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My schizophrenic triangle

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Mizrahi Lake Life Theater includes two schizophrenic parents with 100% mental disability, and a schizophrenic aunt herself, who is both the mother's twin sister and another resident in their home

Ofir Sagarsky

Imagine raising your parents around the time you learned to say a continuous sentence. You are in charge of solving the quarrels between them, teaching them the rules of conduct in the company and explaining to them how to talk to teachers in the school. Most of us - especially those born to the Y and Z generation who are connected to mother well into their fourth decade - sound like this is far-fetched and creepy. Mizrahi Lake calls it "life." That's how it is when two schizophrenic parents with a 100% mental disability are born, and when the plot also brings home the mother's twin sister, a diagnosed schizophrenic, who has lived there since their marriage began.

Mizrahi's parents knew her on the beach, but the innocent moment carried with her a load of stress over the years. "He started with my aunt in general, and she directed him to her sister. I think she has some regrets today about not having a family, having no children of her own and being a third wheel, even though she and my sister have always treated me like her girls. My mom and my aunt all the time, because they are identical twins, "she will return," I always treated my aunt like mom, but as a girl, I often felt unrelated, distorting parents' relationships and creating intrigues. My mother and sister are very connected from an early age. They are basically identical twins who grew up in the house and were the anchors of each other. And let's say goodbye and never separate. To me, they put my dad in them. "

The intrusive looks from the environment soon evolved into more complex questions, but Mizrahi portrays a completely different childhood than can be imagined. "I didn't know a kid who got as much love as I did. I felt like they were the most perfect girl on earth, and I still feel that no matter what I did and what I said, it's always a wonderful wonder for them. I was really smart in their eyes, because my cognition went very fast. My mom's cognitive, from the age of 4, they would consult me ​​about everything. It has less beautiful sides, but it has very developed me. I felt that my opinion mattered, that I had something to say. Later on, the fact that they were less attached to norms also allowed me to choose to go less Conventional. I think that's why my departure from the closet was pretty smooth, as was the choice to study theater. "

And where are the less beautiful parties?
"When I was little I went through a boycott, and I felt there was nothing to help me. I usually didn't feel different, because my parents always made me feel like I wasn't. If companies wore brands, they bought me, too. And still, I invited home only very close friends who I trusted, and in all She once came to sleep with a friend who a few days later told everyone not to talk to me, which is what happened. She said whoever stepped on my shoes would get lots of candy. These were expensive shoes that I really liked, and ruined them. "

In the absence of protective authority at home, Mizrahi tried to avoid telling her parents about the boycott, and when she did, her fears became valid. "I told my mom, and it just verified what I was afraid of - it hurt her terribly, but she didn't know what to do. What authority to address, how to handle it. I remember she was talking to the educator on the phone, and I whispered to her what to say. Mother admires her so she can help her. Years later my sister said that mother threw this girl some comment, made a round on her, and so maybe the boycott started. It can be. My mom is amazing and charming, but once in a while she can have an extreme and unsuitable reaction. " .

for example?
"I was recently in India with my sister, and I left a girlfriend's phone in case they were in trouble. Suddenly she calls and says my mom and my aunt filed a police complaint against dad, said he hit them, and now he's in jail. He's not a violent person, but it's hard to live with So they call the police to get him out of the house. He shouts, slams doors, talks to himself. It's complicated. " From that moment, she described, she and her sister were looking for ways to get him out of jail, "because it's not a place he can be or should be in. I asked his lawyer how a person who has known mental illness for years may be in jail, I wanted them at least transferred to the ward She said he was going to be there until he saw a psychiatrist, and it took three days. During that time, he suffered physical violence, sexual harassment and theft of a valuable watch he had. From there, they were transferred to a closed department, between murderers and rapists. " He received a restraining order from the house, and the same lawyer advised her to rent him an apartment.

The day I found out that my son was dealing with mental illness

The father's unwillingness to admit his illness prevents him from entering the hostel, a possibility that could have relieved the entire family in cases where he was removed from home. "In order to transfer him to the hostel," Mizrahi explained, "you need to apply for a rehabilitation basket, express your willingness to a social worker and then medical committees - be consistent in requesting rehabilitation, which is not possible for many mentally impaired, because consistency is not their strong side. A lot of the homeless people on the street are just mentally impaired who don't get treatment. I know that easily my father could have been in such a situation. "

The burden falls on the family. Mizrahi (Photo: Yakir Shukron)

Mizrahi Lake (Photo: Yakir Shukron, official website)

The 29-year-old Mizrahi teaches and directs at the Goodman Game High School, giving audition preparation lessons and her future to direct in the Yoram Levinstein acting studio. She lives in the Florentine neighborhood of Tel Aviv with two partners, and many jobs do not lead her optimistically to the end of each month. Thus, the idea of ​​renting another apartment for her father came down very quickly. "The first option was to bring him home to me, but I couldn't make it to my partnership, even though they were amazing. The second option, which did happen, was for him to go to his sister, who didn't want him."

She said, "The burden falls on the family because the help from the state is very limited. My father lived with her until he was 31, married and moved to his own home. He lost his mother at a very young age, so his sister had to raise him. My mother and sister were also encouraged to get married. To leave the family. My little sister was brought into the world because I insisted, and I often wonder if as a girl I had the awareness that I wanted someone with me. I don't remember who in the family said to me, 'Yes, that's why Grandma insisted they have children. Who cares for them when she is not. "

Mizrahi and her younger sister of three years ("the most important thing I have in life", by definition) are perfectly healthy, but the tangled family unit naturally led to even more complex questions, including the high risk of childhood schizophrenia (between 15% and 55%, According to Mizrahi, "although there is a tendency to skip a generation"). The criticism did not change their minds. "I hear a lot of people saying that mentally impaired people shouldn't have children, it's hard for me to say that," Mizrahi explained, adding that "the causes of schizophrenia are mostly genetic, and I hope that if it happens to me, there will be enough people left, and I won't be left alone. "My dad talks a lot about the friends who disappeared."

So what is schizophrenia? How does it manifest in your parents?
"The treatment leads to periods of silence, but there are active psychotic seizures, and they are experienced differently in everyone. My mother is mainly paranoid. When I was little, she held me by her hands and told me she was afraid to drop me, that people were watching her and that the cars were driving too fast. I told her not to worry and I hold her, which is pretty much explained by our whole relationship. "

Unlike the mother and her sister, her father denies his illness, which makes it difficult to treat him. "He is talkative in some situations, but it totally changes depending on the moment you caught him. He can talk to you in a normal way and then suddenly respond to imaginary voices in" Doo, stop already, leave me. "He doesn't admit he hears things, even when I ask him "She said he blames himself sometimes, saying, 'Yes, I was very nervous, I shouted, I was wrong,' but he does not define it as a disease. And he really doesn't feel sick. "

Is that something you get used to?
"Whenever we are in the middle of a conversation and it will leak out, it will constrict my heart. In those moments I see the potential of the relationship that could have been between us, and try to see my father beyond illness." Mizrahi is not angry with her father's denial and even sympathizes with his feelings. In her view, the so-called normative society may be just as crazy. "I have companies that go to callers and receive messages from parallel locations, others participate in Iwaska ceremonies. In the past, people with schizophrenia were considered tribal scholars because their consciousness is more open, otherwise, so what's the difference? I'm not out here against anyone, just thinking it's really all about definition".

We must talk about schizophrenia

This question is interesting, but in the reality test, the one who occasionally makes Iwaska better fits the company than a 100-person schizophrenic. "My father was removed from the neighborhood synagogue because he spoke to himself," Mizrahi recalls. "It hurt me a lot. He wants to feel smooth, to pray with everyone. Didn't disturb anyone, his anger was directed at himself and the voices he was hearing."

Choosing to tell the story I want to tell. Mizrahi at the rehearsal (Photo: Gilad Kaufman)

Mizrahi Lake during rehearsals for the dance performance she participates in (Photo: Gilad Kaufman, official website)

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The burden of parenting burdens on the backs of both sisters. The youngest one is studying psychology these days, but Lake chose what many call "no profession," at least financially. "It's a struggle that I have," she admits, "a lot of relatively simple things for other people, such as developing an independent way, accompanied by guilty feelings. My mother has always encouraged me to do what I want, but I always feel it comes at their expense."

Either way, Mizrahi is working, kicking and even winning the May Award at this year's Golden Hedgehog Awards 2018, but still having a hard time enjoying the path she chose. She studied directing at the Kibbutzim College of Art for three years. "Sometimes I wouldn't answer my parents on the phone," she said sadly, "because if I answered and knew there was a situation in the house that I needed to take care of, it would not end - it was now some two or three days I would be emotionally pumped up and unable to function."

When she was in her second year, her mother tried to commit suicide. "She swallowed pills, and my sister wrote me they were in the ER. I remember I had it back that day, and I just couldn't get sucked into it. I told my psychologist that I wasn't feeling well enough, wasn't giving myself enough. She asked what I needed to do to feel okay, and I understood That only if I lived with them 24/7 it would feel enough. They always needed someone there. It made me realize that no matter what I do - theater or something else - it will feel 'at the expense'. "

Arrangement of life

Mizrahi (Photo: Yakir Shukron)

I knew Lake in my studies at the kibbutz seminar. We weren't close to each other, and I knew nothing about her personal life, but her performances always impressed me with their color, daring and rhythm, which was characterized by mathematical precision. "My perfectionism in theater may have to do with the feelings of guilt," she shares, "directing a show is very intense. I want to go back to rehearsal and meet up for a meeting, and then I really don't have time, there's something that requires my full attention. It's not that I'm sitting at home ignoring the phone , And it helps. "

Theater is an escape channel for you, but neither is it. You constantly bring schizophrenia to the stage
"The theater allows me to create a unrealistic world, a world of images that in a sense I grew up with. My father's stories and the psychotic seizures that I was present come to the stage, and a much more open world, one composed of colors, sounds and movement, which I am very attracted to."

The theater also allows for some emotion control, and you come from a place where there is not much control
"As a girl, I was often taken control of. My mother's first hospitalization was when I was 3, and then suddenly my mother is not at home. Today I try to take control of my life and practice the places that are out of control, to see how they do not inspire. As a director, I get the sense of being able to manage emotions and deal with situations from the outside. I say, 'Okay, that's what she wants, that's what he wants - and it clashes.' So the stage is somewhere in order of life. Telling the story I want to tell. "

More than the pleasure of being in control, Mizrahi has shown herself to enjoy the dialogue with the actors and the ability to bring together different inner worlds. "This is something I did not have as a quiet, really mute girl who did not share her inner world with others. I always had good grades and good behavior. I struggled to be very fine so that nothing would indicate that something was wrong. I would sit with my hands Intertwined, because I knew it was considered polite, and I folded them so tightly that my arms were caught on me. It's no surprise that I was a director, because for many years I looked from the side and tried to figure out what relationships were between people.

It is no accident that Mizrahi repeatedly chooses to flood the stage with topics in the cleft mind, as they mediate out in a stylish, rich and colorful language. "At Identity Crises ('Identity Crisis') I really wanted to give a glimpse into the mind of a schizophrenic girl. I like to engage in the space between reality and imagination.

What is the stigma that is most important to you for breaking schizophrenia, on and off the stage?
"There is a gap between what people think of my parents before meeting them and after. Face to face, they find out that they are very innocent and even childish, and that they have a lot of love. Many times I think I had a bad childhood. I admit there were difficult moments, but also many moments Of laughter and their awareness of the situation. For example, my dad can say the Queen of England owes him money, then wake up and laugh at himself. My aunt had a seizure where she thought the air was polluted and told us to close all the windows, and when she calmed down she laughed: I am? '. It brings a lot of freedom to do nonsense at home. A wacky characters and me love it. "

In psychotic attacks, violence can erupt. Never been afraid of you and your sister?
"What is amazing is that they have always had an awareness of us, and it shows me that the disease does not completely control them. Obviously, they do not touch girls. They have created a relationship that allows them to feel safe to vent these urges against each other. We and the world are very threatening, Much less than normative people I know, their isolation from society, and the fact that they have no employment or support, contribute to this problematic dynamic at home. And the country doesn't seem to have either. My dream is that it will make more effort to integrate injured people Society ".

Over the past year, Mizrahi began working on a documentary documenting her family's life. She shows me scenes from it. For the most part, the three lie on couches, tired and fuzzy with medication, but laugh and stray. The film is full of potential, but Mizrahi has decided to cut him off. "I didn't feel I could reveal them," she explained. "When I was preparing them for filming, my mom was very excited for me and said, 'What, so will you succeed and progress as a director?' It was sweet, but I couldn't say that she really understood the meaning of this publication. They are very naive."

That innocence, she said, often resulted in exploitation of the environment. "When my father got an inheritance, he bought a neighbor everything his granddaughter needed. The man took him to the ATM and spent large sums of money with him."

How troubling is the financial issue - knowing that your parents will not be able to help you, and the fear that you will not be able to help them?
"I have thoughts of going abroad or opening up for film and television because there are more options for financial compensation. Right now I'm in a daily financial struggle and the theater is just getting me in the minus because the investment required is greater than the reward. I was able to finance my studies with savings and subsidies that landed on me from heaven, and even then I had no idea if I would succeed. That's how my decisions go - I start walking, and then we'll see what happens. Bottom line, I still pave my way as a director, and see this as a kind of mission. For me, theater is a magical option to explore the human soul and convey messages that will identify with the weak in society. "