Missing the Big Picture by Donovan, Luke (great book club books txt) 📕

for talking.” Then she told me that people can’t read my minds, that telepathic communication has never occurred, and that I should see a psychologist. I agreed to see a psychologist, but I argued that the voices were real and that the whole school knew this had been going on. She tried to reassure me that this couldn’t be so, but I didn’t believe her. I even told her that my cousin knew, and she got angrier with me and said that was impossible.

I had no choice but to go to school on Monday. Once again, I was talking telepathically to three or four people in all of my classes. I was so behind on my schoolwork, and I just wanted to get out of high school as fast as I could. That Monday night, I went out with my mother, Anthony, his mother, and his children to celebrate his mother’s eighty-sixth birthday. Also in attendance were Eric’s and Carmine’s voices in my head. Once everyone was eating his or her meal, my mother took me aside and said, “You’re not really here, are you?” Even though I could hear everybody laughing and joking, I was paying little attention to about the conversation; the voices of Eric and Carmine occluded my mind.

The next day—Tuesday, May 1—I woke up again to the voices. I got up and told my mother that I just couldn’t go back to school. I wasn’t even focused in my classes; I was always somewhere else in my mind and hardly learning anything to begin with. My mother agreed. We talked about seeing a psychiatrist, and after I finished showering, I quickly opened the telephone book, and found the number for Capital District Psychiatric Center (CDPC). I was soon talking to a psychiatric nurse. I was very considerate, respectful, and calm as I began explaining what had been happening in my mind since January. The woman was sincere and listened attentively to all my concerns. At the end of the conversation, I was hoping that she would believe me. The nurse responded, “Well, I’m sure that this is all real to you, but that can’t happen,” and she encouraged me to come to the psych center. I called my mother at work and told her that I wanted to go to the CDPC. My mother had a meeting, and I knew she was scared and nervous for me when she decided to leave work early. As we were walking into the building, we saw a man walking outside, smoking a cigarette, and yelling, “Why do you hate all of the Jews, God?”

I was expecting the unit at the psychiatric center to help me, but the receptionist told me that since I wasn’t actively homicidal or suicidal, I would just need counseling. I did lie when they asked if I was suicidal. I already had a plan mapped out, but I couldn’t tell my mother that I wanted to kill myself. So, I went home and my mother and I tried to find a psychiatrist that was covered under our insurance. My mother recognized the name of Dr. Roberts, the same psychiatrist that my grandmother had been seeing for years. My mother called him, briefly described what had been happening, and said that I was convinced I was talking telepathically to my peers every day at school. Dr. Roberts said that I needed to be seen immediately, and I made an appointment for Friday morning.

After my mother hung up the phone, she began to cry—the first time I ever saw her do so. My mother was always the source of strength in my family. Before my grandfather’s death, she and my grandfather would joke about the time my cousins called my grandfather because my uncle, their father, had too much to drink and had started hitting them. My mother drove with my grandfather to my uncle’s house. As soon as my uncle opened the door, my mother started beating him up until my grandfather restrained her. When she was growing up, my uncle would tell me that when he was playing baseball with his friends, everybody would yell, “Move in!” when it was his turn to bat. When it was my mother’s turn, all of the boys her age would yell, “Move back!” So I was shocked to see my mother cry and knew that she couldn’t handle what was going on. She wanted to make things better, but for weeks now I had been consumed with the voices in my mind and it had affected everything—school, my grades, my job, my social life—everything. Seeing her cry ended my suicidal thoughts. My mother cried and told me, “please don’t leave me.” No matter how much I wanted to end my life, I realized I could never put my mother through that.

That night I went to Friendly’s and served ice cream. On Wednesday, May 2, Eric’s and Carmine’s voices were still with me when I awoke—for the seventh day in a row. My mother told me that I had to go to school and that June was only a month away. I knew she was right, as much as I didn’t want her to be. I was pleased when Sam and Gabe were absent. During those classes, I still heard both Eric’s and Carmine’s voices; they were always in my mind. During the middle of AP Chemistry, I heard Tyler’s voice say, “I think they left us.” It was only Tyler’s voice that I heard. I didn’t eat anything the entire day. After class was over, I went home to get some money, and then I went to McDonald’s since I had used my lunch money to pay one of my fellow students to do an upcoming math project. During the drive home, I never heard Eric’s or Carmine’s voice. When I got in the house, I called my mother and asked her to say a prayer that the voices were gone, since it had been about forty-five minutes