24, and Trying to Outrun Schizophrenia

He and Raquel were approaching their second anniversary. At dinner with friends, she bragged about Kevin’s ease with complex mathematics. As they waited for an Uber to take them home one night, he stood behind her on the curb, his arms wrapped around her, so big that he seemed to envelop her.

He liked to daydream about the future, when they would be “a typical family in a nice house,” like the one in which Raquel’s family lived, in Lynn, Mass. He would work from home, and in the evening, he would rise from his desk, stretch his back and play with their children in the yard. Raquel, who was familiar with this vision, rolled her eyes.

“Lynn is not your dream, honey,” she said. “Please.”

Privately, though, worries were eating at him. He was living on $300 in food stamps a month. His classes weren’t hard, but he often slept until midafternoon, straight through job interviews, therapy appointments, classes. He attributed this to his antipsychotic medication, which “makes me sleep more and more and more and more,” he said.

To counteract this, Kevin cut his dose in half, which made him less sleepy. Sometimes, if he had an important test, he would skip his dose altogether, “just to push the limits.” He hadn’t consulted his team about this, but, he reasoned, the time had come for him to start solving his own problems.

“I can’t stay in OnTrack forever,” he said.

Three months after moving to Boston, he still had not found a new psychiatrist or therapist. Maria kept nudging him about his insurance paperwork, trying to set up an intake appointment, but November passed, and then December, and it didn’t happen. Increasingly, when he had sessions scheduled with Maria, he wouldn’t show up.