Arrest Me! I'm CRAZY!

Oh, look. The normies are chattering again. This time, here in March 2023, the chattering is in some ways for good reason: Virginia resident Irvo Otieno, a man who lived with mental illness, but who also was beloved by his family, friends, and his community, was murdered by police in yet another case in which police clearly used far too much force on someone, violent or not, unruly or not, should never have been treated so harshly.

That sort of misplaced use of force is getting to be a sort of dead dog joke. No matter how many times the story is told, it's never going to be funny. Yes, mentally ill men and women in the middle of mental health crises sometimes are going to be violent, are often unpredictable, and thus, in terms of often overworked police officers, can cause particular, and peculiar, problems for police when they are the only powers that can intervene.

A police officer dies, and the news media tends to spread the deceased's remains all across Disneyland and beyond. When a mentally ill human being is murdered by police, we'll get a tearful news conference. Then it's gone. All is forgotten, all is forgiven, and the mass media then wanders off, more amnesiacs on the payroll.

It's as if such a lame comparison is merited. It's not. Those are two mutually exclusive types of occurrence.

I live with Bipolar Disorder. Untreated, mine manifests as irritability, and unpredictability, and sometimes manifests very angrily; often deluded and grandiloquent, and sometimes (very rare) even fraught with hallucinations, emotional or otherwise. Over the years, partly because I fear manic episodes so much, I've taken all kinds of steps, with the cooperation and assistance of a variety of caregivers, learning about my illness, finding ways to "fail safe" when I feel an episode coming on, and discovering that, with some care, I actually can manage this disorder to a good extent.

Regardless, I often fear the worst of possibilities: a police officer losing his temper with me and then beating me up, beating me down, and even killing me. What should I do? Wear a sign--CAUTION--MENTALLY ILL--around my neck? I'd hope that my name is on a list of people with mental illness, something a police officer could key into if he (or she) were to be called to address my life when my life is an emergency.

I actually believe such a listing is a good idea. If someone is under treatment for mental illness and may be prone to explosive behavior, isn't it good for both that patient and for the police to get a lead on such a phenomenon before the encounter?

For the most part, I've been quite lucky with the police. Most of the time a cop's been called because I've done something outrageous--or stupid--when I'm ill, the officers have been exceptionally kind and considerate toward me. Only a few times, long ago, have I ever been treated too roughly by. . .

. . . once again, an officer who might be having a very bad day, an officer who is exhausted, an officer who has literally had it with unpredictability.

What is this "normie" bit? What could that mean? I'd never heard the term used by some in treatment for mental health issues until I was asked to attend a sort of group educational circle at a public mental health clinic--where a coordinator and psychotherapist met with us to discuss manic-depressive illnesses, along with OCD and anxiety disorders. There, I heard stories from fellow manic-depressives that truly alarmed and saddened me. One man sat teary-eyed because he has a compulsion for buying automobiles on impulse. He'd lost his family's savings during another of what I took to be many episodes of OCD. A woman sitting beside me had long red scars along her arms: She was in her sixties, and she had a cutting compulsion that so humiliated her she was in tears.

Around the circle, many manic-depressives described the stigma they have to live with in terms of how they are viewed by people in their communities, in their peripheries, and even in their families who target them because they "are not normal". Hence, "the normies". A sort of disease all its own.

Needless the stories of the normies I heard rang with familiarity in my life. When the supposedly normal--and there really is no such thing beyond a community agreement on conventions and customs--find someone incongruent, it is an animal instinct that informs such people to push out the incongruent as inimical to survival of the group. Incongruence.

Reason has to squeeze into such reactive mentalities, intervening between the human and the human's animal nature. Regardless, many times the "diagnosis" I've gotten from "the normies" amounts to this: Buzzkill.

I'm not certain that's in the DMA 5. Maybe it is. A disease whereby one with mental illness ruins the buzzes of those trying to get off on being so normal perhaps?

Stigma is hurtful. Hurtful to those of us who have to live with an affective disorder, or worse, a mental illness like schizophrenia.

Oddly, these disorders and actual illnesses aren't nearly as bad as a personality defect we know as psychopathy. Psychopaths. They're good at pretending to be normal. But they don't "feel you". They have no empathy. Hence, many of the more functional psychopaths--those who are good actors who can actually get away with pretending to be normal and are often clever enough to keep their hands clean when they intentionally hurt other people--are often quite successful in both business and politics.

Scary, eh? Like those of us who suffer from affective disorders or mental illnesses, psychopaths are often far cries from "Norman Bates" or any of the convoluted characters in "Criminal Minds", a TV show that perpetually confuses psychopathy with psychosis, a syndrome that can strike trauma victims, people in car wrecks, people deep in grief and worse.

As for people with mental illnesses, most of us are trying so hard to not be crazy, and wishing we never were or aren't nutty, that when the worst occurs, a relapse, a setback, an episode, you name it what you wish, most of us withdraw. We are terrified. Honest. It's horrific to go through a manic episode.

One time, an acquaintance at a poetry reading chirped, "Man! I'd love to be manic! Don't you get really high and stuff?" I looked at his normality and thought "he's nuts". But being compassionate, I told him, "Yeah, it's great maybe for the first couple of days, but once you're exhausted from no sleep or from racing thoughts that won't stop, it begins to hurt. Then it hurts really bad. No one should have to go through that."

A manic episode is like being stuck in a big room with 1,000 radios all tuned to different stations all blaring at you at once. Terrifying. And confusing.

As I mentioned, I've mostly had good experiences when the police have been called to address something I've done. Most of the time, I've done stupid things. Once, in the middle of a twin crisis--mania and drunkenness--I furiously wended through downtown Dallas with watercolor markers and defaced walls, windows, and sidewalks with nutty stuff, then marched back the three miles to my apartment, and with a 12 pack of beer in my very angry hands. I encountered a traffic cone. I snatched it off the street and hurled it over my shoulder. I heard a screech. I turned--just in time to see the cone bounce off the window of.

. . . a police car. Talk about the irony. Traffic cone attacks cop car in Saturday afternoon traffic.

In an instant, the cop was crouched behind the door of his squad car, pistol pointed straight at me. I raised my hands, and he cuffed me.

Once inside the squad car, I asked, "If I say I'm sorry, will you let me go?"

He snorted. No response.

Another time, my mania in full bloom, I filled the street with a) a bright blue river of enamel paint in the shape of a peace sign, and b) all the glass I had on hand. When cars rolled through the peace sign, one could hear the swish as paint splattered all over rapidly moving vehicles.

Oh yeah. True art.

And the glass. It was also rainy that afternoon in 1985. When I heard a knock on the door, I found a lovely female police officer in a yellow rain slicker looking anxiously at me. "We're just checking to see if you're all right."

That was nice. No wrestling to the ground, no assault. Merely a simple safety check. Then the City sent a crew to sweep up the glass.

That time I was both lucky and unfortunate. A better strategy, at least in my thinking later, once I had calmed down, would have been to run me to a psych ward. But this is not what the law says. I have to be a danger to myself or to others to get that treatment, sometimes a badly needed one too.

Of course, in 1985, I had next to no idea what my "episodes" were about. Usually, I'd be an insomniac for days. I'd finally drink myself into unconsciousness. That was my "medicine". Unconscious self-medication is a common tactic those with mental illness use. Many times, those with mental illness are seen as drunks and addicts. In terms of homelessness, mental illness gets worse, not better. And if the only "med" is malt liquor, pot or even speed, crack or heroin--these poor people get nailed for the wrong reasons by. . .

. . . the normies.

After jail release after the traffic cone incident, I happened across the police officer standing beside his squad car where he paused after speaking to a retailer.  I apologized to him.  He laughed. 

“Bet that’s the first time someone hit your car in traffic with a traffic cone!” 

Another time, I got so wound up when President George H. W. Bush came to Dallas to speak, that I covered the nearby Army Store with graffiti calling Bush a Klansman. This really could have gotten me into trouble. Instead, Melton, the owner of the Army Store, appeared on my doorstep, bucket of white paint in his hand, and said, "Come on. You need to clean it up." That was awfully nice of him. I think Melton knew I was "troubled". Another nearby establishment, a sushi bar, also got hit by my mentally ill tagging fest. That owner had me paint over the dumb stuff--then gave me the money to buy myself a hamburger. No charges. I was lucky that time.

The worst incident is what I call "the cat on the roof" episode. I'd just gotten out of a 12-day stay in a public hospital's psychiatric ward--when, after getting my first effective diagnosis, along with an SSRI antidepressant--I had an episode. I'd run out of money. That triggered me. To top it all off, a neighbor's cat had gotten stuck on the roof of my apartment complex. After multiple attempts to get animal control or the City to help the cat, I called 911. The fire department rushed in, three trucks, and yet when I told him "Cat on the roof!", the head of the team got angry at me, cursed me out, refused to help the cat, and then pressed charges.

Not nice. Not nice at all. Once I'd cooled off, County officers showed up to arrest me--this was two months after the infraction. I did have some possible bail money. They wouldn't let me go to get my wallet, and hauling me out into the 30-degree February afternoon in my bare feet, they hauled me off to jail.

Welcome to recovery, Gordon Hilgers.

I fought the charges. But a warrant had been issued for my arrest even after being run in and then being released on bail. When I got a court-appointed lawyer, I had him continually reset the court date. In the meantime, unable to get a job that could pay me enough to live independently (because of the warrant), I became homeless.

Yes! Welcome to your recovery! Buster!

What else could I have thought? I'd had one day too many I could not explain, and when the bottom finally fell out, there was no one to catch me. This is how the normies contribute to the homeless problem: by allowing good people to fall through the cracks out of simple conceit, contempt, and arrogance. It's sad to be held hostage by people so proud of themselves. . . .

The worst incident involving a County cop occurred when I was manic, drunk, and blaring music at three a.m.. He came to the door on a noise complaint, told me to turn down my music, and my response? "I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"

BOOM. He grabbed, cuffed me behind my back, grabbed the cuffs, and dragged me to the squad car. He so injured me that I had pain in my shoulders for years. Because he'd had enough of stupid stuff that night.

That's the closest I've ever come to being physically attacked by a police officer. Not that I'm all that grateful to him. I try to understand him by putting myself in his shoes in my mind. He'd probably had a bad night on the beat. I hit him the wrong way.

So.  I’m not normal.  I’m abnormal.  But one thing I’ve noted to myself after years of experience with the hostility of the normies is that, oftentimes, those of us who have been successful in managing our mental illnesses know more about sanity than do the supposedly sane.  

Well, that was incongruous. But it’s not, really.  Outside of sanity, we have to learn what sanity is, what sanity feels like, and what losing one’s sanity is like.  Hence, our hard work on the subject of sanity can serve as a bulwark when those who clearly don’t understand their own sanity try to lord their ignorance over us.  

Not so incongruous of me to allege that, sometimes, the supposedly normal are far crazier than they seem? 

The poor Virginian who was killed when he became violent in the middle of a mental heatlh crisis can no longer speak for himself.  From nearly all the reports of this I’ve read and seen, Virgo Otieno was a kind, loving person.  That’s not odd to me.  When you’ve been at your worse, you also have been subject to humiliation, shame, guilt, and ostracism.  Hence, you learn to deal with those who are unfair to you with a sense of compassion.

Often, all too often, that compassion is not returned.  

During a performance poetry reading one night, an acquaintance I knew fairly well, a man who regularly attended the reading, seen by many naive to the fact he is schizophrenic as weird, nutty, eccentric, had an episode.

With a little casual sleuthing, namely a conversation with a mental health caseworker who knew the man, I learned that his episode had been triggered by loud, violent, nihilistic talk of a man basically acting like a Giant Baby on the stage because he was angry his wife had divorced him for another man. The schizophrenic? He wants love and peace. Happiness.

The staged anger triggered him, he began acting out by shouting--and the moderator, an ex-Marine MP, tossed him out of the reading. No abnormal for a crowd the MP regales as "crazy. No, not the real crazy, merely the "wild and crazy guy" kind of crazy Steve Martin in the Eighties lampooned on Saturday Night Live.

Contempt before investigation helps no one. Oddly, very oddly, the drill sergeant of a poetry host always preaches, Be Positive. No negativity is allowed. Unless of course some big shot is beefing over his alienation after a divorce. Some negativity passes; other forms of negativity is "applied negativity". In other words, I suspect "Be Positive" means "Get High" to the MP host.

At the door, after being chased from the bar, my schizophrenic acquaintance hollered, “Ask Gordon!  He understands!”  

Who knew I would eventually be next? One false move--and you're out, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Keats, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill. We. Shall. Have. No. Aberrant. Emotionality. In. This. Establishment.

I did understand what my schizophrenic friend was going through. He'd had a misbegotten confrontation with "the normies". It's a tyranny. It really is sometimes exactly that. It's an either--or situation for us sometimes: Either we are normal, or we are THE ENEMY.

The drill sergeant by the way isn't exactly a moral paragon. To him, that's also performative.  Like him, too many people are terrified by uncertainty and incongruity as manifested by those of us who live with a mental illness.  But as for the police, I’ve really got to object to this across-the-board mass media condemnation of cops.  

You’d think all cops everywhere are evil in how they deal with those in a mental health crisis.  Sometimes, from what I’ve heard from actually listening to police officers, simply life as a cop is a “mental health crisis”.  Those men and women work hard.  I can’t imagine the jobs they have to maintain.  If all these people see is disorder, sooner or later they’re going to snap, lose it, and, in the worst of situations, really hurt those who have become disorderly.  

I certainly hope I never get crossways with a police officer who’s had a really bad day.  

Interesting to me has been the summary reaction against activists who, in loudly raising the issue against unwarranted police violence in their communities with the very loud battle cry, DEFUND THE POLICE.  Rather than actually paying attention to the activists, and their suggestions, the reactionaries panic, going from crazy to plain old inflammatory nonsense: 

Nobody wants to defund the police.  The so-called battle cry to do so was meant to get explosive attention to the issue of unwarranted police violence. No one is going to erase the police. However, some mental health advocates suggest the burden on police departments can be lessened with the assistance of mental health caseworkers.  

Is that drastic?  Scary?  Who’d have ever dreamed we could hire experts to assist hardworking police officers?  

The last seriously horrific episode I had was in 2014.  I was truly a loose cannon.  Irritable, angry, despairing, deluded, and letting the world know about it, I finally triggered a 911 call after what seemed to be threatening behavior was translated as a move toward violence.  

I cried when the cops came.  These men were gentle to me.  They took me to a psychiatric ward–which helped me.  I never got to thank those men.  But one thing is true: blanket attacks against the police in mass media, and in conversations, are just as ignorant as the “normies” all chattering because someone. . . 

. . . didn’t act right.  Compassion for one group doesn’t mean dispassionate contempt for another group.  Try to keep that in mind. 

As for 2014, there is a part of me that still hasn't gotten over the entire idea of people out pretending to be sensitive in the world as poets, and as artistic purveyors of sensibility, affection and emotion acting like such down and dirty curs when one of their own has a mental breakdown. I don't tend to frequent those readings any longer. I guess I'm too "negative".