Читать книгу Madness: A Bipolar Life - Marya Hornbacher - Страница 17

1991

Caught again. Yellow-eyed, skeletal, bitchy, I am hauled back to Minnesota by my parents. Hospital, take two. Organs failing, deathly low weight, sick as a dog, but I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine. I sit on the floor, head nodding, nothing but static in my brain, my mother trying to get me to talk, speak, show some signs of life, my father making desperate jokes, trying to make me laugh. He cries and my mother cries, and through my fog I hate that they cry, and hate myself for making them cry, and, trying to form words, I tell them they don’t need to worry, I’m fine, please just leave me alone. Desert Storm plays a weird soundtrack to my days, fiery explosions on the TV screen, tanks barreling over entire towns, screaming people, that world far away—and I am far away too, lost in my own mind. The other patients hang limply over the arms of the couches and chairs, or stand in corners pretending to look at something, pacing in tiny, rapid circles, bouncing up and down, trying to burn off the calories that are keeping them alive. I lie awake at night, the bed bruising my bones, and listen to the wild, endless chatter of voices in my head.

Hospital, take three. Then the doctor’s had enough, tells my parents to put me in a state institution and leave me there. Instead, they find the last resort, a locked institution for kids as crazy as me. My last chance.

I am standing outside a square, two-story brick building. It’s ten degrees below zero, no flesh to keep me warm, and my mother grips me tight until the staff of this new place pulls me away. I look over my shoulder at my parents, they cry, I hate myself, I look forward, go away. Three triple-locked doors close one by one behind me as I follow the staff person inside, up the stairs, down the hall.

We are all crazy, under eighteen, the dregs of the system, the failures, the rejects of families, foster care, juvenile hall, we have been removed from society, a danger, a blight. We are a twelve-year-old car thief, a rapist, a sociopath, two cutters, a violent mute. We careen from pitching chairs and tables, to throwing our own bodies against the walls, to moments of calm that still the mayhem for a little while. We are in here for years, the shrieking girl, the roaring, crashing boys, the suicide attempts, the abused, the tortured, the troubled, the insane. I am here, wrapped in my coat, curled up in a ball, silent, afraid, disoriented, skinny, sick. I scream at mealtimes, pitch my food across the room, refuse to eat, they weigh me, I hate them, I swallow their fucking pills.

They are trying to kill me. Make me stupid, make me fat. They take my books, the only things I need to survive. If I can have my books, they’ll disappear, I’ll be safe, but they lock my books away, I scream and swear and cry and pound the walls, collapse on the floor, they say, Marya, you have a time-out, I go to my room and lie face-down on my bed, they come in with my treatment plan, you are assigned to play, you will play one hour a day, you will eat what you are told, you will not scream, you will make your bed, you will go to therapy, you will engage with other people, look me in the eye, you will not be allowed to push us away with your books. We spend our days in therapy groups, Marya, how are you feeling right now? I chew my nails until they’re bloody stumps, I stare at the floor, I have no books, I cannot starve, they’re pumping me full of pills, their kindness encroaches, surrounds me, suffocates me, Marya, it’s all right to feel, you will not die of feelings, why don’t you color your feelings on a piece of paper? Stop pushing them away, get out of your head, it’s safe out here. It is not. I am trapped.

We shuffle through our screaming, crying, silent, laughing days, frightened, angry little kids cared for inside of and made safe by these thick walls. The bedroom doors don’t close. The windows are three-paned Plexiglas, unbreakable, we cannot cut ourselves on them, or escape. I am sitting in the bathroom sink with scissors, chopping my long hair off, it falls around me, I’m cutting it so close it nicks the skin. I am bald as a baby. I lose control, fight, I lie in bed all day, staring at the ceiling, until they haul me out and make me talk and feel my fucking feelings, eat my fucking food, take the Prozac—you’re depressed!—that’s making me more insane. But gradually, despite myself, I really start to try to get better. The pressing kindness and care of the people here gets to me, and after a few months, I’m trying to get well, I really am. I talk, I play, I work out my issues, I participate, I give hugs, I make the effort, take responsibility, share the love.

But it’s not enough. I’m still so sucked into the eating disorder, and so racked by the wild, roaring moods that no one can explain, that no amount of trying is going to work. As tempting as this health thing is, the idea of going back to my familiar obsessions is more so. I want out. I want my bones and my books back. I become the star patient. I talk them into letting me go to college, and they finally agree. I want to be rid of who I am, go back to the place where I wasn’t a fuckup, where I was good at something, instead of a place where all I do is talk about how fucked up I am. I’ve got to get out.

I AM SHIVERING at the bus stop. They let me out each morning to go to the university across town. I am on fire with the classes, writing like mad, hunched over my desk, my underused, overanalyzed brain coming to life again, who cares if I’m an institutionalized freak? All I can think about is when I will get a job writing. I have to make up for this hideous failure. I’ll never tell anyone. This will disappear in my past. I’ll be a new person, soon, soon. When class lets out I avoid the other students, Come have coffee! they call after me, I liked your paper, let’s talk! Can’t, I mutter, hurrying off, can’t very well tell you I have to get back to the loony bin before they give me a time-out.