Madness: A Bipolar Life. Marya Hornbacher
go back out, where the kids teem down the hall.
These are supposed to be the best years of my life.
I fail home economics. I refuse to sew the stuffed flamingo. I question the necessity of learning to make a Jell-O parfait. I blow up an oven—I forget to put the nutmeg in a baked pancake, and when it’s already in the oven, I toss in a handful as an afterthought, setting the entire thing on fire.
I persecute the art teacher. I sit in detention until dark, day after day. When I’m not in detention, I’m running around the newspaper room, putting together what I’m sure is an incendiary tract that’s designed to infuriate everyone who reads it. I am ducking under my desk every half-hour, sucking up the vodka in the water bottle. I am in the library, snorting cocaine off Dante, back in the stacks.
I gallop down the hall at school in a state of absolute glee, dodging in and out between the other kids, shouting, “Hi!” to the people I know as I pass. They laugh. I am hilarious! “You’re crazy!” they call. I am crazy! I’m marvelous! I’m fantastic! The day is fantastic, the world!
“Slow down!” a teacher shouts after me. “No running in the halls!”
I turn and gallop back to him. “Not running!” I shout joyfully. “Galloping, as you can plainly see!” I gallop off.
At the end of the hall, I crash into the wall and bounce back into the circle of my friends who are clustered around my locker. “Isn’t it wonderful?” I cry, flinging my arms wide, picking them up in the air.
“Now what?” Sarah laughs.
“Everything! Absolutely everything! You, today, all of it, wonderful! Amazing! Isn’t it grand to be alive?”
“Weren’t you, like, all freaky and twitchy this morning?” asks Sandra. I pound down the stairs, my legs are faster than speed itself! Tremendous! Spectacular speed, splendid speed, splendiferous speed! I reach the bottom of the stairs and go skidding across the hall. My friends are laughing. I make them happy. I make them forget their horrible homes. I love them, I love them hugely, they are absolutely essential, I would absolutely die without them.
“No!” I shout, “I wasn’t freaky! Well, if I was, I’m certainly not anymore, obviously!” I skip backward ahead of them as we go to lunch. I grab an ice cream sandwich and a greasy mini-pizza. I will be throwing these things up after lunch, obviously, wonderful! I laugh with delight, pleased with myself. “Aha!” I shout, and the people in the line ahead of me crane their necks to look. “Hello, all of you!” I shout, waving, “it’s a beautiful day!” Someone mutters, “She’s crazy,” and I don’t even care, everyone’s entitled to his opinion! That’s the way of the world! We are a world of many opinions, many beliefs! To each his own!
My friends and I move in an amoeba-like cluster over to an open table near the windows and sit down. We munch away on our lunches, chatting, and I chatter like a ventriloquist’s dummy, and all of us laugh, and then I start crying, but right myself quickly. “Enough of that!” I say, wiping my nose, making a grand gesture, “all’s well!” And everyone is relieved, and I have a brilliant idea! I pick up my personal pizza and whip it across the room like a Frisbee! And it lands perfectly in front of Leah Pederson, whom I hate! “Yes!” I shout, triumphant, and the entire lunchroom is laughing, and it’s time to go back to class. I gather my books and my friends and walk calmly down the hall and fling myself into my chair with an enormous sigh.
This time I will be good, I promise myself. This time I won’t make a scene. My heart pounds and I feel another round of hysterical laughter welling up in my chest. I press my face between my hands. I will hold it in. I won’t get detention. I won’t get kicked out of class. I won’t punch Jeff Carver. I won’t turn over any desks, or throw any chairs. I sit up in my chair, open my notebook, click my pen. I stare straight ahead at the teacher who is shuffling papers and handing them out. I will be good. I will, I will, I will.
I SIT IN THE OFFICE of my mother’s shrink. The air circulates slowly in the room. I turn in circles in my swivel chair. To my right, through the window, two floors down, is the parking lot and the sunny, empty afternoon. A small man with square black glasses and gray hair sits kicked back in his leather office chair, watching me.
“What would you like to talk about today?” he asks.
I keep turning in circles. I shrug. “What do you want me to say?”
“What would you like to say?”
I look out the window, count the red cars in the parking lot, then the blue. “I don’t have anything to say.”
We sit in silence. The minutes tick by.
“What are you thinking right now?” he asks.
“Nothing particular.” I turn to face him. He scribbles something on his yellow notepad.
“What are you writing?” I ask.
He gazes at me. “What do you think I’m writing?” he asks.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” I say.
He scribbles some more.
“Are you supposed to be helping me?” I ask.
“Do you think you need help?”
I turn to face the window again. “I don’t know.” From the corner of my eye, I see him write something down.
“You seem very upset,” he says thoughtfully.
Startled, I look at him. “I’m not.”
He tilts his head to the side. “You’re very angry, aren’t you?” he says.
I laugh. “You’re very perceptive, aren’t you?” I say. He writes it down.
Seven red cars, six blue. The day is still. The branches of the trees don’t move. We sit in silence. I turn circles in my chair.
HE’S A FREUDIAN therapist. When he speaks, he asks me about my mother, about my dreams. I wait for him to tell me what’s wrong with me, why I snap into sudden, violent rages, and shut myself in my room with the dresser backed up against the door for days, and disappear in the middle of the night, and stay in constant trouble at school. Why is it that my moods are all over the goddamn map? How come I’m terrified all the time? He sits silently, watching me, saying nothing, fixing nothing. I give up.
He isn’t looking for eating disorders or drinking or drug use. He isn’t looking for mental illness. In truth, he isn’t looking for much at all. One day he slaps his notebook shut. What’s wrong with me? I ask. Am I crazy? I don’t ask that. I think I know.
His wise and considered opinion is that I’m a very angry little girl.
WORD GETS OUT at school that I’m seeing a psychiatrist. My friends avoid the subject. But other kids whisper about it when I come into the room, kids I don’t like and who don’t like me, the rich kids and the snobs. One of them, egged on by the others—Go on, ask her—comes up to me: Is it true you’re, like, crazy?
No, I say, looking down at my desk.
Then why are you seeing, like, a psychiatrist? Isn’t that for crazy people? Isn’t it? Come on, admit it!
I don’t answer. I scribble so hard in my notebook that my ballpoint tears the page. They laugh. I’m a freak, and everyone knows it, including me.
Then suddenly it hits, a massive, crippling headache. My migraines are coming on nearly every day. I stagger into the nurse’s office and collapse on a cot, curled up in a ball with a pillow over my face. The nurse calls my parents. Back home, I lie in the dark, blinds drawn, rabid thoughts and images zipping through my brain, flashes of blinding color and light. I lie there, shivering and sweating as the pain clenches my skull, nearly paralyzed with fear at the fierce throbbing behind my eyes.
My father opens the door slowly, shuts it quietly behind