Jeremy was a quiet boy who never spoke much. In school he never had many friends, not because he was shy but because he had an intensity about him that intimidated his peers. Talking to him was like talking to a manic Christopher Walken; his sentences showed perception yet were fractured by an uncanny surrealism that made him difficult to follow. They were punctuated by the rapidity of excited thoughts; thoughts that came so fast that it seemed like torture for his mouth to get out. Random pauses in his speech weren’t uncommon either, which is why it always appeared like his mind was heading in different directions when he was trying to say something. His schoolmates felt socially awkward in his presence, and the unstable way he carried himself only distanced them further. Often, he could be seen shooting basketball hoops alone, or fly fishing down by the river. He wasn’t like the other kids, and everyone knew it. They could see it in the sadness his eyes would sometimes reveal whenever a string of thoughts led him astray to affairs of home life.
His father had been living with his mother when he was born, but he never knew him. He'd told her that he wanted to be a stay-at-home caretaker while she worked the whole time, which didn’t bode well for her considering that the women’s lib movement had yet to make its ripples in America. He also said he wouldn’t marry her because he felt that the institution of marriage was a fantasy invented by Christians to enslave people to one another; a fantasy that was enhanced by Hollywood’s constant depictions of happy endings and eternal love; a fantasy that glossed over the realities of relationships, making them appear perfect. Any normal woman would have disagreed, and his opinion on the matter sent her into a flummox. But that wasn’t what finally set her off. The final blow came when he informed her that he wanted to become androgynous because he felt like a Messiah, that his sex was a hindrance to the completeness required by beings who felt like they were inhuman: those beings who felt like they were above all the petty dramas and quibbles of lesser people resigned to the neuroses of greed, love, and addiction. She couldn’t take any more of his oddness, something that was evidently getting worse as time went on. She knew that she couldn’t let her child be raised by a madman, so she told him to leave. He thought he wouldn’t be a good father anyway, so he reluctantly agreed, packing his bags for Israel in search of whatever divine promises the demigods have.
A year later his mother grew impatient in not having a father for him, or a man to love, so she fell in love with the first man who came along, a man who appeared to be her savior, someone who’d rescue her from the prison of being a single parent. They got married and had a child, a boy named Teddy, who was every bit as charming as his older brother. They were loving children, with glowing faces and carefree hearts that brought joy to their parents. Jeremy’s stepfather didn’t want them to know that he wasn’t his real father, so he grew up thinking he was, even though he'd never been adopted. Deep down the stepfather held resentment and jealousy for his illegitimate son, for he was turning out to be more gifted and benevolent than his own. As a result, Teddy was treated far better. He became spoiled and self-righteous, as he was often allowed to eat first, lead the way, and was given better gifts from his father. The boy would throw fits at anything he thought unfair, but Jeremy didn’t mind this so much. He’d been used to not getting his way ever since realizing he was a bit different from other kids. It didn’t help that his stepfather’s parents had been Nazi immigrants, and that his real father had been Jewish. If anything, it may have sharpened the stepfather's resentment of him, for he'd grown up in Germany under Nazi sympathizers. Nonetheless, he loved and admired his stepfather as if he were his true father, and, at the time, his stepfather did the best job in raising him that he could.
Then their parents divorced. During the dark years that followed, Jeremy distanced himself from his mother and Teddy, electing to stay in his room most of the time. Teddy was saddened by the wall put up between he and his brother, one which could have been avoided if his father hadn't told Jeremy he didn't want to see him anymore. Jeremy did everything he could to repress the jealousy he felt for Teddy, but it wasn’t enough. Whether it was an unconscious divide or not, it happened. When he was a boy, the superior treatment of Teddy taught him that he was meant to be subservient to others, even among equals like the kids at school. He grew to hate himself, unable to understand why he was being punished when Teddy wasn’t. According to logic, it had to have been because there was something abhorrent about him that made people want to hurt him. He thought that other children couldn’t understand how someone could be so different and out of this world, so naturally they felt like he wasn’t human and didn’t deserve the same kind of treatment that they did. They felt like he was something else entirely, something that could bear the labors of intense pain without actually feeling it. His kindness was mistaken for weakness, which made him even more vulnerable.
In Junior High School, the aftermath of this trauma crystallized into a silent rage that stalked him through the halls of adolescence. The sick past he’d inherited made him suspicious of humans, so he withdrew into his own little world where things felt safe and incorruptible. All children who face such tragic beginnings learn how to be alone. They may even develop an imaginative genius, which helps them escape certain realities that plague their real lives. Unfortunately, these children tend to get poor grades and seek the aid of drugs, as their internal conflict closes them off from communication. Their low self-esteem tarnishes any motivation to succeed in a world that had been so cruel to them. Jeremy had been born a gifted child, but the tragedy forced him into isolation. That is how he was able to create a surreal world where his fantasies could become realities, and his realities could become illusions. His teachers knew he was smart, but they didn’t know why he was holding back. One sought out an explanation, which was given by his mother, but she didn’t do anything to help him.
There is a certain horror common to those suffering through an adolescent crisis. It is a horror that runs far deeper than the threat of physical pain or the loss of people they love. It is the complete denial of anything that makes life worth living, a self-loathing created by an illusion erected from the replacement of repressed memories. A false sense of self is used to deprive the individual of all things they once enjoyed, and they become lost inside an insurmountable spell of despair. Part of this horror comes about because of living a life they hate living; another comes from attending an institution in which they notice everybody's face without really knowing who they are. Yet another part of it is the inability to take a leap forward into accepting greater responsibilities, for fear of being inadequate. The final element is abject self-pity, in which case the adage I don’t deserve to be happy plays like a tape inside their heads. It is placed there by years of abuse, neglect, and the inability to trust people. These pieces can assemble into a monstrous form of introverted torture, a type of torture that could only be described as Hell on Earth. As a defense mechanism, the individual clings to their past as if doing otherwise were the same as dying. They cannot see the road ahead, for it is painted black.
In October, Teddy showed his mother Jeremy’s journal because he was alarmed by some of its descriptions of self-hatred. She took him to see a doctor and the young man was diagnosed with clinical depression. She agreed to put him on an SSRI called Zoloft, a drug designed to get brain activity going faster than it already does. Unfortunately, an SSRI was the worst thing that could have been given to him because his brain was as normal as anyone else’s. In fact, he already had an extremely active brain, and the drug made his cerebral chemistry so rapid that the desperate emotions he was feeling became more enhanced. Happiness became euphoria and anger became rage; a rage so deep that it spawned a certain restlessness in which a rash action had to be taken by any means necessary. Essentially, the rage that had been accumulating over the years became unleashed by the drug. Jeremy had always done a good job hiding how he felt, but the bottle burst once he took those pills.
In November he grew the courage to ask a crush out on a date. She rejected him and wouldn’t tell him why. He had a pretty good idea it was because of his deteriorating reputation, one in which some people were alarmed enough to worry about him bringing a gun to school. He did his best to hide his heartbreak, but his efforts were futile. Two months later, during a particularly acute manic episode, he frantically wrote a letter to her confessing his love, at the same time frightening her with vivid descriptions of the things he’d done. He confessed to stalking her and hiding behind a tree in her backyard, cutting himself with a knife. He also insulted her by attempting to read into her past, a past which he’d been bold enough to assume was as horrific as his own. The girl turned the letter in to the school counselor, who then called him in to have a talk with him. The counselor was irate, wanting to transfer the boy to another school.
In January, Jeremy was hospitalized at the Benton Psychiatric Ward for suicide ideation. Just prior to the new year, his dosage of Zoloft had been doubled by Dr. Eric Ritter at the Quincy Family Medical Center. Jeremy had said the drug hadn't been working very well; that in fact he'd been feeling worse since going on it. We are unclear on why the doctor's inclination was to give him more of what was making him feel worse. We feel that Dr. Ritter's mistake of increasing his dosage without fully understanding the extent of his illness is what caused his wild emotional swings, leading to more frantic thinking patterns, hypersensitivity, sporadic bouts of elation, and more severe thoughts of suicide. It is our opinion that the misdiagnosis of his depression directly led to this letter being written to the girl, and his consequential collapse. We also feel that had his situation deteriorated even further, he may have eventually acted in violence, either towards his peers at school or against his own self. We recommend that Dr. Ritter be suspended from any further practices involving psychiatric care.\
Jeremy's hospitalization was largely a success. He was taken off Zoloft and put on Risperdal, an antipsychotic used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder- though we think the drug mainly acted as a sedative to offset the mania caused by the antidepressant. His interaction at the hospital was mostly non-existent; they tested for his intelligence, but he would either fill in all the wrong answers on purpose, or simply leave the pages blank. He was very reserved in Group Therapy sessions when asked to speak, although he did offer some insight for the other patients. When asked what he wanted to be after he graduates, he said he wants to be a psychiatrist. We can't tell if he's joking or if he's serious, but if he's serious then it's good that he cares about people who are going through difficult times, the same way he is. Perhaps he can use these reflections on his own problems to offer support for others, as long as he doesn't make the mistake of assuming their problems are entirely like his own.
The sessions he truly seemed to enjoy were the ones designed to cope with depression. He participated in the writing and drawing sessions, which are designed to open the artistic responses of the sufferer. Jeremy has shown that he is deeply creative, and it was suggested that he might be able to use these skills to do something productive with his inner turmoil. The vivid details of his journal entries show just how desperate he'd felt during his stay at Benton. Although the stream-of-consciousness style is disjointed in places, it shows how Jeremy has started to use his pain to create outstanding pieces of writing. Writing out one's feelings has a way of releasing the horrible feelings that plague oneself, and we think he is starting to see that. We recommend that he continue his passionate journal writing for as long as these emotions plague him.
