By Charles Cousey
All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
—attributed to Blaise Pascal, 1623–1662
By the time I graduated high school, I was mentally ill — and I knew it. Eighteen years of constant hellfire and brimstone “Christian” fundamentalist indoctrination will do that to you. Especially when the church is pretty much the core of your family’s social circle in a small Texas town with a culture that’s very, very “churchy.”
One day during my senior year, I awoke about 6:00 AM feeling uneasy. I had no idea why. Nothing had happened. The sun was rising, my cat was at the foot of my bed — everything was absolutely normal. But inside my head, something in the core of my being didn’t feel... normal.
I looked around my room. A voice inside me said, “This is not your room.” I jumped out of bed, running towards the door. The voice said, “This is not your home.”
I looked back into my room at my guitar, my posters on the walls — all the symbols that signified “me.” The voice said, “You don’t know who you are.”
Mom and dad were at the kitchen table eating breakfast when I entered the kitchen. We weren’t a demonstrative family, but my presence was acknowledged. I took my seat quietly at the table.
“What are you doing up so early?” my mom queried. (A very good question.)
“I need to see a psychiatrist,” I replied calmly.
“Now honey, you don’t need to see a psychiatrist. You just need to talk to one of the elders down at the church,” mom said in the most motherly voice she could muster.
“I need to see a psychiatrist,” I repeated, cool and calm outside, volcanic within.
My dad was a man of few words — fewer than few, actually. But a string of them fell out of his mouth, just enough for me to understand that he didn’t “get it.”
The volcano within me erupted. “I NEED TO SEE A F****** PSYCHIATRIST!!!” I screamed, spewing white-hot tears and spittle all over the table.
Invoking the F-word in a fundamentalist Christian home really gets peoples’ attention.
