A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise

A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise : A True Story about Schizophrenia by Sandra Allen

    When I worked in an elementary school there were children who we now refer to as “on the spectrum.”  The spectrum is long and curved and so some of the children were very high functioning and some not so much.  There were other children who were just plain struggling emotionally and while they were often considered ‘the problem child’ I couldn’t help wonder what it was like to BE them, to be inside their heads trying to make sense of us and the world.

    I thought of this the whole time I read A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise.  What must it be like to be inside the head of someone with schizophrenia. Well, author Sandra Allen does her best to help us by introducing us to her uncle Bob.

    While she was growing up the author didn’t know much about her uncle but what she heard and that was that he’s crazy.  He came and went a lot because it’s hard to live with someone who can’t make sense of what’s in their head.

    No one knows really when Bob’s head turned on him. Studies are inconclusive and much of what we know about schizophrenia is old information, boys develop this condition more than girls and at a younger age, but late teen to early twenties during which traumatic experiences happen seem to be constants. In Bob’s case there was a divorce, custody consideration, bullying in school and getting in with a group who were into trouble with drugs and alcohol. The mind does strange things while trying to cope. By the time he was about 14, his father committed him to a horrible place to “get better.”

    One day out of the blue Bob sent his niece his autobiography, typed all in single spaced non punctuated caps.  There were sixty pages of what could be considered the ramblings of a crazy person.  But the author was intrigued about this family member who was only talked about occasionally and never in good terms. So she started to read it.  She talked to family members, she did her research on the condition and when Bob was doing the talking she reworked what Bob was saying so it would make sense to us (punctuation certainly helped.) It turns out Bob had a firm control over his thoughts and his chronology. In the end what we have is just what I had been wondering about all those years in school.  We get a look into what it’s like to be inside his head. And how it feels.