Of course, under such conditions it is very difficult to save one’s life, and everyone here only broke down more, disfiguring, and devastated by the memories of his/her life in the free world. The main thing was that cruel irritation, distorting one’s soul; I remember that many years later I dreamed of it in a nightmare, in that crowded room, crowded so tightly, standing each other’s presence with a great effort, experiencing a cruel incredibly agony of neighborhood with their own kind – emotionally unbalanced comrades, beyond the limits of self-control. And this stay among such people brings everyone, who lives there, a strong mental injury, anger, and most importantly, as I later realized basing on my own example, entails the contamination of the symptoms of their diseases: you begin to think and feel like one who’s next to you, borrowing from him even the process of abnormal behavior that had seemed to you completely alien. I remember my fear of such transformation into a man with almost no traces of sanity, whose face bears uncovered repulsive beastliness, an eerie creature, hammered and trained by local personnel. And the first time when I got to the hospital, and, running ahead, I must say that I got there many times and for a long time, frankly, half a lifetime, for the first time there was not so hard, for at least, no one hurt me, and I was treated by others with quite a respect. But life passed in the grip of irritation, pain and despair, I must say, the maniacal energy does not guarantee total comfort, but at the same time I did not calm down and was drunk and merry. But yet, which is still nice – smart people. Yes, here you can meet them, gifted, talented, very interesting, highly cultured, which I had not met and certainly had not communicated in real life, even very short one. I was overfilled with delight of communicating with them; I admired those individuals: writers, translators who had more than one higher education diploma, wise, charming, even if drunk with their illness. I could be for them a sympathetic kind smart boy, whom they soon loved and began to consider as equal. In addition to the attraction, erudition and even charm, these people were exposed to torments which heavily burdened their lives. And the tortures of psychosis in some stages are enormous.
I did not even supposed then that I after some time I will have to suffer such pain which no one can stand, believe me; it can only be hatefully tolerated, coming to heavy madnesses. These madnesses happened to these people, and I could not understand all these nightmares, but I really wanted to support them somehow in difficult minutes. I was confused by the gusts of acute disease inside those who had only recently been in an idle mood. But people are various here. There are drug addicts, one can encounter good guys among them, but they are rare, most of them are all vile and completely immoral. That was here when I first saw drug addicts, they were few at that time. One of these guys was very attentive to me and even found something to admire in me during our intimate conversations with him. I had a kind of “trick”: I thought that I was capable of parapsychology.
A writer and a translator wrote a poem to me:
“Maître Sergei Mikhailovich Vassiliev, praise St. Petersburg and the whole country, having mastered parapsychology, on Basil Island.” (no rhyme preserved – Translator’s note) This sounds well, does not it? I was proud. Only one rascal spoiled my the festival of my life drunk with psychosis, which never left me within the walls of the house of sorrow. This manipulator got acquainted, gained trust, and when I was dismissed, called me at home, promised videotapes, but did not bring them, took money promising to bring them later, and left. I suspected a hidden catch, I told him that I really needed that money, to make him have the hiccups later, but already completely realizing that I was cheated, still gave a ten-ruble note to that sick poor addict. Hoodwinkers just started to appear, and I already hated them.
A maniacal exultation itself can be seen as an incredible joy from a huge success, which, with its enthusiasm, does not allow any grief to knock you sideways out of this happiness. But, unfortunately, this behavior has no proper path. Since it can only anchor a little. I shall explain: I thought earlier that if the issue with skin disease is resolved, I’ll be completely free me, there will be no barriers in my way. And this factual deliberation from appearance issues – a kind of maturity, on the one hand, was also a tragic impetus to a new disease; it first gave me that pleasing relief of which I had been dreamed for almost all my life. Freud just supposed similar ways of developing maniacal psychoses. It turns out that all this mood, overfilled with freedom, can generally drive mad a person who, in principle, was very close to such an explosion of emotions due to his/her temperament, which was not the best since early childhood, and this is the second and the most important cause of the disease. It is like this, and it’s not far to seek, one should only see its root causes originating from the past of a person, his/her childhood, his/her sinister memories, escaping from which he/she creates a world of illusions. But I became aware that it all happens in such way a very, very long time later, because all the horror of my past was hidden from me, forgotten and controlled by me.
For many years I have been looking for the reasons for what happened to me in anything, but not in the responsibility of my family. But nevertheless, leading experts of the city chose a simple final conclusion, i.e. a disorder of brain biochemistry, no more assumptions, and I already took it as my own personal defect, independent of anyone, which, I must say, put me in a very unpleasant situation, because it was a real muck, it turned out, that I myself was guilty of what was happening; I thought that was an congenital defect, and, thus, I considered my case as fatal. In this first my maniacal nightmare, all thoughts were mixed in my head, the confusion in my spiritual world was incredible; to be a god, a real one, in which I was absolutely convinced, and to be for some reason in captivity, and not in the best places. How? After all, I was truthful with everyone and wished everyone good. But I still tried to find myself. It’s not for nothing that I was here, there is a sense of my being in this disgrace, and I saw in the need to be placed behind the grill a kind of profound providence, the doctor told me so, without letting me to leave on Christmas holidays: “Take it philosophically”. In addition, and, I must say, I understood this literally and thought that he was just pretending not to let me leave, and that I would be back home before the holidays, I really wanted to get out, but the doctor, as you know, brought another meaning into this tip, namely that the New Year in a madhouse is “not bad”. Philosophy helped me, of course, greatly in my grief, but being at home on holidays is sacred, and, of course, I hoped until the last.
Meanwhile, the delirium gradually began to go away, and I already understood that