Читать книгу Madness: A Bipolar Life - Marya Hornbacher - Страница 19

1995

The cutting helps. I’m cutting every day. I stand in the bathroom, slicing patterns in my arms. They’ll scar. My arms will, for the rest of my life, be covered with scars. I clench my teeth. Cut more. Cut deeper. The thoughts stop.

The pain is perfect. It’s precise. My mind, for one blessed moment, is aware only of the pain. The pain makes me feel alive. My heart beats steadily in my chest. I picture the blood pumping through me, reaching the cuts, spilling over, running down my arms.

Morning comes. I’m passed out on the floor. I try to lift my head. A thick and pressing sadness lies on me like a dead body. I roll over on my stomach, lay my face on the floor, close my eyes. I can’t move.

By night, I feel like I’m on speed. The moods carry me up and down, up and down. I fly and fall, crashing and sailing and crashing again.

The therapist’s office: she leans back in her chair. She’s lovely, and out of her depth. She keeps increasing my Prozac. It’s making me insane.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” I say, trying to sound calm but grappling with a desperation that clutches at my chest. “I don’t think things are going very well.”

“What makes you say that?” she asks kindly, tilting her head. Sometimes her kindness gets to me. It’s excessive and saccharine, almost a parody of itself.

“I’m acting a little crazy,” I say. “One minute I’m flying around and the next I’m, you know, lying on the floor.”

“But don’t you think that’s progress? That you’re really feeling your feelings? I think you’ve finally reached a special place in your life, a place of real balance, where you’re able to fully respond to those feelings. You’re not just locked up in your head all the time, intellectualizing, pushing those feelings away.”

“Maybe,” I say, hesitant. “It just seems like maybe it’s a little much. You know, like really extreme. It seems like the feelings are taking over my entire life.”

“Well, consider this—how’s the eating going?”

“Pretty well.”

“Now, I want you to really take that in. Stop for a moment and really appreciate the significance of that. How different is that from ever before? You’ve never really been in a space where the eating disorder was under control. I feel like you’re really using the tools we’ve been working on, the mindful eating, the being in your body. You should really bear witness to the progress you’ve made in that area. I think you’ve finally, really, truly made the decision to stay alive. That’s just enormous. Can you see that? Can you be proud of yourself?”

“I’m cutting my arms up every night.”

“Have you been journaling?”

“Yes.”

“And what are you finding?”

“When I read it over, it’s like two different people are writing it. One of them’s a maniac and one of them’s completely depressed.”

“Do you think you’re depressed?”

“Not when I’m flying around.”

“I think, honestly, that you’re in much better shape than you’re giving yourself credit for. I think maybe that you are still just so angry at yourself for all the years of being sick, and so unfairly judgmental of yourself for finally breaking away from the past and finally feeling your feelings, being true to yourself, that you just aren’t allowing yourself to appreciate how well you’re really doing.”

“I really would rather not be cutting. I’m getting scars all over my arms.”

“Well, I think that’s a matter of doing some self-soothing. Have you been trying out the self-soothing techniques I suggested? Take some real time for yourself. Just sit down at night, make yourself a cup of tea, and be quiet in yourself. Wrap yourself in a warm, fuzzy quilt. Put on lotion. Splurge on some perfume. Take yourself out to lunch. Turn on some soothing music and try self-massage. Take a warm, comforting bath. Light a candle and really feel the water surrounding your limbs. Do you think you could begin tonight? Do you think you could try taking a bath?”

I take a fucking bath.

Night comes. It finally happens. It’s the scene in the bathroom of my apartment in Minneapolis. I’m twenty years old, drunk out of my mind. I am cutting patterns in my arm, a leaf and a snake. And then, without thinking, on blind, unstoppable impulse, I slash my left arm with a razor so hard I hit the bone.

NOW I’M SOMEONE else. Now I’m someone who’s tried to kill herself. I’ve opened my artery and not even felt it. Has it gotten that bad?

No problem. A blip on the screen of my usual nuttiness. I’ll simply start over. No more of that. Out with the cutting. Out with the Prozac. Out with the old me, and in with the new.

Obviously, the next thing to do is to skip town.

I head off for California in my rattling car. I’m getting out of here. I’m going to go be a real writer. I take only some books, a ratty blue bandanna, a few clothes, and my cat.

And the five-inch purple scar on my forearm, which looks like a terrible worm.