chronology 2
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| New Zealand Products |
1993
March-April: Tessa started to make interminable telephone calls in which she complained about the Fitness Foundation. Its members, she said, were scheming against her. There was always something "going on". (The expression "I don't know what's going on here" later became a dreaded indication of florescent paranoia.) The calls, which came almost every night, were tedious and tiring . . . and ultimately inconclusive.¹ That was because, two years into her decline, a conclusion could no longer be reached. Her problems were not rooted in reality, and were thus impervious to both reason and reassurance. But at the time, I didn't realise that, and thought there must be some compelling argument — some parental pearl of wisdom — that would enable her to put her suspicions into perspective. After all, I would tell her, even if people were scheming against her, there was nothing they could do if she simply shrugged off their machinations. About this time, Tessa also started to claim she was constantly under surveillance. "No one is watched like I am watched," she would say over and over. The schemers/watchers were not only the members of the Auckland branch of the Fitness Foundation, which she had joined after her arrival in the city, but the members she had left behind in Palmerston North, who seemed to have some sort of hotline to their partners in crime up north. It was all maddeningly nebulous: one struggled to find anything concrete in anything she said. One also struggled to hold a conversation with her, as her thought was disorganized and she was not really interested in anything you had to say. I'm reminded of a friend who developed Parkinson's disease: long before I realized what the problem was, I found that I couldn't talk to him any more. There was no meeting of minds, no structure to our discourse, no observance of conversational convention, which meant that we were constantly lapsing into a (to me) slightly embarrassed silence. Then he would say something that was only tangentially relevant to what we had been talking about, and we would lurch off again like a rudderless boat. In Tessa's case, the dialogue was actually a dull monologue: she would go on and on about all the malicious rumors that were being spread about her, and I would make totally ineffectual interjections. This would continue for an hour or more, before mutual exhaustion would more or less force us to hang up.
¹ I used to take them while lying on a bed in the back bedroom.
Residence: Tessa flatted with some other young people in Auckland. We visited the house, which I remember as a pleasant old place with a beautiful wooden floor in her room — a place that was conducive to a quiet, studious life, you might suppose. This was, however, the place where Tessa began to have delusions. For example, she claimed to us that the daughter of our friends in Auckland was having a clandestine affair with the son of her landlord, who occupied one of the other rooms. There was never any evidence of such an affair, and Tessa's suspicions seemed, to us, to be absurd. But even if there had been an affair, it would have been none of Tessa's business — unless, of course, she perceived it as a relationship that was somehow hostile to her. We were puzzled, too, when Tessa told us she was angry, because one of her male flatmates had quietly fixed her faulty bicycle. Why did she object so strongly to anyone doing anything for her? We put the question to her, but couldn't get an answer.
Occupation: Studied for a BA degree at Auckland University.
May: Tessa returned to Palmerston North for the university holiday, during which she levelled the first serious paranoid allegation against us. (See Article No 2.)
December: Tessa again returned to Palmerston North for the university holiday. Because I thought she might be having legal problems, I sent her to see barrister (now District Court judge) Mike Behrens. Nothing came of the meeting, and later she told me she had wept while telling Mike about her misfortunes. In the meantime, she was coldly informed by her landlord's son in Auckland that her room was no longer available. Partly because of this setback, she decided to transfer to Massey University in Palmerston North.
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Residence: This year, we saw the beginning of what might be described as an itinerant lifestyle. She flatted at three houses, in succession, in Palmerston North.
Occupation: Studied for a BA degree at Massey University.
February-October: At Auckland University, she had started to drop papers for one reason or another. This dropping of papers continued at Massey University. At the same time, she complained incessantly about the Fitness Foundation people, her flatmates, and her male lecturers at both Auckland and Massey universities. She was convinced these lecturers had an improper interest in her. "I can see everything so clearly now," she said on one occasion, while sitting on a sofa in our home.¹ "No, your perceptions are askew," I replied, without effect. I noticed that she was so self-absorbed, she was almost oblivious of her surroundings. She was apparently unmoved by the harrowing film Schindler's List: as soon as we came out of the cinema, she started complaining, yet again, about the nefarious activities of the FF members. I was incredulous. I felt like saying: "We've just seen a film about Jews being herded into gas chambers. Didn't that touch you in any way?"
¹ After her recovery, she told us she had concluded her increasing clairvoyance was a sign she was becoming cleverer. It is this "clairvoyance", which supposedly includes a perception of the "interconnectedness of things", that has led some romantics to suggest that schizophrenia brings an elevated understanding of the universe, and that, in a "more tolerant society", the schizophrenic would go on to become a spiritual counselor or shaman. To people of this persuasion, the psychotic delusion is not a delusion but a "myth" — something to be viewed positively, rather than negatively. One correspondent has even suggested that, during Tessa's psychotic episode, I should have played the role assigned to me in her "myth". But in my view, this would have only further blurred the crumbling border between reality and delusion, and resulted in the whole situation getting completely out of hand. Tessa's comment (June 10, 2006): Yes, I really did think I was becoming cleverer. I thought I had been really dumb up until then. I thought that you and Mum were simple, and had brought me up so that I couldn't understand the real world.
October-December: Tessa came round at least once a week, mainly to tell us how much she hated Palmerston North. Then, in November, she came to my room, where I was working at my word processor, and asked me whether she could move back into our place for the end-of-year vacation. I said she was always welcome, but that I didn't want a repetition of her previous outburst. That was my only condition for her return. She seemed relaxed, almost light-hearted. "Oh, all that came from the Fitness Foundation," she said dismissively. "I don't care where it came from," I said. "I just don't want it to happen again." She then assured me that everything would be okay. Of course, I should have known that everything wouldn't (and couldn't) be okay. At that stage of her decline, she could hold things together — in our home, at any rate — for no more than two or three days. And sure enough, I was working in the garage late one afternoon when I heard a bang from the house. I knew, immediately, what had happened: Tessa had become violent. So it was with some trepidation that I returned to the house for the evening meal. Somewhat to my surprise, I saw that only two places had been set at the dining table. "What's going on?" I asked. "Tessa said she wants to eat in her room," my wife replied. There was no further explanation. But after we had finished eating, and had washed up, Tessa stormed into the kichen like an avenging angel. "I don't know how you two can carry one as though nothing has happened," she shouted. "What's happened?" my wife said. "You know what's happened!" Tessa shouted, even more loudly. "No, I don't know what's happened." And so the "conversation" continued, locked into a crazy circuit from which there was no escape. And once again, it ended in Tessa's bedroom. "What are all these things doing on the floor?" I asked. There was a letter holder and about half a dozen letters strewn around, silently testifying to the source of the bang I had heard earlier. "I threw them there," Tessa said. "Why did you throw them there?" "I couldn't help myself." And then came the comment that brought her stay with us to a sudden end: "I feel like smashing the whole place up". "In that case," I said, "you will have to leave — tomorrow morning." Today, I regret my harshness. I realize that my anger was inappropriate. But at the time, I thought she was being cantankerous. And rightly or wrongly, I saw her as a danger to the household. I was afraid that if we left her alone in the house, she might try to burn it down. The next morning, I refused to see her, and waited in my study until she and her mother left. They went first to the bank, where her mother gave her some money, and then to the bus station, where she took a coach to Auckland. (Altogether, we gave her $1300, some of which came from a garage sale of her childhood books. But the transfer of the money in the bank proved to be complicated, as all kinds of precautions had to be taken to avoid the prying eyes of the ubiqitous spies.) After Tessa left, however, I suddenly realized that she was mentally ill. The realization came to me as a kind of epiphany, while I was lying on the sofa in the conservatory. So at the first opportunity, I spoke to Mike Behrens — the barrister who had interviewed Tessa the previous December. Not only had Mike defended many of society's losers and misfits, he had been the District Inspector at Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital near Wanganui. I respected his judgment. "What was your opinion of Elaine, when you saw her at the end of last year?" I asked him, after I had taken him into my newspaper office's interview room. His reply: "That she was either mentally sick or very close to being mentally sick." And he warned me that her condition would worsen. He suggested I call the hospital's mental health crisis team, as this was the service to contact first. I made the call as soon as I got home, and told the whole story to a male psychiatric nurse. It was a story I was to tell over and over — in Palmerston North, Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin — as I struggled to persuade someone to help Tessa. And of course, it was a story that lengthened with every move she made, as she tried to outmaneuver her demons. On this occasion, I was told in no uncertain terms that I would probably be unable to do anything until Tessa came to the attention of the police. (Several months later, a senior policeman at Palmerston North police station told me the police were unhappy about that particular psychiatric nurse. He said the police felt the nurse was a little too keen to keep his workload down.) Continued