A Story About Back Story

A little more about the background of the script. When it was first written as a short, the character of Shore just sort of appeared. He was a very simple character - kind of hapless yet happy-go-lucky. He was a bright, young, good-looking kid who just happened to be homeless and had no back story to explain how he got that way. In the first draft of the feature length script, he acquired an element of delusional behavior. But still, no explanation of how he ended up homeless or delusional. This is the story of how he acquired his back story.

Let me back up a little more ... to when my older daughter Wendy was 13. She had a bad habit of getting up several times during the night, going downstairs to the kitchen, opening the refrigerator door, closing it again, and then returning to her bedroom. Over and over. She had other weird habits too. She would spend hours in the backyard running back and forth on the rocks that formed a border between the grass and flower beds.

She came to me one night and told me that she was very afraid, because she was hearing voices. She could not make them stop. One of the voices was the voice in the refrigerator. It kept asking for someone to help it get out. Another voice was in the iceplant in the backyard. Again, someone or something begging to be released. The same thing with coke bottles in the movie theatre. Cap on, cap off. A voice inside that only Wendy could hear, unrelenting.

This is one of the things that makes a mother's blood run cold. When your child hears voices, and can't make them stop, that is a very, very bad thing. Even someone who's never taken a psychology course knows that this is one of the signs of psychosis.

And so began a series of visits to psychiatrists. They prescribed medication, but I was afraid to give it to her because she was so young. By the time she was 16, she became so removed from reality that I had no choice. My brilliant girl who used to get "A's" and "B's" in elementary school was now getting all "F's."

But the medications we tried either made her gain weight, or fall asleep, or jittery, or just plain didn't work. We went through just about everything. We went through four psychiatrists until we found someone competent. Wendy is now on a combination of three drugs that keep her relatively stable emotionally and mentally. However, there is a trade-off. She sleeps well into the afternoon. And one of the medications, clozaril, carries the potential deadly side-effect of a lowered white blood count. In order to receive this medication, by federal law, she must go to weekly blood tests. At the time we were filming Defying Gravity, her blood count was erratic, so I was taking her twice a week. Furthermore, the pharmacy will only dispense enough of the drug to last until the next blood test. So, if she's getting weekly blood tests, she only gets a week's worth at a time. More often than not, the lab will forget to FAX the results to the pharmacy, so I'll drive all the way over there (there is only one pharmacy in Escondido that carries Clozaril), and they will refuse to give it to me until they get verification from the lab. For some reason they don't do this on their own until I drive over there and yell at them.

I began to understand that this is how so many mentally ill people become homeless. It is almost impossible to navigate the system whether you're competent or not. Even missing one or two days of meds can result in a meltdown for a schizophrenic person.

You might wonder just what is the big deal with the meds. If you listen to Tom Cruise, no one needs meds for anything - just a balanced diet and exercise.

From the clozaril website:

The risk of suicide in the general population is only about 1%. But people with schizophrenia are at a much greater risk of suicide. Approximately 30% to 40% of people with schizophrenia attempt suicide at some point in their lifetime. About 10% will actually die by suicide. In fact, suicide is the most common cause of premature death among people with schizophrenia. And the suicide rate may be even higher for people with schizoaffective disorder.

Wendy was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder in 2004. This means she is not only schizophrenic, but depressed. The first time she cut herself with a razor was in 2004. Fortunately, she had the sense to come to me and show me what she'd done. I took her to the hospital emergency room - not so much for the wounds (which were superficial) but for immediate psychiatric support. They asked her, "Were you trying to kill yourself?" She said "no". "Then you can go home," they told her.

The second time she cut herself, she again came to me and showed me her bloody arms. "Wendy, why did you do this?" I asked her. She replied, "Because the voices told me to."

This is why she takes medication. This is why I will not leave her alone for more than a few hours. And this is why I will never see another Tom Cruise movie.

Schizophrenia is possibly the only condition in our society that carries a stigma and invites ridicule. When I explain to people what makes Wendy different, I tell them she has Asperger's Syndrome (her original diagnosis). It's much more socially acceptable - even quirky and winsome - to be slightly autistic. I'm working on my ability to give the honest truth about my daughter. She's schizophrenic.

Consider this movie my first awkward step toward that honesty. And maybe one small rip in the blanket of shame surrounding this condition.