Gone at Midnight, page 14
My research into the history of the Cecil Hotel may have deposited the raw imagery of suicide in my subconscious and now, intermittently throughout the day, my mind hit the space bar on grainy visions of men and women jumping from windowsills, their dresses and ties flapping in the air.
THE SIMULATION IS GLITCHING
My mind started to play tricks on me. One night, as I crawled into my cot in the corner of my tiny office, I heard what sounded like footsteps coming from the floor above. I stopped and listened, turning off my fan (I can’t sleep without it, even in the winter). There were multiple other businesses who shared the office building out of which my company worked. But it was midnight.
While I had never heard someone there that late before, it was completely reasonable that someone had to finish up a late-night project. It could have also been a custodial worker, though they usually finished up several hours earlier.
Nevertheless, the building started to unnerve me, further confining me to my cot.
I began to have exceedingly strange dreams, too. One night I dreamt that reality was a simulation. In the dream, one of the simulation designers communicated to me through shadow puppets that I did live in a simulation but that I should stop worrying about it. It felt like a thinly veiled threat.
And I was registering what I can only call glitches. Even in my delirium, I knew that this was almost certainly the result of withdrawal from the antidepressants. Digital artifacting, pixels randomly conspiring to look like faces. Audio blips during music that resembled demons chirping. Seeing the same people over and over again on the street, as though reality were trapped in a loop.
Even though I stabilized somewhat in the coming year, the glitches were replaced by synchronicities. Highly charged words, phrases, and actions echoed all around me, on the radio, on billboards, etched into bathroom stalls. And the more I researched the case, the more intense the synchronicities got.
I dreamt of Elisa again. Once more, she was aware that I was investigating her case. In fact, she was on her computer, researching my research, posting about it on Tumblr. In another dream, Elisa seemed to be falling in a black vacuum, her limbs and hair suspended while she mouthed words of caution to me in slowed silence. Dream Elisa always wore her red hoodie.
The footsteps returned at odd intervals. The pace of the footsteps sometimes quickened to a scampering, as though a child were running through the hallway. It was certainly possible, I told myself, that an employee was finishing up some work and had brought their child along.
But at midnight? It was always at midnight.
I didn’t like leaving the office and entering the hallways at night because I wanted to conceal the fact that I was sleeping there. While I could pass off some encounters, it would be hard to explain brushing my teeth in my pajamas in the employee bathroom.
But the sounds started to legitimately unnerve me. Was someone else living in the building at night?
One night I changed into normal clothes, crept into the dark hallway, proceeded to the elevator and pressed the button for the floor above. When I got there, I peeked out first to look down the hallway.
Nothing. None of the lights in any of the offices were on.
Suddenly I remembered that some of my colleagues had taken to putting a piece of plastic in a back-entrance door to make it easier to get inside on a whim. Is it possible that one of the many transients passing through the alleyway behind the building had seen them do that and used the open door to get access?
But what about the running sound? A chill went through me. As a child, I had a particular fear of the sound of something scampering quickly through the darkness outside my room. Now, years later, that fear manifested into reality.
I was about to abandon my inquiry and return to my cot when I heard a clicking sound at the end of the hallway, where the glow of the red Exit sign cast the only light.
Summoning my hydrocodone courage, I traversed the hallway like a character in one of the Alien movies.
When I reached the exit, I pushed open the door and emerged into a staircase that led to the roof. This is really dumb, I told myself, as I ascended the stairs. Seriously, this is really dumb. I pushed open the door to the roof.
Our office was probably the tallest building in the area and so there wasn’t much surrounding light. The roof was almost entirely featureless. I could see the outline of a couple maintenance contraptions.
I went to the edge and looked over. There was a row of spikes twinkling in the moonlight. “Bird control” or “roost modification,” erected by city officials and building owners to protect private property. The spikes looked like long needles that might be used to medicate an elephant. There were hundreds of them, extending out a foot from the ledge.
I was not planning to jump—not consciously, at least—but I vividly imagined nicking myself on the spikes or impaling myself and having to wait for the police to come rescue me while hanging in agony. In addition to preventing pigeons from roosting, the bird-control spikes might serve as a suicide deterrent as well.
This is what’s known as a happy accident.
I went back to the door to the stairwell. It was locked.
“Oh fuck you, God!” I yelled with a chortle of rage. Nothing infuriates me more than when I am sabotaged by my own erratic behavior, which is God’s fault, of course.
I paced and started to panic. The situation wasn’t life-threatening. I could have lasted the night up there, but how the hell would I explain having to be rescued off the roof in my pajamas? “I heard footsteps while laying in my cot.”
Suddenly, I remembered that on a Friday night of drunken debauchery after work, some of my colleagues had scaled a narrow passage connecting the roof to a vestibule-like platform of windows outside our office.
I realized that my situation seemed eerily analogous to Elisa’s. If one follows the “psychiatric accidental death” explanation to its logical conclusion, Elisa died because of a perfect storm of ailments converging—mania (possibly a “mixed state”); withdrawal from meds; delusions; and possibly hallucinations—which convinced her to climb into the water tank.
This explanation was beginning to make more sense to me. After reading the autopsy and then experiencing my own nervous breakdown and its attendant “glitches,” it became clear to me how easily a normal situation can turn into a complete nightmare in only a few quick steps.
I hopped down onto the passageway and shuffled sideways toward the open-air vestibule-type structure. Below me was a fatal fall. But I made it.
Now let’s hope one of the windows is open, I thought.
Later, I would recall my experience after reading a news story about a young woman, Jamie Minor, who, after demonstrating “erratic behavior” on surveillance video, tried to sneak back into her work office but got trapped in a large ventilation shaft. She had no way out of the shaft and likely died after days of dehydration. One of the more horrifying deaths by misadventure. Friends and family later confirmed Minor had been suffering from bipolar disorder.
The window was open, fortunately. I climbed through and slithered back into my cot.
SUICIDAL IDEATION
Much debate has taken place regarding whether Elisa’s death was a suicide. After all, she was a diagnosed depressive with bipolar disorder. Around 80 percent of bipolar patients contemplate suicide, compared with only one in twelve of people in the general population. New data suggests that between 25 percent and 60 percent of those with bipolar attempt suicide at some point. Between 4 percent and 19 percent succeed, making suicide the number one cause of premature death for those with the illness.
However, suicide by drowning is rare, representing only about 1 percent of successful attempts in 2012 (compared to approximately 50 percent by firearm; 25 percent by suffocation/hanging; 16 percent by poisoning/pills). Many who consider the suicide question in this case ask why Elisa wouldn’t have just jumped off the roof. It was right there in front of her, as opposed to the water tanks, which were tall and difficult to access.
The Cecil Hotel is infamous for its suicides, so much so that locals call it the “Suicide Hotel.” And it’s especially well known for its jumping suicides. But jumping suicides are actually almost as rare as drowning, constituting just over 2 percent of victims.
But was Elisa suicidal? We know she suffered severe depression and bipolar disorder, but suicidality, chronic suicidal ideation, is a bit more complex.
Elisa wrote in her blog:
There is no physical manifestation of my “illness.” Would I become psychotic and want to off myself? I know I wouldn’t do anything rash like actually jump off a bridge. I’m too much of a coward. Instead I’ll just lie in my bed and let the days pass by. That’s my physical manifestation, sleeping for days in bed.
Elisa, even while denying that she would ever consider suicide, mentions psychosis as a possible factor that could change her mind.
On November 2, 2011, Elisa wrote the following on Tumblr:
Suicide is not an option for me but in the last 96 hours I have considered it to be a possibility multiple times. I am just that disappointed with the human race.
A few days earlier, on Halloween, she explained the reason in a post.
Exhaustion:
I’ve never been this physically and emotionally exhausted.
I’ve cried more tears than I can handle. My eyes are so swollen. My throat is hoarse. The bones in my body ache.
I’ve had only 2 hours of sleep.
What is significant here is that she had described the previous day as one of her best days in months. She said she nailed a job interview, found a box of aged French books for only $30, bought a snowboard, and watched Drive, one of her favorite movies. That she could fluctuate from such a high to suicidal thoughts in only a couple days underscores the volatility of bipolar disorder and the irrational nature of its mood swings.
However, at this point, it’s unclear whether Elisa had even been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The date of that diagnosis is uncertain. In a post in which she lists and describes her medications, she casually mentions a bipolar med.
“The other one is lamotrigine because apparently I’m bipolar as well?” she wrote.
Her full list of prescribed medications, accompanied by a photo of each of her different pills laid out, is as follows: Effexor, Wellbutrin, Dexedrine, Seroquel, and Lamotrigine.
Though stimulants can be helpful for some bipolar patients, many psychiatrists and general practitioners with experience in psychopharmacology raise their eyebrows at the suggestion of combining an amphetamine, such as Dexedrine, with bipolar meds. In fact, many medical professionals view it as dangerous. After all, if a patient is bipolar, particularly a patient like Elisa who had episodes of severe hypomania, why would you be prescribing a medication that activates the brain and could trigger mania and cycling?
Additionally, Wellbutrin is sometimes thought to be a problematic drug for people with bipolar because of its activating, stimulant-like effect. Other doctors think Wellbutrin can be a “secret weapon” against bipolar. The general consensus is that a patient experiencing severe hypomanic episodes should not be taking an antidepressant without also taking a mood stabilizer or a drug specifically for bipolar. This may have been the case with Elisa, whose autopsy shows the presence of Wellbutrin and Effexor but virtually no remnants of Lamotrigine or Seroquel.
It is thus possible to reasonably conclude that Elisa was experiencing severe hypomania, mania, or a “mixed episode” during the elevator surveillance footage. She may have even been experiencing psychosis. But does mania or psychosis necessarily lead to suicide? Or death by misadventure? Is there overlap?
By the next year, Elisa’s struggle with depression and bipolar was continuing to take a psychological toll.
I just don’t see my depression having a legitimate support.
No I don’t self-harm. No I’m not in an abusive relationship in fact my boyfriend is in many ways, perfect for me and a nicer, sweeter more supportive guy could I have met and I’m very lucky I did. Sure I think about suicide but I don’t want to kill myself and unless I become schizophrenic I don’t think I will kill myself.
Elisa may not have been aware of the overlapping symptoms shared by schizophrenia and severe bipolar disorder. Because bipolar disorder can induce psychosis, including hallucinations and delusion, it is often confused with schizophrenia. In his book Another Kind of Madness, Stephen Hinshaw wrote that his father was misdiagnosed as schizophrenic for decades before doctors finally identified the problem as bipolar disorder.
That Elisa went off her mood stabilizer meds, perhaps abruptly, speaks to the possibility that the psychosis she may have experienced the night she was recorded in the elevator would have felt like schizophrenic symptoms. Thus, one cannot rule out that Elisa followed through with her vow of taking her own life at the perceived onset of schizophrenia.
It is just as likely that a severe hallucination or delusion convinced Elisa that she needed to hide in a dark, quiet spot. It wasn’t until she hit the water that she realized she could not reach the top and there was no way to climb out.
HALLUCINATIONS
Did Elisa hallucinate something that made her take refuge in the water tank? Bipolar disorder can cause hallucinations and psychosis. Many people with bipolar disorder report that they are able to experience hallucinations while understanding that they are not real. Others can not make that distinction.
In her blogs, Elisa references a dizzy tunnel-vision sensation and a variety of physical ailments related to her illness, but she does not once describe a hallucination.
In her hypomanic rants, though, she certainly displays the signs of having extremely powerful delusional thoughts. And on the day she disappeared, she was off her mood stabilizer and bipolar meds. This may have triggered an unusually strong manic episode that may have included hallucinations.
Some examples of hallucinations reported by people with bipolar include the following:
• Seeing faces in random patterns, like wallpaper, rust stains, etc.
• “Shadow persons,” often caught in peripheral glimpses.
• Dark demons that cuddle beside them in bed, breathing on their neck.
• Static men, with skin like the static from a TV.
• Someone running by really fast—(one Redditor reported frequently seeing a person in a white hoodie).
• Someone standing at a distance and watching them.
• “a sentient melting photograph” [fascinating description I found on Reddit].
• People whispering or singing, sometimes urging one to take a certain action.
• Train whistles when there’s no train around.
• Humanoid creatures or monsters.
• Thoughts and inner dialogue becoming unbearably loud.
• Hypnagogic hallucinations, which occur during the transition to sleep.
• Hearing distinct voices in white noise or static.
• False memories.
• Shapes of varying colors that float around and shift.
• Phosphenes, seeing images behind closed eyes.
We task our brains, the most mysterious biological organ on the planet, with transforming raw sensory data into a usable format that we experience as our senses of sight, sound, smell, hearing, and touch. Sometimes, however, our minds show us fragments of a world that is not there. The visions can be truly horrifying for people who experience them.
IT WORSENS
The extent to which hypomania disrupted Elisa’s life is massively under-reported in most articles and comment threads about the case. Her bipolar disorder seemed to worsen over the course of 2011 and 2012. It is, of course, possible that she simply began to recognize the symptoms more and more readily acknowledge and examine the extent to which it was affecting her life.
Bipolar disorder can easily be confused as depression until the hypomanic episodes become evident. Elisa suggests that for years she was rendered bedridden with crippling depression. But the hypomanic episodes seem to have intensified in the years of her writing. When she starts her college courses, more and more of her posts are incoherent stream of conscious diatribes written in all-caps. In many of these posts she acknowledged that she had not slept in twenty-four hours or more and hashtags them #hypomania. She wrote posts entitled “Adventures in Hypomania.”
On June 1, she wrote a lengthy testimonial to her hypomanic episode:
For your viewing pleasure . . . my current adventure in hypomania
I haven’t slept in 24+ hours . . . Ok google let’s see [how] you define hypomania
• Inflated self-esteem or grandiosity (MY SELF-ESTEEM CAN HANDLE ANYTHING!!!)
• More talkative than usual or pressure to keep talking I AM SENDING INTENSIVE MULTITEXTS ABOUT RANDOM THINGS TO FRIENDS!!! ALSO I AM WRITING A LOT ABOUT MYSELF AND PUTTING IT ON THE INTERNET
• Distractibility (e.g., attention too easily drawn to unimportant or irrelevant external stimuli) . . . in math class I wasn’t paying attention because I was working on my BRILLIANT EXTRAORDINARY IDEA and sketching madly . . .
• Increase in goal-directed activity (either socially, at work or school, or sexually) or psychomotor agitation . . . I WILL DO ALL THE THINGS I HAVE PUT OFF BECAUSE I CAN DO THIS I AM BATMAN
• Excessive involvement in pleasurable activities that have a high potential for painful consequences (e.g., the person engages in unrestrained buying sprees, sexual indiscretions, or foolish business investments). This has yet to happen to me but OH BOY I LOOK FORWARD TO WHEN I DO!!!!
I’m not psychotic enough that I will jump off a bridge to test this brilliant, spectacular theory I have in [my] head.
