Hey, Come Here

Photo by Tim Barber

My name is Glori Anderson from Niles, Illinois. I didn't want to come here. When I came here, I got scared. Everyone was sleeping—the whole place was sleeping. I think they were all overmedicated. My psychiatrist told me, "You are not—NOT—mentally ill." I had attention deficit syndrome since I was five years old, and I am 60 now. I also have severe anxiety disorder. It's so awful, you have no idea how awful it is. The attention deficit syndrome makes me hyper. I get hyper. I think I even had it when I was two years old. I remember. I remember being two and being very, very hyper. When I came here I was scared. There were people all over and they were all sleeping. You couldn't get them up! But little by little, I changed my mind. Now I love it here. Severe anxiety disorder all my life. You pick up the phone and you call everybody when you're worried. You call your friends constantly saying, "Help me, help me, help me, I'm so anxious." The biggest problem is my mother. She is mean, nasty, cruel, and she can be vicious. She calls me the f-word—how do you like that? My own mother calling me the f-word. I will never live with her. We would kill each other. Seven and a half months ago I almost died from Zyprexa and Depakote. I don't even know what these drugs are—nobody ever explained them to me. I got a new psychiatrist and he told me, "You are not mentally ill. You have never been. You are just excitable." And he always tells me, "You better calm down." When I'm hyperactive, I knit, I clean house, I read—I read everything I can get my hands on. I write. My big thing is writing. I keep a diary every day. And I write down everything. I write every single day. I'm Jewish and Spanish. My father died at the age of 59. When he died, I almost died. My mother would not allow me to grieve for my father. She would not allow me to cry. She told me if I cried she would have a nervous breakdown or lose her mind. We couldn't get her out of bed—that's how heartbroken she was. She won't go to church. She blames God for his death. She never used to be cruel or mean or nasty or vicious. This has just been lately. My friend gave me this book. It is out of this world. I'm on page 321. I'm coming to the part where Nicholas and Alexandra have been killed. They chopped them up in little pieces and put them in drums. They killed them, chopped them up, and put them in drums. And I read about Rasputin. She gave him millions of dollars, Alexandra. My father is from Russia. He was born here. My Jewish grandmother was so in love with me, but I never got along with my Spanish grandfather. He told my mother, "If you want to become a Jewish woman, it's fine with me, Conchita." They told her she had to have a mikva. Do you know what that is? It's a ritual bath to make you Jewish. So my father said, "Fine, you don't have to be Jewish." Then one day I said to my father, "I want to go to Catholic church, Dad." He said, "Whatever you want, whatever you want." So I went to the Catholic church at 13 years old, praying for everybody, and I've been praying for everybody ever since. In my church, they called me forward—I'm going to cry—they called me forward with three other people, and I am a minister of praise. That means that I pray 30 minutes every day for all the sick and dying of the parish, for people who want my prayers, for people who need my prayers. I've seen many miracles. We prayed for a woman that could never get pregnant—NEVER. She had a child. One of my best friends had a tumor as big as a shoe inside her. They were going to operate, but she went to the washroom and the tumor came right out in the toilet. All we did was pray. When my dad died, my mother went to sleep. She really hates God. She says, "God hates my husband." She went to sleep one night, and she saw a circle of lights. And she got scared. She screamed out my dad's name and instantly, the lights disappeared. She came once to church. The day they commissioned me as a minister of praise, she came. She was shocked. The priest made a little speech about what a minister of praise is about and then we all went to the Holy Family room and they had a big banquet for us. That was one of the happiest days of my life. I was married to a millionaire—I never cared. He had a screw machine shop. He did coal heading. You know what coal heading is? Second operation screw machine parts. I was very young, and I was studying the piano since I'm eight years old and I was going to be a concert pianist. I met him and my parents were hysterical when I said we were getting married. But my mother loved him so much. Every Friday he would send her two dozen long-stem roses. I've been all over Europe. I've been to Hawaii three times. I've been to Las Vegas twice. I've been to Arizona twice. I've been to New York. I met Johnny Carson, Buddy Hackett, Louis Armstrong, Barbra Streisand, Sonny and Cher, Pearl Bailey. Bobby Darin I saw live in Las Vegas right before he died. I've led a truly unbelievable life. But I always thought I was mentally ill. I thought I was bipolar. I'm not bipolar. The doctor says no, and he is the head psychiatrist of this whole building. I'm on a very high dosage of one bottle of pills. I was taking 20 bottles of pills a day, easy. He told my mother, "Mrs. Goldberg, Glori is off all medication except Seroquel." But when they gave me Zyprexa and Depakote, I kept collapsing. And one day I collapsed in front of a squad car and a policeman. I said to him, "I'm not a drug addict. Please don't look at me like I'm a drug addict." And my mother was driving by and she started screaming, "That's my daughter!" Oh, my bus is here. I have to go. Remember—I have led an unbelievable life. GLORI ANDERSON