Awakenings

- Dr Sayer, sit down.

- Why? What is wrong?

- We have to tell everybody. We have to remind them how good it is.

- How good what is, Leonard?

- Read the newspaper. What does it say? It is all bad. People have forgotten what life is all about. What it is to be alive. They need to be reminded of what they have and what they can lose. What I feel is the joy of life, the gift of life, the freedom of life!

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It is not us that are defective, it is them. We are not in crisis, they are! We have been through the worst and survived it. They fear it. Because they know. They know! They know! Because we remind them that there is a problem which they do not have an answer to. They will never be healers until they realize this and see the problem. Until they admit there is a problem, and that the problem is not us. We are not the problem, they are the problem!

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- I do not understand it, he was never any trouble before. He was quiet, polite and respectful. He never demanded anything. - He was never disobedient.

- Because he was catatonic, Mrs Lowe.

- I am speaking of when he was a boy.

- I am sorry.

- I do not know who that is up there. I do not think he knows. You turned him into something he is not.

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- He has not been able to release anger for years.

- As the others.

- I think his behavior is more natural.

- You think his tics and paranoia are signs of normal behavior?

- Yes, because he is in this place... We wake him up and lock him in a cage. That is not paranoia; that is a fact.

- I have psychotics refusing to eat, who have no idea why they are doing so. How long should that go on?

- He knows why. He wants out.

- Mr Lowe is not the Messiah of Ward. He is a man in trouble. He was not resurrected; he was given a drug by you. A drug which is not all that miraculous.

- The others are fine...

- He has been on it longer. I sympathize with him but I will not let him endanger the health of the other patients.

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I am all right and then everything stops. There is no warning, it is like a light switch going off. Something has to bring me back. A sound, a touch, and then I can move again, I am okay again. It is not that I feel bad, it is just that I feel nothing. It is as if I am dead. Nothing. It is as if I am not a person anymore. Just a collection of tics. Not that I mind them. Sometimes they make life interesting. I am not sure who is in control, me or them, but they should not be there.

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The summer was extraordinary. A season of rebirth and innocence. A miracle. Fifteen patients and for us, their caretakers. But now, we have to adjust to the realities of miracles. We can hide behind science and say it was the drug that failed. Or that the illness itself had returned. Or the patients unable to cope with losing decades of their lives. The reality is we do not know what went wrong or what went right. What we do know is, as the chemical window closed, another awakening took place. That the human spirit is more powerful than any drug. That is what needs to be nourished. With work, play, friendship, family. These are the things that matter. This is what we had forgotten. The simplest things.