APOCANGELICA Wild Beasts

Chapter 8

 "So. How was your sixteenth birthday? I mean how did you experience the visit from your parents on your birthday."

"Ufff... come on Doc, you know!... I don't want to talk about it."

"It would do you good to talk about it."

"Why do you want to address the issue now? Couldn't we wait a little bit of time before discussing it? I don't know... about a year?!"

"I've noticed that often when we touch thorny subjects you always try to skirt the issue, postponing to talk about it. But this time I have the impression that we will address them... so, what do you say? Shall we talk about it a bit?!"

"Ufff... They... The usual things. They will never change. Although, like an idiot, every time I expect them to: I expect them to be different... at least a little! But they never are."

"What do you mean?"

"Also this time they immediately began to torment me with their apprehension."And how do you feel?", "How are you getting on here?", "Are you taking your medicine?"... And so on. I can't take it anymore, Doc."

"Nothing else?"

"Yes, yes... at the end the same old speeches: "When you get better bla bla bla" but who says I will ever get better,fuck!" Ada stared at an indefinite point on the floor, close to the dark narrow mahogany library with its four large inlayed paws; it seemed that the paw closest to her had attracted her attention.

"How did all this make you feel?"

"It was like taking a trip back in time." Ada turned back and looked at Dr Von Hillkeneim in his dark and penetrating eyes, crowned by a myriad of wrinkles.

"It's something that you will have to face once the therapy is finished."

"You mean when I get out? But will I ever get out of here, Doc?"

"Never doubt it, Ada. Be confident in your healing. A positive attitude is very important. However, as I was saying, once the therapy is finished, if you decide to go and live somewhere different from your parents' house, you still have to take into account the inevitable contact that you will have with them."

"I'll keep them at a distance."

"Maybe at the beginning! But you will not be able to avoid them forever and sooner or later your parents will get back in touch with you."

"You mean they will barge into my life."

"They are your parents, Ada."

"I don't remember... What if I never leave this place? What if I spent my whole life in here?"

"Don't be so pessimistic... I have a lot of faith in you getting better soon."

"Are you saying this because for a while I haven't made any trips to Pangea?"

"That's right: now you are more present in your life here, while a few weeks ago you spent a lot of time there."

"Doc" said Ada leaning forward and lowering her voice as if about to reveal a secret. "Do you want to know why I haven't been to Pangea for over a week?"

"Certainly! Why haven't you?"

"It's a long story, get ready Doc" and she began to talk about the angels that had descended on her and that seemed morbidly interested to know where was the clinic in which she lived; she omitted to tell everything about Eddy and what that boy evoked in her.

"I guess that's a good thing."

"Are you joking, Doc?"

"Ada, try to look at the events from a different angle. Prior to what you've just told me, you would spent a lot of time in Pangea. I was begining to think that for you that was the main world and this world only a secondary and less important one. Conversely now you don't go to Pangea anymore and live your present here. It is possible that your subconscious has built a threat to make the Pangea significantly less attractive than the world waiting for you down here."

"My subconscious?" repeated Ada in a kind of trance, and she got a shiver down her spine at the suspect that for Dr Von Hillkeneim all that she had confided to him regarding Pangea was considered nothing more than a mere invention of her subconscious.

The doctor sighed, brooded for a moment and then said, "Have you ever read Alice in Wonderland, or have you ever seen any film adaptation of it?"

"Hmm, yes. It's the story of that little girl that crosses a mirror and on finds a fantasy world on the other side, right? With a cat that appears and disappears, a rabbit with a waistcoat and glasses, the playing cards with the queen that always orders to "Cut off his head!" You're referring to that story, right?"

"Yes. I understand you know the story. Well, this Alice can also be seen as an archetype, a model, that many patients here at the clinic embody: each one of them have their own personal reality; a deformed world, to some extent dependent on the personality of the patient, in which no one but the creator himself, has access."

"Ah," said Ada while taking in the insinuation.

"See," the doctor continued. "Everybody comes and goes, in and out. I mean from their fantasy world to reality and vice versa; some easily, others with difficulty."

"And?"

"Every patient is lord and master of his world, and in this world, or rather in its symbolic manifestations, there is the key to bring back the patient to reality."

"For him to re-cross the mirror again?"

"Yes, using the metaphor borrowed from the work of Lewis Carroll you can see it in this way. See Ada, many schizophrenic patients should be treated with caution, and their illusory world should be considered by the therapist as an alternative reality fully valid and coexisting with the world in which the therapy is carried forward. Often the patients' repeated and continuous alterations of the patterns underlying their illusory world, limits the possibility of intervention by the therapist who deciphered the hidden symbolism, pushing towards the adoption of a drug therapy based on a specific class of medicines, the neuroleptics, in order to reduce and control the patient's psychosis. This brings the therapist to a sort of deadlock because the administration of neuroleptics reduces the symptoms, but it does not eliminate the cause of the problem. And with the disappearance of the symptoms, it also blurs the interpretative key that allows to discover the emotional damage that caused psychosis."

"Ok... uhmmm and what are you trying to tell me? I mean, in my case?!"

"You have already gone through all the steps of this path. But now you have come to a crucial point in your journey towards healing and is essential that you perform an act of will, crossing the mirror to return home... You understand me, Ada?"

Ada nodded trying to bring the session to conclusion as soon as possible and knowing in her heart, that everything, everything she had lived in Pangea, everything was real, every second of it was real.

"Very well, Ada. I am glad that you understand."

"Of course I understand Doc" she thought, but instead said: "Of course I understand, doctor."

*

"The application form seems to be filled in correctly!"

"I'm pleased to hear that."

"All right then; you should report to the head nurse, Marta Houseoff, next Monday; your shift starts at six in the morning. The head nurse will give you a tour and explain the job. Goodbye Mr.... Harniel, right?"

"That's right. Samuel Harniel. But everyone calls me Sam and, in fact, in the name badge I would prefer you writing Sam Harniel."

Lewis Carroll. Pseudonym used by the English mathematician and writer Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson to publish in 1865 the book "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and its sequel "Through the Looking Glass and What Alice found there".