In later years, my family in the medical entourage used the word “schizophrenic” to describe me, but as a child, they used to tell me that I had “leanings of an autistic nature.”  They said my childish scrawl was that of a poet and my frequent incoherence displayed, what they refer to as, a “charming imagination”. I lived on the good side of “special” until my thirteenth year, at which point my mother declared my unique behavior as symptomatic and had me committed to The Cottage, a private institution known to the outside world as pioneer in behavioral and rehabilitative technology. People of conscience sought The Cottage as a sanctuary for their mad relatives and then, having secured quarters for these genetic mishaps, resume their lives, holding tightly to the notion that they did the right thing.

Having been labeled “creative” during my formative years, I continued to believe in my artistic gift, and through the diverse therapies is at my disposal, set out to become famous. I did. I didn’t seek fame for its own sake, but for the sake of freedom. Freedom took the form of a rented van that departed from The Cottage, on a monthly basis, to tour the vast and intricate sub-culture of the institutionalized. The Art Therapy Program, a promotional tool of The Cottage, took its wares to the road and I, determined to hitch a ride with the traveling freak show, exploited my artistic gift for all it was worth. I turned my focus, myopic in obsessed, toward my art and the goal of joining the show.

At first glance, my paintings were like an epistle about to be unearthed and many a therapist was lost in the interpretation. Chaos disguised order, my work was almost perceptible to human sense but, just as perception becomes aware of itself, the message was always and irretrievably lost by what I hoped would be come my signature, an angry red shadow.

The week of my sixteenth birthday I was given a paper bag filled with the psychotropic Haldol and was entrusted to the care of the art therapist. Up and down the highway, the art therapist and a handful of well behaved lunatics traveled from institution to institution to promote The Cottage as a leader of in the field of applied psychosocial science. The gigs were polite and pleasant and were usually accompanied by a lunch buffet or a dessert tray. Typically, the art therapist spoke about measurable outcomes while my peers and I stood meekly beside our paintings and pottery, dazed from our medication and giddy with the sights and sounds of a world outside The Cottage. When asked about our lives at The Cottage, we intuitively, as of reading from the same script as the art therapist, coated our lies with words like “quality of life” and “empowerment”. We smiled like doted-upon children and then shyly excused ourselves to eat sandwiches with the crust cut off and dainty Nanaimo bars because we were, after all, on vacation. To those of us who lived in Cottage Country, Hell would have been a vacation.

I became famous, in much the way I had planned, through my art. I showed my work, not in galleries or artspaces, but in psychiatric institutions, day treatment programs and correctional facilities. I showed my art, expressed my gratitude for the Art Therapy Program and the ground-breaking work at The Cottage and, as the professionals oohhed and aahhed over my paintings, felt like a worm. Afterward, I would return to The Cottage and, having gained privilege through my work, was allowed to immerse myself in oil and canvas to exorcise very demons that oil and canvas had inflicted upon me.

I learned that I was an adult in an unusual fashion. That is to say, I read it. the Mental Health Act, in its entirety, had been posted in the patients’ lounge for as long as I could remember, but it wasn’t until I decided to read it but I learned I was of legal age and, barring the perception of threat, it was free to leave The Cottage.

I left that day and hitchhiked home to Toronto. The house I grew up in had been torn down and replaced with a donut shop. Sitting approximately where my bedroom used to be in a back booth of the donut shop, I drink bitter coffee and stared into the aluminum walls, surprised and unsettled by my reflection. The person staring back at me didn’t look how I believed myself to look. I believed myself to look like a thirteen-year-old girl who, because she could see and hear things that others could not, had been abandoned. Indeed, the last time I had stared into a mirror I was that child, unsure and afraid and ashamed.

Now, alone and uncertain, I looked to the only thing I knew, myself, and found a stranger. I was seventeen years old and didn’t know what I looked like. Like a canvas afraid of paint, I was alone.

I lost my virginity that night in Toronto. He was fat and smelled of sweat, and aside from the beer and pizza, paid little for the pleasure. I had hoped for a warm bed to sleep in, but was, without ceremony, escorted from his apartment left his wife, returning from the night-shift, should see me. I sat in the park and wept, troubled by a familiar pain, although I had never, before that night, been laid or cast from a married man’s bed.

It was then and there, weeping in the park, that I met and married a man named Robin. Robin was a young man, tall and slim with tangles of long black hair. He had the air of one used to visions and voices, and carried himself with the ease of a god accustomed to the world of mortals. There was no pretense in our marriage, an hour’s conversation sketched the essential need: mine for warmth and lodging, his for a laundress and bedmate. His room was above a record store, a clutter of paper and clothing, a futon collapsed on the hardwood floor, a shower, a sink and a toilet. I fell beside him and slept soundly, my first night away from The Cottage.

Robin was a gentle man, content with his lot and grateful for his guitar. He played each day on the street, his open guitar case filling quickly with coins. His spirit was fed by the inquiring eyes of passing children and the wistful smiles of pretty women. Robin bought me art supplies and said that, in this way, I was to contribute. Art became my life. Without the constraint of Haldal, my vision encompassed a myth so frightening and seductive that it was only the mundane work of a woman that kept me grounded.

In the cracked mirror, above the toilet, I began to recognize myself. Brown hair, green eyes, and unblemished face. One night, I asked Robin if he thought I was pretty and he said yes. We ordered Chinese food and ate our dinner lazily and happily atop the futon. Naked, we covered each other with plum sauce and made sticky, sweet love. I remember these things in a particular light because it was the first time I lived with the awareness of myself: brown hair, green eyes and pretty.

The demons, disguised as inspiration, are born to the world through a channel of torment. Harsh brushstrokes become a vivid collage, and although I try, I cannot avert my eyes from the horror. I work for hours, deaf and blind to the world and I feel nothing but the agony of being. Afterward, I collapse. Robin plays his guitar and strokes my hair, whispers that surely this one will sell, and it does, to an underground nightclub for five hundred dollars. We go to Niagara Falls to honeymoon.

It is here that I find God, not in the majesty of thundering water, but in the cafeteria at the Holiday Inn. God is smiling at me for my breakfast plate, his features are light in the glimmering wetness of scrambled eggs and, though I am shy to eat my Lord, the music is directing me and I swallow with a pious appetite. I break bread, toast, and marmalade, to share communion with my husband. As Robin licks marmalade from his fingers, I fall deeply in love with him and realise with a sudden clarity that we have always been together.

I am afraid as we sit on the Maid of the Mist and cling to my love as the waves crash around us. As we disembark, I hear God whispering to me and, as He bids, I take Robin to the IMAX theater. The show begins at I become overwhelmed and frightened by the images. I scream until I am safe in bed at the Holiday Inn, Robin holding my hand.

I tell Robin about God and how the IMAX theater frightened me. I beg him not to use the word schizophrenic, but to tell me what he knows.

Robin tells me that he knows God and that there is nothing to fear from the IMAX theater. he tells me that when he was A little boy, he used to be afraid of the Holy Ghost. One day the Holy Ghost asked him what it was that he was afraid of and Robin, the little boy, told the Holy Ghost that he was afraid of ghosts. The Holy Ghost said, “Then just call me Bob.” So Robin called the Holy Ghost Bob and has ever since. Robin said that when he was a child Bob was his best friend and, unlike other children, Robin didn’t lose his invisible friend when he grew up because a world of believers, through their devotion, faith and prayers, kept Bob alive. Robin said that it was Bob who led him, that night, to the park to find me alone and weeping.

Robin told me that I was a special woman because I could see God in a plate of eggs and hear His whisper in my ear. We made love that night and, in the morning, went to the wax museum.

Originally published in White Wall Review 23 (1999)