My sister, my beloved sweet sister who was born 2+1/2 years after me, was diagnosed as schizophrenic in her early teens – after some experimentation with psychedelic drugs. We had moved the summer before she entered 9th grade, and she fell in with the “wrong” crowd. I remember her acting a bit strange the following year, just before I took off for college. But I missed most of the trauma around all this.
Things I remember being told:
- She asked our younger brother to cut her belly open and put a lamp inside her to help someone or something.
- She was brought to the “best” institution in a nearby city when she became unmanageable. (There were 3 younger children in the family.)
- I know she was medicated and raped while whe was at this place.
I’m not sure how long she was institutionalized. I believe it was months, not years.
I remember her having a job at a supermarket a few years later. She had returned home for a while, but then our parents had kicked her out. After a while she tried to kill herself by jumping off a 2nd story porch. She broke her leg.
At some point she became unwilling to take medication.
She spoke of having flashbacks when I spoke with her. I was scared of her and her condition. I missed my sister. I didn’t know what to say to this person. It was like my sister had vanished. My loss of her is one of the deepest losses I have experienced in this lifetime.
She was the one who saved birds and other small critters when we were young. She never hurt a soul.
Later she had a child who I ended up adopting. Story here.
After that my sister lived under bridges; I was told she sold her blood for food. She witnessed a person pushing her friend off a subway platform into the path of an ongoing train. She experienced a lot that I never want to experience. My father managed to stay in touch with her because she called him for financial assistance from time to time. He managed to get her a PO Box, then later, an apartment – with the help of social services.
She stayed away from family for a long long time, but Dad would send a letter to her PO Box and travel from the East Coast to the Phoenix, AZ – where she lived. He told her where and when to meet him, promising a meal, a swim in the hotel pool, a stay overnight if she wanted. He would plan a meeting at a certain place and time. Sometimes she showed up and sometimes she didn’t. This went on for years and years. Eventually she let him know where she lived and he was able to go there annually and pick her up for meals and some time together.
Eventually my youngest sister moved to Colorado. She visited our challenged sister sometimes. Eventually my challenged sister told my compassionate youngest sister that she’d like to be closer to family. This was after our parents had died. My youngest sister arranged for housing and brought her to live nearby. She is present in her life at least weekly.
I have seen my “mentally ill” sister several times since then – at her apartment, at our sister’s home, back East at my brother’s home and at my home. She has seen her daughter/my daughter maybe 4 years ago on her most recent trip East. She met her 2 grandsons once or twice when they were small (they were busy being teenagers and missed our last gathering).
At some point I learned that schizophrenia usually becomes evident in adulthood, not in the teen years.
During my shamanic training I learned that schizophrenia can be a result of being stuck in non-ordinary reality (like on a journey) after the use of LSD – and not knowing how to get back to ordinary reality. That made sense to me. It may have been an LSD experience that never ended.
I mentioned this to my sister, but she isn’t interested in exploring alternatives to the medication she has come to rely on. (The meds have improved over the years.) She has come to live a connected and reliable existence and she is sticking with it.
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8 hummingbird way 