7121 Lonzo
With Eva de Broche des Combes
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12/19/2019 MD (DR.) A. SPYRIDON PATIENT: MR. E TAYLOR I just can’t wrap my head around this case, it’s been close on 10 years and we still haven’t made any headway. Taylor is definitely suffering from some extreme deep-rooted depression dating back to his youth, but due to his optimistic nature I have had to revise my position numerous times now on potential prognoses, I don’t even want to think about the impact it will have on the medical boards index of existing mental illness.
To recall the first afternoon we did a session at the house, he looked substantially more at ease there than at the Clinique. We did quite a few sessions there since then, at least 2 a week. I remember the place being clean and well looked after, the furniture were original throwbacks from the 1970’s. A few odd occurrences came up on some of the other occasions when I was there, I can’t quite explain it but I feel like there is something unearthly about this place.
A strong sensation of curiosity overwhelming me, I took a drive past Taylor’s house one night. I would be lying if I said that it did not make me feel uneasy afterwards. There, in the second story window – what I remember to have been the kids room from my previous visits – he was sitting, in the dead of the night, gazing ahead as if that mountain rising up behind his house would perform some divine gesture. It gave me the same sensation I felt the other day after we had just closed a session in the house, I had walked over to the sliding door to look out onto the patio. What I saw were hundreds of baseballs laying around on the ground in the backyard, an eery site, I get goose flesh just thinking about it.
His intensity makes me shudder. He rolls that strange dice constantly, I have the feeling it calms him down, distracts him from the emotional talks we have. I asked Shirley to find out what these dice were, but she came back to me with a half-baked explanation that it used to be a prop from a popular form of gaming before the year 2000. This just reaffirms my notion that he is lost, no, present on a different plane, or maybe that is not even the right description… Taylor has ceased to adhere to the social norms and standards familiar to most, by locking himself away in that house without any form of technology aside from an old television, analogue telephone, and some odd home-made satellite device. He is waiting for something he refuses to talk about. Both his older brother and younger sister have attempted to break into his psychosis for decades, and now that it has grown into an exigent circumstance they are standing at an arms length, fearing that their attempts might only push him further into his abyss.
The session I had with both siblings was interesting but peculiar, they mentioned that something particularly significant happened to them in the year 1982, they said it was an undisclosable matter pertaining to illegal immigration, and that the authorities had forbidden any talk on the subject matter since. They could not go into any details, only to say that Mr Taylor had been the most touched by it, whereas the two others had been more rationally sane in dealing with the event. I suspect that this was the catalyst. What could have been so monumentous? Sometimes when he slips into a vacant state he mumbles that he wants to go home, and although I believe that he comprehends where he is, he seems to long for some past encounter. To enter a feeling he once had. In his words “It is the salvation, the way to right the wrongs, before it’s too late.” I have concluded that he must be talking about his own past mistakes? Or could it be something on a larger scale, mankind perhaps? Seems unlikely! Whatever it is, I am certain it has to do with what happened back in ’82.
Another disturbing habit Taylor seems to have is collecting pot plants with dead flowers. He has lined his shelves and counters with them, when I asked him about it he told me that they would be the sign that he’s returned. “Who is ‘he’?” was my question. Taylor didn’t answer. Generally our discussion is over after moments like these, his eyes go blank and it’s like I am not there in the room with him. On other occasions he speaks about collecting species, that he has to be ready for the arrival, but as far as I can gather from the background check Shirley did, he has never worked for any Botanical or Fauna et Flora organisations. Perhaps it’s a hobby he used to share with someone, ‘he’ perhaps. Records show that he has had no close friends for at least the last twenty years, he is on the maximum prescribed dosage of Haloperidol since 2005, and doctors before me had tried all there was on the market on him without any results.
What’s bizarre is the lack of tendency to want to commit suicide. Is the hope of this supposed return somehow keeping him alive? This brings me back to the start of my dilemma, how am I supposed to diagnose this and treat it before he slips further into his state. He has clearly worsened since our first rendez-vous, and if it were not for this cryptic communication and clear lack of interest in technology, I would almost be tempted to pin the entire episode on the tumultuous cyclonic frenzy an average human has to endure when they enter the world of social media and the liberating world of internet. We have had quite a number of cases since the onset of 2010, all related to modern tech, smart phones mostly, computers, but there is the common thread in all of them. Mr Taylor is clearly an exception.
