To this day, I do not recall the six-hour drive from Queens to Rochester. I don’t remember getting in the car, the long drive home, nor arriving at my parents’ house in Henrietta, a suburb of Rochester. It must have been my mind’s way of protecting me from the pain I had experienced from being ripped apart from my life with Alexander in New York. In one fell swoop, I lost my relationship, my career and my independence. I was only 27 years old, and I was devastated. I thought my life was over. I felt like I was a broken doll that Alexander had discarded.
I do however recall a conversation that I had with my mom Nicolasa. I said, “Mom just let me sleep. If you just let me sleep, I will be okay.”
We both desperately wanted to believe that. My mom did humor me. She let me rest for a few days. But after some time had passed it became very apparent that I was not going to be able to sleep away my insanity. My parents took me to the psychiatric hospital in Rochester. I spent a few weeks there and then came back home. Then I was admitted into a continuing day treatment program where I would spend the next three years.
I regularly met with the director of the program, a psychiatrist Dr. Karen Jones. I remember asking her if I could keep my mania. Mania feels good. You feel like you are invincible and that you can do anything. Your thoughts are also racing around in your mind a mile a minute. It feels good to be manic. But, sometimes in a manic state I can make really bad decisions. The not-so-great aspect of mania. Anyway, I asked my psychiatrist if we could just medicate away the schizophrenia and if I could just keep my mania. Much to my disappointment, she told me that it doesn’t work that way.
My mom and I attended a support group together. It was for consumers and their families. I still recall the condemning words that a medical provider had said to my mother in my presence. He stated, “the best you can hope for is 80% of her previous level of functioning.” When I heard those words, I felt like a little part of me died.
When I was at the continuing day treatment program, I got linked up with VESID, vocational and educational services for individuals with disabilities. I was enrolled in computer programming training. As I was being interviewed for the program, I shared that I had a love of languages, and that computer programming is just another language that I could master. It was a full-time program. It was five days a week for about eight hours a day. I was still in the early stages of my recovery. The program was very demanding, and I was not at my best. It was while I was attending this program that I met my friend Robert James.
One evening while I was out for a walk, I entered a bar near my apartment. As I was having a drink, Robert approached me and told me that he practiced Buddhism. As we began playing pool, he shared with me about his practice of Nichiren Buddhism with the Soka Gakkai International. He told me that by chanting nam myoho renge kyo that I could become happy. I wanted to be happy and at that point in my life I was searching for meaning and felt like something was missing.
My friend Robert asked me if I wanted to come to a district meeting and learn more about the practice. I told him that I would like to go. When he took me to my first meeting, I heard a bunch of people chanting. In unison, they were all chanting together. To be honest, my first impression was, “this is weird.” But I felt an energy in the room that I had never felt before. It was this energy, that made me keep coming back. It was also the people in the organization that made me want to continue. They were all so warm, friendly and inviting. I felt like I had found my place and that I belonged.