1. Zachary Schneller
April 17, 2014
Paul Bogard
Sick of being Sick
“He who looks into the abyss realizes that there’s nothin’ looking back at him, and the only
thing he sees is his own character, Ricky. You understand, bud? The abyss? The shit abyss?”
(Jim Lahey, Trailer Park Boys)
Age 11: The Opening Act of Agony
I stood in front of the mirror in my room at Fairfax hospital and observed my 59-
pound frame. My parchment skin clung to my jutting xylophone ribs like saran wrap. My
shoulders stood out like bony baseballs, and the tendons in my neck were entirely visible.
Mother stood beside me in tears. She thought I looked like a concentration camp victim, but I
was a victim to Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Nothing in my stomach stayed there for too
long. Food was some volatile chemical inducing copious vomiting rather than healthy
nourishment. Who knew that in six years I would be shamefully overweight and in the mental
ward?
Over the years my body seems to have a bounty ascribed to it by some devilish form
of fate—perhaps from the masters of the universe and sick jokes. At one moment my body
wrung itself out like a dirty dishrag and the next it became inflated with flesh—an accordion
time holds at both ends. My brain made things worse because it was not intact—even at
birth—and with every drastic bodily shift it silently hid behind the scenes—watching
everything through my eyes like a criminal mastermind.
Naturally the sum of these parts amounted to my body being unintentionally
objectified because of not being able to be in control. My sicknesses mutated me into a kind
of freak—an unnatural product of physical and mental disease. These afflictions rendered me

2. into a used plaything—something the gods had fun with for a little while and then
discarded—and maybe they haven’t finished. Either way fuck them with a white hot branding
iron—because I am sick of their puppet strings jerking me around when I don’t have a say in
what dance or cartwheel I do for them next. I am sick of being sick.
My childhood could be characterized as series of spectacular medical mishaps more
so than educational and personal landmarks. Little Stevie had his football trophies and I had
my collection of Asthma inhalers and Peak Flow meters. The first half of my childhood was
punctuated by asthmatic incidents while the latter half was affected with illnesses usually
involving the violent torrent of semi digested food. Such was the case with my Inflammatory
Bowel Disease.
I grew to fear food. The kid who used to eat Tabooli out of his high chair and snack
on sushi in Kindergarten was afraid of crispy chicken sandwiches and steak and cheese
strombolis (then again the more salty foods do seem way more threatening than foreign
cuisine). I went to the bathroom to puke more than I went to my locker to get books. My
parents were concerned of course, but I suspect the amount of times I vomited everyday
faded into normalcy. It didn’t help I tried to stay out of school every time the food went up
instead of down. I began exaggerating about the number of times I would puke in a day at
school. At one point the number went up to seven. I was more concerned about using the
illness as an excuse to get out of school. Getting help became secondary to missing class.
Sixth grade was fresh for me like a newly minted coin. I had only begun feeling
around the circumference and admiring the crevices. September brought new experiences,
but not many new friends. The novelty effect generated by the initial middle school
experience had something to do with this. Navigating through the bowels of middle school
while trying to be on time for everything kept me busy, but not busy enough for a social life.
I couldn’t really dig my heels in and make a presence for myself amid the chaos of middle

3. school life. Everyone’s edges did not fit well against one another and more time had to pass
before they became rounded and malleable. I successfully hid my illness from my peers
because the amount of people that cared about me was limited. I didn’t draw any attention to
myself even when making sounds similar to women in labor whenever I hurled up spongy,
disgusting cafeteria food.
I did not think about the long term effects my illness would have on my body. My
tween brain was all about instant gratification. College and adulthood were thousands of
miles away. The cafeteria and the bathroom right after were just around the corner. I became
weak. My backpack seemed to grow two sizes too big as it strangled my diminished form.
For some reason I thought the ladies preferred the really skinny guy. I looked at my rail thin
body in the mirror after school, but I thought it was sexy and lean. Once my parents really got
a look at me they did not think so, which led to being hospitalized. After a week of bland
hospital food, an ulcer, and a colonoscopy, I got what I wanted. Sort of. The doc gave me a
three-month vacation from school and the school gave me a tutor. I won.
School was abhorrent to me because of my introversion. I preferred my own company
to others. I had my own solitary pursuits at that age like reading and writing. The number of
books I read rose—the books scattered around the sides of my bed like wishing well coins—
and my mind became well oiled for one so young. My peers chattered and flapped around
like exited magpies that just found something shiny, and this scared me. Their aggression
withered my will to attend school. That’s why the vacation brightened my smile and my
immediate future. I wouldn’t have to deal with anyone for three more months, which at the
start felt like a delicious eternity. At the time being sick never felt so beneficial.
Did I want to be healthy? At this age I never thought about being healthy. I felt
unaware that my body was something that should be tended like a garden rather than a
punching bag. This disregard was a dangerous thing. When I did go to school with IBD my

4. sense of neglect followed me everywhere, and its impact or implications never hit me. The
state of my body never affected my emotions. Perhaps I was too young, too inexperienced.
A seed was planted in me that grew in such a way that it became more of a problem to
rid myself of in future illnesses. The seed grew while I bled from my ulcer that was the basis
of my diagnosis. Inflammatory Bowel Disease had me running everywhere: from school,
from food, from people. What is disturbing is that these things are not the best reasons to be
on the run. What was so reprehensible about school in the first place? I dreaded the constant
chaotic interaction. Perhaps something terrible would happen like an echo from an earlier
elementary school asthma attack. Perhaps I would be tangled up in a snare of an awkward
and embarrassing social situation.
This reaction implanted a kind of squirrel mentality in my developing brain to run
away from the slightest hint of danger. I think I wasn’t aware of what I ran away from.
Retreating from so much implied my life’s greatest pursuits were in fact problems. Running
away is a rapid withdrawal: not into a shell, but somewhere more vulnerable; like a cave that
became smaller and smaller as you faded into the darkness.
---
Age 16: The Pain Deepens
It seems with every advancement into the school system came with added medical
baggage. Every time another cycle of classes started I thought here we go again. I went
through school with a perpetual sense of déjà vu. Disorder at some point became the norm. In
elementary school there was asthma, in middle school there was IBD, and in high school
there was Rotovirus. Rotovirus is yet another illness related to not being able to keep down
food and additionally had an added punch of weakening the immune system. It is the unholy
bedfellow of Mono and Walking Pneumonia. All three dealt with diminished immune
systems and appetites as well as copious amounts of vomiting.

5. I remember the day it was diagnosed. I still blame the crispy chicken sandwich, the
one that put me off crispy chicken sandwiches for good. It tasted bad, but hunger conquered
the taste and I finished it. The crispy coating looked lumpy and dead and I’m not sure how
white the white meat was. Later on I thought how it festered in my stomach—a different sort
of acid far more dangerous than gastric fluid. To this day I still wonder if that old high school
standby was the culprit that led to another vacation.
The rest of 5th Period passed in relative peace, and I felt a slight twinge in my
stomach on my way to seventh. The whiteness of the walls seemed brighter and the blue and
gold lines that looked like racing stripes were blurry. The sound of incessant chatter in the
hallways ailed me more than usual. Nausea buried its many fingered claws into my stomach
as I sat down for Math. No big deal I thought it will pass. Nausea was nothing new and
neither was a probable near-future trip to the bathroom. I could probably shake it off. But I
couldn’t. The claws of nausea burrowed deeper, and I began to feel faint. The faintness
alarmed me. Coupled with nausea, this did not bode well indeed. A decision had to be made.
I raised my hand and asked to go to the nurse. The teacher looked at me and wrote the hall
pass with a visibly fast hand. I staggered on down to the nurse’s office and sat down in front
of her.
Concerned radiated out of her eyes as she took my hand in hers and said, “You’re
green.” I lied down on a cot sideways to balance my strange mix of sick feelings. My mom
was summoned and I got out of school five minutes early. I didn’t even get to miss much
class I thought with a faint pang.
As the day went on the faintness and nausea increased. I read a book miserably in my
bed until my lunch suddenly appeared in the back of my throat. Covering my mouth to stem
the tide, I ran to the bathroom and slipped in front of the door. I unleashed a veritable
projectile flood of vomit all over the carpet as the toilet stood five feet away silently mocking

6. me. That night was one of the worst of my life. My body seemed hell bent on expelling every
bit of good from me. I banished nourishment from my body faster than people who take in
nourishment—maybe not the right word—from hot dog eating contests.
I have never felt weaker at this point in my life. Sure I felt weak with asthma and
even weaker with IBD, but never have I been so assaulted by myself to such an extent. The
many rounds of vomiting punished me in the most visceral of ways. That feeling is closer
than something at arm’s length—something external—because it is inside and happening in
you right at that very moment. Forced degradation of one’s self in a way is far worse than
how someone else can degrade you. Your body becomes a battlefield, and you need to focus
to somehow not lose your shit (or your lunch). If you succeed, there’s a strange sense of
reward and accomplishment afterwards or else you just sink lower.
After losing so much fluid the next natural step of bodily degradation is dehydration.
My parents were alarmed. My mom in particular regarded me with large, open eyes and grew
hysterical. I was in a seat and I held on to her arm to steady myself and to keep me from
sliding on the floor. She feared for my life and called the ambulance. After many hours of IV
fluids the battlefield was finally silenced and the hysterical tempers were cooled. For now.
A visit to the doctor’s ruled out anything short term, and she diagnosed me with the
long, grueling battle that is Rotovirus, which is basically a milder version of that whole shitty
school day. I got a vacation for a month in a half. I hoped for at least a week and the doctor’s
words took me aback. I didn’t anticipate this. I felt somewhere between blessed and alarmed.
I learned some things about myself in the process. I could weather a beating my own
body wages against itself. I could grudgingly accept it in a way reminiscent of a prison
inmate who asks, “Are you going to take this shit, or give it to me willingly?” It’s almost like
I have something to prove by enduring so much. Do I have a thick skin? Is the capacity to
endure supposed to be a redeeming characteristic? It’s like I’m being tested by God the way

7. He tests Elijah to find Him not in the firestorm or the tornado—but in the still, small voice
inside. If this is a test, it is more like a jest to keep Him amused. I hope He’s having the time
of His life screwing me from the throne of Heaven hidden among the clouds. He keeps His
distance.
Maybe my high tolerance for illness is a good thing. One must develop a tolerance, a
shell, after years of torment. Maybe this could be a barrier for emotional pain as well, but I
don’t know. A sickness of the body is far different than a sickness of the mind. This requires
an even thicker shell made up of a different material—something like bone covering my
fragile brain. The layer on me at age 16 was egg-thin, and it wouldn’t take much to crack it
open and fry the yolk of my brain in cranial juices.
Control of my body was once again generously and involuntarily surrendered to the
malicious puppet master. The feeling of being on my knees brought no thoughts of prayer
and Jesus, but rather of horrible tasting bile and the open bottomless porcelain mouth. Toilets
all over waited in silent shadows for my precious liquids. Please feed us. I knelt before them
like they were altars of worship—gleaming white and shiny and filled with water not
intended for baptisms.
I couldn’t hide behind my introversion like in sixth grade. I had grown emotionally
since then and included many more people in my personal repertoire. They cared about me
and I cared about them. More inquisitive eyes pried into my life, and this wasn’t due to
anything bad, but yet it meant a lot of individual explanations.
High school felt abhorrent, sure, but nowhere near the amount garnered by middle
school. People were different. A sex joke seemed to linger in every conversation like a
persistent alcoholic aftertaste in a bad mixed drink. This meant more smiles, but also more
surreptitious talk behind raised hands. Everyone’s business became everyone’s business.
Curiosity levels of adolescents are naturally elevated because of developing bodies and

8. behaviors. Teachers had to be more sympathetic because of the new problems raising their
heads in their students’ lives.
My classmates and teachers noticed my absence with a marked concern. I didn’t give
them the dirty food-related details, but rather the time I had to be out. My creative writing
class missed my antics because I always shared my journal entries and received big laughs.
Classmates and friends on Myspace gave me kind words. Again, I had a tutor and a
manageable amount of work from school. The illness kept me in bed and miserable. My
meals were a bland circus of bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast. Rotovirus marked the end
of my junior year and the end of a long period of sanity. Little did I know how much my life
was to be changed my senior year.
---
Age 17: Psycho Shit and the Year of Insanity
Senior year is the most romanticized year of high school. Everyone says it’s the best
out of the four—the culmination of a significant length of time. It’s the year of the big prom,
the final year of bonding for many friends, the final year of devoting seven hours in a row to
school, the final year before the awe inducing graduation event. My most recent illness
robbed me of all of this. Senior year single handedly, irreversibly, and completely changed
my life and crushed my sanity. It would be a while before the broken shell magically
gathered up the tiny pieces and fit them together like a glass window.
One day early in September changed everything. I woke up and I bounced like a
spring from the bed to my feet. Something felt different, but I wouldn’t acknowledge the
feeling until I thought back on that strange day weeks later. I was high, and not from weed or
cocaine, but from the chemicals zooming around in my brain like bees on steroids. This was a
natural high, something far more potent from anything snorted or injected.

9. I took my seat in homeroom. I couldn’t sit still. Energy reverberated around my frame
and I gripped my desk to prevent myself from exploding. A best friend of mine entered and
sat down in the seat in front of me.
“Arthur!” I said, “What I want to do is run around the school. Just running around like
a fucking energizer bunny. Look at me. Feel my biceps, man. C’mon don’t leave me
hanging.”
“What? This is just government. Wait until you get to gym,” he said.
I pointed at him, “Aw, what a downer. Point and stare at you, Arthur! Take that!” I
made a gun with my thumb and index fingers and shot at him.
“You’re dead.”
“No I’m not. And you’re full of energy. Something’s different, man.”
“I’ll say. Hey, I swear to God I could power the bus today man. I just kept shaking,
nah’ mean? Trying to get people involved swaying to the rhythm of the bus.” I swayed in my
seat.
“That’s cool, man.” He avoided my gaze hastily.
The rest of the class came in and the teacher introduced the topic of the day. I cackled
and joked with him to his face. He looked surprised, eyebrows disappearing into his
forehead. When it came time for group work I turned around, searching, and a beautiful girl,
Tammy, caught my eye. I felt the confidence rise like a sudden blaze and I worked with her,
complimented her, and batted my eyelashes at her. She grinned in a way I found very sexy
and I tried to earn that grin by flirting. Before this (whatever “this” was) I never flirted, but
this was a new me. The old me never possessed an ounce of confidence. I was happy with the
new me. I had the whole class laughing. My role was firmly established.
Later on this feeling was described to me as “mania” and the more mainstream term
“insanity.” Only it didn’t feel wrong or bad, which is the accepted way to think about it. Oh

10. no. It was the best feeling I ever had, better than any orgasm. This lasted for days. My energy
levels were off the planet and if I stood still something kicked me in the ass and forced me
into another rapid, jerky movement. An infectious euphoria spread from my brain to my
tingling fingertips and toes. My voice gained a new velocity and volume in a machinegun
like burst of chatter. My sex drive increased from normal teenage horniness to a level through
which I could fuck Aphrodite for days.
I remember specifically as the weirdest night I have ever spent. Sleep was out of the
question, so that left room to do some pretty freaky shit.
I had a visual hallucination: a robot fighting video game on my computer that I played
with my PS2 controller. The colors were so vivid—starburst explosions—every time I fired
my weapon.
I connected my PS2 through electric cables, ran a game in the console, put a cable in
some spilled Arizona green tea, ran it back to the PS2, and convinced myself that this would
improve the graphics of the game because the essence of the tea would be infused with the
game—a samurai game—and this fit because both of them seemed to have Asian origins.
This ripe potential for fire didn’t hit me at all.
I had a boost of creativity, but a very strange sort. I twisted coat hangers from my
closet into appealing shapes I thought my friends would appreciate. They would love having
one. I composed plays in my head—even writing a soliloquy sung by a frog in a swamp
creatures musical.
My sex drive was high—a number followed by too many zeros—but no one was there
to benefit from my affections except all the inanimate objects in my room. I humped
everything that had a dick-sized hole. I lined a cylindrical case with red book sock material to
make a kind of crude fleshlight and I fucked it like a crazy person.

11. Does this alarm you? Thinking back on it, it sure alarmed me. You would be right to
feel alarmed. I lost control again, but I couldn’t resist. The puppet master drugged me with
something and didn’t even need to force me to perform better tricks. I performed them
voluntarily, and yet I had no control. This is a terrible feeling, something akin to a wanted
brainwash. Don’t you see? Everything becomes so simultaneously important and not
important and wires are crossed and messages are scrambled. My brain’s activity is strained
through a poisonous filter and kicked into a realm of shitty happiness. I was bathed in a glow
the way Stephen King’s monster, It, forced Bill and Richie into It’s orange deadlights
threatening with insanity. And it feels good.
My family and friends noticed my alarming shift, but I didn’t. How can you when you
feel great—when you experience perfect euphoria for the first time? Home is the sphere of
life where it dawned on my parents that something was dreadfully wrong with me. I never
thought about my behavior, what it meant, or how scary it was to my family. Even when my
parents began talking about sending me to the nuthouse, I was completely oblivious. My
brother later told me that he didn’t like me anymore at that point because of my unfamiliar
behavior. He was only 15 and too immature to understand the illness, that I couldn’t help it.
Never did I think: What have I done? I’m not sure if I thought at all.
Fall of 2007 to spring 2008 was the year I dub the “Year of Insanity.” At the end of
September and early October the doctor—the head doctor—diagnosed me with Bipolar I. My
manic tendencies far surpassed the hypomania of Bipolar II—the milder illness—and my
delusions was the other red flag. My symptoms had been compiled in various binders for
three weeks (two trips) at Dominion hospital. My sanity had disintegrated before the eyes of
my teachers, my friends, my family and most of all myself—it took my eyes the longest of
group to be fully adjusted to my new self. That year I paid three trips to the psyche ward and
it was the most eye opening, terrible, and beautiful experience of my life.

12. I remember being hungry at the hospital literally all of the time. It was strange. A
bottomless cavity seemed to exist deep in me and I felt that visceral feeling again. My body
called to be degraded by food instead of being degraded for lack of it. This time obviously
felt different because I took in rather than expelling. Dominion hospital has the best hospital
food in the world and otherwise I wouldn’t have chowed down so much. I waited for my next
meal with unbridled eagerness and anticipation of what would be served.
And what food! No Salisbury steak and meatloaf here. The staff served me all you
can eat shrimp, taco Tuesdays, a variety of chicken, vibrant and lush broccoli with long
stalks, varieties of fish, fresh eggs, wild rice, noodles, and much more. I became convinced
Dominion had such great food to encourage and tempt all of the people with eating disorders
to finally gain some weight. Taco Tuesday and Sunday brunch stood out the most. On
Tuesdays the staff noticed my fixation for tacos and served me a double lunch, which
included five tacos and various sides and fresh milk. It was so good. For Sunday brunch the
staff served Danishes, doughnuts, varieties of eggs, pancakes, and cereal. Maybe anorexics
and bulimics stayed in places abundant with donuts and Danishes—leading them into
temptation.
Dominion also had a sort of communal fridge, which patients could access with
permission. It became a hot spot for me. I drank cartons of milk and orange juice. It was here
I developed a taste for Granny Smith apples that endures to this day.
I also put on about 70 pounds because of my medication, which is the source of my
salvation and constant chagrin. Seroquel changed me the most. This pill stands out in my
mind the most because of how big it was—a 400-milligram monster. A yellow blimp. It
makes sense the medication with the biggest size would make the biggest impact. Seroquel is
a strong anti-psychotic with a slew of peculiar side effects. Seroquel induces intense hunger
and initiates a slow metabolism, which in turn causes a significant weight gain.

13. I left the hospital fat. My large belly confronted my eyes every night in the mirror. It
jiggled unfetchingly. My swelled shoulders and arms hung down at my sides ape-like. My
expanded face shrunk my lips, eyes, and nose. I repulsed me. Not many girls I knew liked
‘em thick. With that kind of weight gain and subsequent loss, the body accumulates a load of
stretch marks. These still exist and make me very self-conscious whenever I take my clothes
off. This repulsion became so great that I starved myself by eating little meals. A year later I
miraculously lost 50 pounds. All of my friends and family gave me those kind yet
uncomfortable comments that I had lost weight.
A new side effect has been added after taking years of the same eight medications.
My hunger has drastically shifted. I take most of the Seroquel at night, so I get hungry as if I
smoked a joint. Either I have to resist the hunger and be hungry the rest of the night, or
succumb to it and throw off my hunger for the following day. It’s a bizarre Catch 22. I have
many tallies for both scenarios, so I do not get hungry during the day that often.
Where am I now? Well, I’m about to get my bachelor’s degree. I’ve been on meds
now for about seven years and I hate taking them. I contemplate what would happen if I
rejected them. No more embarrassing side effects. It is very tempting, but too risky to go
through with. I would lose so much found ground.
My arduous predicament provoked me and something inside finally started to change
for the better. I had endured punishment once again but this time from a much more personal
angle. Discovery of the bipolar forced me to examine myself and change. The future
stretched before me and I had to take the right opening steps to ensure my course was defined
and that I wouldn’t be lost. I had a say in it this time. Once I had control, I forced my being to
change and willed into submission. With the help of medication and my head—my former
enemy—I was able to start the process to replace the manic mentality with something
beneficial. I burned the strings jerking me around and said, “That’s enough.”

14. This new mentality is something I still don’t completely understand. I became normal,
but what does that even mean? The weird stuff stopped—the hallucinations, delusions, and
mood spikes—basically anything deemed abnormal. People who knew about the struggle
noted my strong mental fortitude and those who were ignorant of it thought I was completely
normal.
Strangely, I didn’t derive much pleasure or gain a sense of pride after the beating
ceased. Part of me still recoiled like a hand from a burning lamp because that part would
always be affected by my ordeals and couldn’t change. This prevented much self-celebration,
but I was pleased by those who knew me and told me how much better I was. The truth is
that I am afraid. It’s like the strings binding me to normalcy are frayed and could snap at any
moment. However, as time progresses I become stronger as the time between senior year and
now increases. People say “normal” but I will never feel that way. Bipolar has left an
invisible mark on me and that will never go away. Furthermore as long as I live, the disease
will drain my finances to a certain degree, and many things can still change. I am uncertain,
but I am stronger than yesterday. All I have to do is take my medicine today and wake up.