Session 3

Talking with Mannequins: Mental Illness on the Streets - Letting go

 

The anatomy of loneliness is a very visible one in the city. It’s true, there are many mentally ill people whose inner processes drive them to a disconnection with the world around them, and one can only hope that medication and proper mental health facilities will assist them in their search for human connection. On the other hand, many individuals, I think, are driven to talking to themselves and to the mannequins of their lives because there is no one around to listen to them or care about them. They aren’t mentally ill; they're just lonely. Some folks connect more with the cockroaches, mice, cats, dogs, birds, and plants in their SRO rooms than they do with other human beings. This is not so much by choice as it is a result of the poison of human disregard. Page 28

 

A pretty honest reasoning, and the same one uttered by generations of people who, innocent as the air, find themselves bearing emotional and physical afflictions. As we walked down the final block before she headed toward her residence, she said to me, “You know, Gary, I am a greyhound dog in the chase for Jesus, the rabbit, but he always stays in front of me and I cannot reach him to be healed.”

I told her that I thought Jesus was the greyhound and we are the rabbits and that, in fact, Jesus was present to her, but the healing she wanted was going to be accomplished in a way that neither one of us would understand. Page 28f.

 

Lucy

Lucy is a case in point. She is a young, mentally ill, developmentally disabled woman. She is obese, unattractive, and dirty most of the time. She lives in a trashed apartment full of cartloads of junk she has harvested from the streets. Her obsessive‑compulsive disorder renders her unable to pass up anything.

Her room is a cave of chaos and filth, yet she rejects any criticism of her lifestyle or suggestions for change. She has a difficult time listening, and her mind seems locked on to thoughts that have nothing to do with what the person addressing her is saying; inevitably she challenges from another point of view. She will talk incessantly unless one cuts her off. It is amazing and sad. The paradox for Lucy is that each time she reaches out, she does so in such an offensive manner that human contact is impossible. She is like a rogue gene, wanting to belong yet of such a nature that the rest of the body must reject it.

And yet, for all the tearing‑the‑hair‑out‑of‑my‑head conversations I have had with Lucy, I inevitably sense how desperate she is for attention and help. She is a daughter of God. This is why I hang in there with her and make an effort to talk with her. I have seen her intelligence. I get the feeling that she maintains her torrent of anecdotal commentary about the dirty deals she is getting in order to keep me around her. I have never lost sight of the hard truth that she has grown up unloved, unwanted, untouched, unengaged. Her life has been a nightmare of survival.

And yet, is she not one of the least of the sisters and brothers to whom Jesus refers? In a culture that deifies physical beauty, she lives in a constant storm of unattractiveness. Isn't the flip side of all her attention-seeking a desperate plea for friendship, love, care, attention, meaning?  I often hear people categorize the poor mentally ill as individuals who “should know better and could improve if they tried.”  Such judgments, made about a person such as Lucy, are the sanctimonious judgments of fools. Page 38f.

 

One day I escorted a mutual friend of ours to the courthouse to deal with a misdemeanor charge: trespassing. Joanie came along to comfort him. He had been ticketed for urinating in a vacant parking lot. It sounded more like police harassment to me. He had spent the last two weeks worrying himself to a frazzle over every possible outcome short of the rack. This, of course, is because he has already spent more than half of his fifty years incarcerated, most of it in the state penitentiary.

In the end, he was informed that no complaint had been filed, so the whole thing was dropped. We started to leave the courtroom quickly, because I didn’t want the court to change its mind. But there was Joanie, turning and saying to a stunned judge and the assembled legions, “God bless you.”

So much for the separation of church and state. I cringed as I pushed the two of them ahead of me, expecting the judge to say, “Now wait a minute, you three, come back here, especially that gray‑haired guy.”

Who is most in touch with religious reality: Joanie or me? Notwithstanding her periodic bouts with negative religious thoughts, she has an amazing childlike wisdom when she talks about God. It is in such moments that I lose track of what is mental illness and what is the power of the Spirit working through a person. I have found that the spirit of piety in the mentally ill is stronger and more devotional and more other‑oriented than that of much of formal religious life. Maybe that is part of the point: Joanie is to teach me. Page 42f.

 

Theo often says things that betray a childlike perception of the world. One day, reflecting on God’s goodness, he said nonchalantly: “I pray for everyone. And, Brother Gary, I pray for God, too. He needs help.” He said this as though he was speaking of a needy friend who could use some backup once in a while. In his life, he works from the premise that God is a sweetheart. And he prays this way, totally accepting of this theological truth and totally available to the one he calls “Sweetheart.” It is the street version of what St. Ignatius calls consolation without previous cause, when an individual is experiencing God directly without any thought, event, or person being the source of such a movement. I think Theo is in that state almost all of the time. Page 44

 

I don’t want … to sound naive. I know there is no quick religious fix for mental illness short of a miracle. I know, too, that mental illness can propel the religious instinct into the worst kind of madness. But my experience with the mentally ill on the streets is that there is a place in them that is sacred, and they can touch it in the presence of one whom they can trust, a person committed to walking with them through the minefields. I believe that the heart of God is enfleshed in the depths of friendship with another human being, whether it be with a person I love or with my coffee buddy, Frank.

It is in the presence of Frank that I am drawn out of myself and set off down the path that will lead me to the wounded and along which I will find my life and holiness. Frank teaches me the way to the fundamental task of the church, which is to tell the poor of this world that God loves them. Page 52