in my direction, and he began to justify himself, saying: “We believed you,” thus dexterously hiding from the truth, which was the fact that, as I thought, his own maniacal attitudes were in full harmony with mine, and their union made my idea common, as also for Dimon, but these two comrades were smarter and more sober than many of the local guys and yet they got dexterously deceived.

These kinds of ideas were already believed from those books of the magician Castaneda, being in love with whom, we dreamed to go in our entire company to Mexico and find there the teacher of magic called Don Juan. This idea is evidently not much crazier than the one I was infected with, but we were all very much attached to each other, sharing the most secret thoughts and hidden dreams, undoubtedly merging in our search and reasoning into a unity, where the idea of one person could immediately become the idea of another without the intervention of any criticism, or for the sake of that other person, especially due to my deification, which assumed an important role for my great destiny and my friends. And they all believed almost out of habit, because I often took a leading position in relations with friends, who gathered in crowds in the garden to help in hard work, and heard from them no complaints, forcing them to believe that it was the best way to spend time. And if your belief is shared, it has a much greater chance of continuing to exist, and I must say that the guy who woke up the first suspicions of my madness was not from our company. And when a man is already called mad by the community, this makes him a stranger to everyone, because if you do not show your difference in comparison with the sick person, joining the almost direct condemnation, then you are treated like him, and many of them did so, at once forgetting their recent respect as a terrible mistake in their life. Like Pushkin’s: “But truth is: be my mind not clear, a plague will merit as much fear.”

Most of all I was surprised that they suddenly began to reproach me, for example, “leave me alone,” you know, treating me like a dog. After all, this caused a sharp, profound resentment, and besides, to me personally, it was completely unclear why suddenly such insolent anger and rudeness occurred, and most of all, it is not clear how a God can be treated by everyone in such an obviously offensive tone. I could not understand why they mocked at me, considering me crazy, while I’m really so smart and cool. The girl whom fell in love with in, made me even suffer when, I repeat, she said that everybody mocked at me, I just did not believe it and decided to leave the village company with a heavy sense of insult, having already decided to visit a psychiatrist on the advise of my parents (this advice being also silly), because it was difficult already to show to those spoiled evil people the correctness of my idea. And I got into the hospital. I think it was quite simple to persuade me to go there; for me, with grief in my soul, was indifferent where to hide. Although with resentment, but still with a maniacal rise, whose whirlwind was not going to subside, I left the free community. And my views, together with the love of the ideas of my new world, together with the extremely fantastic inner movements inside me, and the terrible passion of crazy despair… Already being settled in the psychiatric clinic, in this swirl of countless anxieties of those who are no longer needed by anyone, those terrible and crazy people, in their irritable and horrible company, of which I became the participant for an indefinite time. Not understanding all the horror of what was happening to me, I was seeking for my place here, but I did not tell anyone about the divine ideas, which here were completely inappropriate among all the anguish that reigned in the feelings of the people around me. I was going to somehow escape; I still did not believe that my freedom was now cut off, that I was away from my home for a long time, and the iron grills threatened the fire of my life, reminding me of this terrible limitation of will.

Of course, under such conditions it is very difficult to save one’s life, and everyone here only broke down more, disfiguring, and devastated by the memories of his/her life in the free world. The main thing was that cruel irritation, distorting one’s soul; I remember that many years later I dreamed of it in a nightmare, in that crowded room, crowded so tightly, standing each other’s presence with a great effort, experiencing a cruel incredibly agony of neighborhood with their own kind – emotionally unbalanced comrades, beyond the limits of self-control. And this stay among such people brings everyone, who lives there, a strong mental injury, anger, and most importantly, as I later realized basing on my own example, entails the contamination of the symptoms of their diseases: you begin to think and feel like one who’s next to you, borrowing from him even the process of abnormal behavior that had seemed to you completely alien. I remember my fear of such transformation into a man with almost no traces of sanity, whose face bears uncovered repulsive beastliness, an eerie creature, hammered and trained by local personnel. And the first time when I got to the hospital, and, running ahead, I must say that I got there many times and for a long time, frankly, half a lifetime, for the first time there was not so hard, for at least, no one hurt me, and I was treated by others with quite a respect. But life passed in the grip of irritation, pain and despair, I must say, the maniacal energy does not guarantee total comfort, but at the same time I did not calm down and was drunk and merry. But yet, which is still nice – smart people. Yes, here you can meet them, gifted, talented, very interesting, highly cultured, which I had not met and certainly had not communicated in real life, even very short one. I was overfilled with delight of communicating with them; I admired those individuals: writers, translators who had more than one higher education diploma, wise, charming, even if drunk with their illness. I could be for them a sympathetic kind smart boy, whom they soon loved and began to consider as equal. In addition to the attraction, erudition and even charm, these people were exposed to torments which heavily burdened their lives. And the tortures of psychosis in some stages are enormous.

I did not even supposed then that I after some time I will have to suffer such pain which no one can stand, believe me; it can only be hatefully tolerated, coming to heavy madnesses. These madnesses happened to these people, and I could not understand all these nightmares, but I really wanted to support them somehow in difficult minutes. I was confused by the gusts of acute disease inside those who had only recently been in an idle mood. But people are various here. There are drug addicts, one can encounter good guys among them, but they are rare, most of them are all vile and completely immoral. That was here when I first saw drug addicts, they were few at that time. One of these guys was very attentive to me and even found something to admire in me during our intimate conversations with him. I had a kind of “trick”: I thought that I was capable of parapsychology.

A writer and a translator wrote a poem to me:

“Maître Sergei Mikhailovich Vassiliev, praise St. Petersburg and the whole country, having mastered parapsychology, on Basil Island.” (no rhyme preserved – Translator’s note) This sounds well, does not it? I was proud. Only one rascal spoiled my the festival of my life drunk with psychosis, which never left me within the walls of the house of sorrow. This manipulator got acquainted, gained trust, and when I was dismissed, called me at home, promised videotapes, but did not bring them, took money promising to bring them later, and left. I suspected a hidden catch, I told him that I really needed that money, to make him have the hiccups later, but already completely realizing that I was cheated, still gave a ten-ruble note to that sick poor addict. Hoodwinkers just started to appear, and I already hated them.

A maniacal exultation itself can be seen as an incredible joy from a huge success, which, with its enthusiasm, does not allow any grief to knock you sideways out of this happiness. But, unfortunately, this behavior has no proper path. Since it can only anchor a little. I shall explain: I thought earlier that if the issue with skin disease is resolved, I’ll be completely free me, there will be no barriers in my way. And this factual deliberation from appearance issues – a kind of maturity, on the one hand, was also a tragic impetus to a new disease; it first gave me that pleasing relief of which I had been dreamed for almost all my life. Freud just supposed similar ways of developing maniacal psychoses. It turns out that all this mood, overfilled with freedom, can generally drive mad a person who, in principle, was very close to such an explosion of emotions due to his/her temperament, which was not the best since early childhood, and this is the second and the most important cause of the disease. It is like this, and it’s not far to seek, one should only see its root causes originating from the past of a person, his/her childhood, his/her sinister memories, escaping from which he/she creates a world of illusions. But I became aware that it all happens in such way a very, very long time later, because all the horror of my past was hidden from me, forgotten and controlled by me.

For many years I have been looking for the reasons for what happened to me in anything, but not in the responsibility of my family. But nevertheless, leading experts of the city chose a simple final conclusion, i.e. a disorder of brain biochemistry, no more assumptions, and I already took it as my own personal defect, independent of anyone, which, I must say, put me in a very unpleasant situation, because it was a real muck, it turned out, that I myself was guilty of what was happening; I thought that was an congenital defect, and, thus, I considered my case as fatal. In this first my maniacal nightmare, all thoughts were mixed in my head, the confusion in my spiritual world was incredible; to be a god, a real one, in which I was absolutely convinced, and to be for some reason in captivity, and not in the best places. How? After all, I was truthful with everyone and wished everyone good. But I still tried to find myself. It’s not for nothing that I was here, there is a sense of my being in this disgrace, and I saw in the need to be placed behind the grill a kind of profound providence, the doctor told me so, without letting me to leave on Christmas holidays: “Take it philosophically”. In addition, and, I must say, I understood this literally and thought that he was just pretending not to let me leave, and that I would be back home before the holidays, I really wanted to get out, but the doctor, as you know, brought another meaning into this tip, namely that the New Year in a madhouse is “not bad”. Philosophy helped me, of course, greatly in my grief, but being at home on holidays is sacred, and, of course, I hoped until the last.

Meanwhile, the delirium gradually began to go away, and I already understood that I was in captivity of the disease, and already agreed with my stay in the house of sorrow. I was happy such return to a normal state, and a good, already sober mood as if accompanied the outcome of the sad event. Soon I was dismissed and back home. And then a tremendous shock happened, something inside, like a swarm of bees, hit me with alarming threats. Thoughts and feelings rushing outside were a part of this swarm, probably its basis; I could not understand that kind of expressive and suppressing pain. Suddenly, with all suffocating, oppressive nightmare, I saw myself as just tiny, and this black cloud stung again and again, without giving me any rest, wanting to finally destroy me. I must say, this was impossible to anticipate. It’s like as if, for example, you are horribly morally tortured, bringing to intolerable frenzy and torments, which one under no circumstances could seem to imagine, only in case of some direct intervention into the organics of brain. I looked at my hands and body to stay in my mind, and did not find any explanation of this muck. All thoughts were focused on this, like a nightmare which more and more blackened and killed me as time passed, and which reached the limits of suffering required for itself and almost intolerable for me, and which tormented so fiercely that I felt myself like in the hands of a real executioner. And it was not possible to get away from such a situation. I realized that my parents are near, like protection, but the demon of psychotic depression was not at all dependent on anything external and seemed to know this perfectly, gloating in his action.

Well, such a symptom suddenly revealed itself in the nature of my soul. And no one knew how to cure this, how to help it, I still took handfuls of medications, medics added antidepressants and generally better drugs, but the disease strength completely ignored doctors’ attempts. Sometimes I was so oppressed that I felt as if I was drowning, and in the very end of life I could take a breath – and then was again lethally drowning. I had no self-control and asked my parents to find me similar persons, because there are people like me who suffer torments similar to mine, because it should go somehow, maybe they know how. Then suddenly I was getting the relief, on the one hand. The irritation of this infernal swarm of anxious feelings receded, but it was replaced by the results of such evil intervention into the mind, that was a state of “thoughtlessness”. The feelings were terrible: I did not feel at all that I could think, and the ability to argue was seemed to be lost to such degree that the inner emptiness, which I strongly felt all the time, was like ringing in all my body, leading me to panic. I felt to be a completely empty person, literally an idiot. And this thought, being the single in my head, pestered me with its uncompromising rightness, no less than the former imaginary murderers, depriving me of life. Emptiness and bad mood deprived me of the ability to feel life and at least somehow participate in it with my soul, which, I must say, I was completely deprived of, judging by my sensations. I remember how my beloved friend Dimon accompanied me on a trip to the parapsychologist in St. Petersburg for help, and my never-ending complaints to him, a reliable friend, to the only one who listened to my roar without tears. And the parapsychologist, I must say, at that time also reassured him, saying that everything would be fine, but how wrong he was! For many long months I experienced inexpressible feelings, staying in which, you can not think of anything else.

Soon I was looking for salvation from the guru of psychiatry in St. Petersburg, I really wanted to get rid of the defile that was destroying my inner world. Curiously enough, but the professor did not find me in need of help, at all. I began to tell him that I do not feel my thoughts, that I say and do not feel what I said, I don’t feel my mood and my life in my judgments, and he replied me to this: “So what? I do not feel it either. What makes you think that you need our help?” He said, if only this is the case, then it’s nothing special, in general. I was at a loss, I almost began to ask to admit me into a well-known research institute and finally broke the professor’s resistance. But I must say, with great reluctance, even with some disdain, he glanced in my direction during his rounds, I was not the first to suffer, although I was undoubtedly full of indignation, and was completely bewitched by the soul oppression happening in me so deadly. But in order to prove to the doctor that he keeps me here for good, speaking before the assembled commission, I told about everything that had happened to me before, and then they began to treat me with sufficient attention. But the fact is that the specialist’s mistrust occurred because I was a very good artist and, being in a terrible depression, did not inspire any trust to the guru, who could not see in me, with all his experience and elderly age, any signs of depressive mood, which I masked, on the contrary, by a brisk and lively behavior. So in my childhood, I automatically hid the pain, which was unprofitable and even dangerous to show to my parents. And now such a crazy optimism, born in childhood, played a cruel joke with me, and not only with me; yet I was admitted in the most severe hospital unit.

This hospital was unusually calm, compared to my turbulent life where I could take a rest of the maniacal state. Here, except for rare cases, everybody was calm, at least externally, and mostly asleep, spending time in bed and wandering peacefully along the small corridors of this clinic. I zealously sought and waited for the pacification, which, as it seemed to me, should emerge and had been earlier inside my soul, but I did not find at all at that moment. It was not possible to argue, neither to recollect my thoughts, the emptiness and the resulting anguish, accompanied me at every moment of my life, and whatever I did was very bad. Trying to imagine my interlocutors, to somehow study them, I began to mentally create their psychological portraits in my mind, but it stopped in such a way that having collected the idea of my comrades, I saw this idea empty and meaningless, because, besides the very visual representation, I still I could not go further, and these anxious faces, gathered in my imagination, pressed me only with annoyance and anxiety, showing me the futility of the efforts of my analysis. And no matter how hard I tried using all my strength and will, the irritation and terrible depression only grew, not allowing me feeling at least any satisfaction from life and communication. Although there were moments when the warmth of my interlocutors nevertheless could be felt in conversations, giving hope for the opportunity to escape from the clutches of this nightmare. After all, I felt it was the interaction with people that should lead me to good health and help to eliminate these symptoms, the full idea of which could hardly appear in those persons who never was prone to mental disorders. This kind of torment is totally unlike anything else, even by the fact that it is practically uninterrupted and sophisticated, giving no respite to the person who is not able to get rid of it, blinded by his/her psychic actions, being in the situation of extreme discomfort.

The existence and the pain of the disease can be sensibly understood if you try to imagine a severe violent mockery of a person, a real monster reigning in the mentality, a torturer clutching the most painful emotions and thereby tearing the string of the soul, magically twisting all the thoughts, depriving them of life and you of clarity and freedom, provoking sharp conflicts with yourself, causing you to beg for mercy from fate and this deadly evil-doer, who represents parents, was had once absolutely, completely ruled you in this way, so cold-blooded and indifferent to your sensual world. Although at that time I could not imagine that these symptoms were the memories of my interaction with parents at the very beginning of my life, so to say, the story of the child’s sensual world, which is already so acutely recalled and shows me all the anguish of my past. Therefore, such brutality, ruling the soul of a mentally sick person, is not new to him, and now it was executed repeatedly, when I was twenty years old, and all these resurrected memories, so disturbing to live peacefully, is the core of psychosis.

But everyone’s not well here in the hospital, everyone tries to find a way out, but believe me, no one finds, everyone firmly knows that one just have to wait and rely on, unfortunately, drug treatment which is to many respects completely useless. No one could understand this grief which I expressed only as a simple complaint of not feeling my thoughts, and I had not the mood that should accompany the above, and it makes me feel very bad, and everything, that’s it; and, believe me, what I said is very important. No one, of course, could understand, basing on these words, the grief that raged inside my soul, but I could not find other words, which made it even more painful. All this evil, which guided me, was absolutely not going to retreat, and, on the contrary, it was effectuating terrible steps, which inspired me with the bitterest outcome. My mother’s friend came, and I, knowing her from childhood, rushed to pour out my heart, saying that I had become so stupid that I can really compare myself to a mentally retarded guy in our village. As for myself, of course, I sincerely believed in my complaint, but this woman began to lead me away from such conclusions, she, already in another visit, when the disease had continued to torment me for years, proposed a treatment by electric shock, about which I will speak later.

My parents came to visit, and I burst into scalding tears, telling them that the cause was the glue that I had once breathed. In general, there was something to think about. Every morning of every day was an ordeal; waking up, I was filled with incredibly heavy feelings, and their heaviness was not causeless, they engrossed, depriving me of my usual ability to chatter, I was as if emotionally torn, afraid that something in me was to break and thus to be lost forever, and you need to keep everything inside yourself, otherwise you will simply perish, and this is the most important. I was trying hard to live in such conditions. In order to accomplish this task, doing something else is simply impossible, it is for sure. Even starting a simple conversation with someone needed enough courage, because it seemed to me, if I distract from the main task to keep the remaining pieces of mind together, then I would loose the fight spending the last will of my mind. The weakness of thinking processes, or may be not this, but rather its constant strengthening, but your inner world in which everything happens does not have the same laws, and you seem to be completely lost in a strange realm of tormenting dreams, an alien world of horror. And here you can not find not only the familiar logic, the order of the flow of internal psychic reactions, but even the mandatory presence of chaos here comes in the first rank, the incredible intricacies of everything, either after or at the time of treacherously intervening forces, whose purpose was a direct violence and simply the destruction of your comfort, of everything inside you, in particular, of the emotions once associated and pleasant to many respects.

But we must live somehow, and I felt already calm, knowing that I was not the inly one to be subject to such a catastrophe, that means there is salvation, since there are a lot of us here and all gathered to get help and comfort, and most importantly, there are those who suffered just like you here. And so I made friends with a kid who looked at me with a perfectly clear understanding, answered my exclamation with his “How bad!”; i.e. he neither felt better than I did, as it seemed to me. Then our attention to each other began to support both of us, and thus we recovered, I think. The healing power of friendship made the necessary spiritual upheavals inside us, pulling one after another out of depression. In addition, I was prescribed to take lithium to balance my mood. More importantly, I began reading a book about the exploits of a man who got in the world of animals and survived there, finding his place. Tarzan struck me with his courage in such a terrible situation, and I must say, comparing my sorrows and problems to his, I was replenished with determination and necessary courage, which, of course, contributed to my internal stability. But anyhow I recovered not in the way one can imagine, I swapped the psychosis depression to a slight maniacal rise, i.e., a remission. Doctors in our clinics are still convinced, and this is taught even in universities, that only remissions are possible in cases of maniacal-depressive psychosis, but it’s out of the question to think about completely good health, if once gone mad, it’s forever. And it was absolutely extended for that part of my lifetime, following the depression I was staying now in a somewhat cheerful mood, but, I must say, my behavior was quite efficient.