Modern Madness

by Terri Cheney

  Staring into the Turner in that crowded museum, I realized I knew things other people couldn’t. That used to make me feel alone. Sometimes it still does. But at that moment, breathing in the light and the paint and the colors, I only felt alive.

  WHY NOT TRY THE TRUTH?

  I have a friend who’s a rock star—a genuine rock star, I kid you not. I cherish him, not just for his amazing talent and the fact that he has groupies, but for himself and the very down-to-earth humanity he exhibits when he’s not performing onstage. So when I got his message about an upcoming show, I eagerly jotted down the date and cleared my schedule so I could go. I knew he was breaking in a new act, and I wanted to be there to support him, the way he’s unfailingly been there for all my readings. But I didn’t reckon on depression showing up for such an extended visit.

  Sometimes, if I push myself really hard, I can function when I’m depressed. I can at least show up and pretend to be human, which is what I wanted to do for my friend: just be there for the body count. Who would see me, after all, with the spotlight trained on him? I wouldn’t even have to speak, since no one could hear me over the din.

  But that, unfortunately, was the problem. This wasn’t a chamber music concert; this was Celtic punk rock and all that entailed: the incessant shouting, the amped-up atmosphere. People pushing past you, spilling their drinks, jostling to get a better view. There’s a very fine but definite line in depression where sensory stimulation turns into torture. Light sears your eyes, touch burns your skin, and music morphs into raucous noise.

  And then there would be that awful expectation of gaiety, the crushing pressure to have a good time. I tried to imagine myself in the crowd, grim-eyed amidst all the lit-up faces. I couldn’t dance, I couldn’t even move. I’d be a black hole, sucking the life out of the party. Or worse yet, what if I went and I lost control? If I started screaming to be heard, would I ever stop?

  But—and it was a major but—I’d already said I would go, and canceling held its own terrors. I’ve learned the hard way that when I’m depressed, it can be extremely dangerous to call off my plans. It makes me feel like a flake and a fraud when I don’t show up as promised. Which leaves me feeling even more depressed, which leads to yet more cancellations, until inevitably I’m left wallowing in self-hatred and isolation. And as every one of us who struggles with mental illness knows, isolation is suicide’s favorite haunt.

  So I couldn’t go, but I couldn’t not go, either.

  My illness seemed to hold all the cards—until I remembered the ace I still held up my sleeve: maybe I could just be honest. Because it’s not the canceling per se that does the harm, it’s all the lying about it. Pretending that I have the Hong Kong flu, or my tire exploded, or my dog has rabies, whatever. All the elaborate excuses and scenarios I come up with to hide what’s really happening—which is that I’m simply too heartsick to come out and play.

  I had to force myself to sit down at my computer, but I finally sent my friend a brief message the morning of the concert, saying I was sorry but couldn’t come because I was too depressed. He immediately wrote back, sending “lots of love.” I knew that he would understand, but more important, I knew that I could forgive myself because I’d told the truth. We all get sick now and then.

  THANKS, I’LL HAVE THE USUAL

  A few weekends ago I showed up as usual at the Barnes & Noble bookstore where I research, hang out with other writers, and maybe get a little writing done, too. I could already taste the warm oatmeal cookie I always order with my latte. I was so eager to get inside I didn’t even notice that the front door was securely padlocked. Without a word of warning, the Barnes & Noble was no more. It meant a lot more to me than losing yet another bookstore, which L.A. can scarcely afford. It meant losing the basic framework of my weekends. What would I do now, where would I go, and how could I work without my gang, my routine, and my cookie to sustain me?

  I hate change.

  This could easily be a cliché—nobody likes change—unless you understand the peculiar workings of my personal world. My internal landscape is always in flux, so I have no idea what the emotional weather will be when I wake up tomorrow. Gray and gloomy, with scudding storm clouds? Or so vividly, piercingly bright I have to squint to take it all in? I need some measure of outward stability to compensate for this unsettling inner lability.

  And so, I want my regular waiter to greet me with “The usual?” when I show up at my favorite café (same order every time: gazpacho). I want Mondays to be yoga; Tuesdays to be therapy; Wednesdays to be my writing group; Thursdays to be the farmers’ market (same order every time: white lilies)—and well, you get the drift. No substitutions; no exceptions.

  I want stability in people, too. I resent it when my friends change their email addresses, let alone get remarried or find a new job. I’m not crazy about their aging, either—not because I don’t empathize but because it makes them look and act differently. I want their faces to be, if not carved in stone, at least reliably etched in my memory.

  With stability comes a hunger for order and an even deeper belief that if I just keep doing things the exact same way, in the exact same order, madness will have no hold on me. I realize this is pure magical thinking—superstitious at best, neurotic at worst. I know deep down that whether I relapse or not depends on a whole lot more than getting a dozen white lilies from one particular flower vendor every Thursday afternoon, or the perfect oatmeal cookie.

  What really matters—and the only thing I should never change—is my personal sanity checklist. Every day without fail I must

  1. Be vigilant about my symptoms;

  2. Take my medication as prescribed;

  3. Stay current on the medical research;

  4. Reach out when I need to;

  5. Give back when I can; and

  6. Resist the temptation to lie in therapy.

  These things lie squarely within my control and have nothing to do with forces beyond me, malevolent or otherwise. But still… Who can really say for sure? There must be some good reason for superstition, or we’d all be sashaying under ladders and blessing black cats. All I’m really certain of is that I’m incredibly lucky to be this functional, when so many others are not. And as long as I keep staying lucky, I intend to stick to what works whenever I can.

  Am I predictable? Maybe. Boring? Perhaps. But ask any pro: batters hitting .300 should never alter their swings.

  THE WORLD IN AN UPROAR: NOISE

  It was a lovely dinner party: a dress-up affair, which was unusual in L.A. and fun for a change. Family silver graced the table, along with crisp linen napkins and gold-rimmed champagne flutes. Light jazz effervesced in the background. The other seven guests and I were in fine form, and conversation flowed. Life felt soothing and sophisticated, and I was right where I belonged.

  Until I wasn’t.

  It started just after the cheese course, when the guests were well fed and well wined. Anecdotes gradually lengthened into stories, gestures got bigger, laughter grew louder. The man to the left of me set his glass down on the table, and it made a sharp clinking sound. Then the man to the right of me accidentally dropped his fork, and it clattered onto his plate. Across the table, a woman’s charm bracelet jangled as she moved her hands. Small sounds, but I knew myself well enough to be worried: in the midst of the delightful conversation and music, all I heard were clinkings and clatterings and janglings, and little else that made any sense.

  It escalated, until the voices sounded screechy, like a jaybird’s. The jazz was a series of discordant riffs, and the laughter wasn’t infectious; it was brassy and grating. The man next to me kept talking—not to me, but at me: a significant difference. I didn’t even try to answer him, since I could barely hear what he was saying. All at once, a longing swept through me. I wanted to be elsewhere, quiet, home. What had started out as a lovely dinner had become nothing more than a terrible din.

  It’s not the first time that sound has turned the tables on me, intensifying f
rom scarcely noticeable to almost unendurable in the space of a few moments. In fact, it’s happened so often I actually researched it. It turns out there’s a phenomenon called hyperacusis: an unusually low tolerance to ordinary sounds, the kind which don’t bother most people. Anxiety plays a role in hyperacusis, and bipolar individuals may be particularly susceptible, given their heightened sensitivity overall. It’s especially prevalent in mania, which doesn’t surprise me: all my senses are on hyperdrive then.

  But I wasn’t manic that evening. And I was armed with information, even a technical term for what was going on with me, which usually makes a difference. So what was I supposed to do? Excuse myself from the dinner table, telling the hostess, “I’m sorry, but I feel my hyperacusis coming on?”

  Once again, I struggled with an all-too-familiar demon: just because I’m different from other people, should I excuse myself from life?

  It’s never an easy question, especially in the midst of cacophony. So I did what I always do when social situations threaten to get the better of me: I escaped to the ladies’ room. The guest bathroom was, not surprisingly, beautifully appointed and a genuine refuge. When I closed the door behind me, the noise fell away. I ran cool water over my wrists and fingers, and dabbed some perfume on my neck. Gradually, the buzzing in my ears became a low drone, and I was able to think again.

  I reviewed the facts: (1) The hyperacusis was real; (2) The bipolar disorder was real. Together, they created what some poetic scientist has called “a collapsed tolerance for stimulation.” Reasonable grounds to isolate, I thought; no one could blame me if I just said to hell with it and went home. No one, that is, but myself. I would know that I’d given up without a genuine fight. So I refreshed my lipstick and my courage, and emerged ready for battle.

  The noise hit me again, like a shimmering wave of heat. Only this time I was ready for it, and I had a plan of action. The noisier it got, the less I would struggle. I’d allow the sounds to move past but not through me: I’d observe the scene without being a player. Lonely? Yes, but how much lonelier it would be if I insisted on my illness; if I allowed it to be the measure of me, and surrendered without even trying.

  I sat down and smiled at the man on my left, then at the man on my right. I smiled at the woman across from me. I tried hard not to blame them for being so loud: no doubt there are reasons people find comfort in overwrought sound. Maybe they were shy, and the clamor relieved them of the need for reciprocal conversation. Maybe they felt ill-informed and were afraid to say things that might actually be heard. In short, maybe the noise was overcompensation for their own shortcomings rather than an intentional assault on my fragile nerves.

  It’s amazing how much simpler life can be when you refuse to take it personally.

  I managed to make it through dessert, and even waited for another guest to leave before I skedaddled out of there. I was proud of myself for sticking it out and taking care of myself, but I knew it hadn’t changed my essential antipathy to too much noise and stimulation—or my frustration that the rest of the world doesn’t seem to feel the same way. Quite the opposite. Go to any popular restaurant, and just try to make yourself heard. Or take a walk down any city street, and try to escape the intimate details of everyone’s cellular life. Tell me: Why do we shout at invisible people? To drown out the specter of silence, perhaps, because in silence you can only hear yourself—and heaven forbid, anything but that.

  Is it really so strange to want library quiet, even though libraries are becoming anachronisms? When did we collectively forget the exquisite, shivery joy of a whisper? I can’t help but wonder how much of my sensitivity is pathological, and how much is my sanity poking through.

  SCHEDULING SANITY

  For five days going on forever, I was trapped in my house with a contagious strep throat. I’d say I was slowly going insane, but when you’re bipolar you have to use words like “insane” judiciously. So for five days I was alone with the TV, some books I’d been meaning to read, and my thoughts. The first day I figured, how great! I’ll rest and catch up on my reading, maybe binge-watch for a while. Five days later, I’d finished the books, binged until I was thoroughly bored, and eaten my way through my provisions. I hadn’t meant to eat so much, but boredom makes even sardines look appealing.

  Enforced isolation isn’t good for me. It’s probably not good for anyone, but in my case it’s particularly nerve-wracking, even dangerous. It means I’m living alone in my head, and my head is a cacophonous place. Usually I manage to silence my thoughts by suffocating them with action. Each week I aspire to a writing group, therapy, a support group, and something social; almost every day I try to go to a local café and write.

  It’s extremely ironic that I would have developed such a regular system. When I was hospitalized for depression years ago, the first therapy session every morning was called “Scheduling.” You were handed a sheet of blank graph paper, and told to fill in what you had planned for that day, the next day, the week. I hated it with a passion, as did many of my fellow patients, and we used to sneak out to the cafeteria for coffee and bagels until that session was over. To me, structure meant the death of serendipity. It was a ball and chain, a lock with no key, and I felt imprisoned enough already by my illness and my surroundings.

  But “structure is essential to mental health” was the message I kept hearing, and I guess I heard it often enough from doctors I respected that I finally, grudgingly, succumbed to the notion. True, every so often I’ll rebel against the regimentation of my daily routine. Do I have to get up? Do I have to go out? But once the stupid strep throat deprived me of my structure, I absolutely craved it. I realized what a lost and aimless wanderer I am without my well-worn path.

  When you’re sick, there’s nothing to do but lie still and ponder. So I pondered away, not a very smart thing to do when you’re feverish. Only five days, and I could already hear the mood goblins whispering—so seductive, so alluring. Come back to us, they beckoned; you know the way. And they were right: I knew it all too well. It’s so easy to stumble into that black crevasse when I’m bored and have nothing better to do. Time has no meaning there. An hour is endless. There is nothing to stop me from falling forever.

  Alarmed, I took out a blank piece of paper, sketched a rough graph of hours and activities, and taped it up on my refrigerator. Seven a.m.: get up, have coffee, check emails, watch the news. Eight a.m.: make breakfast, return emails. Nine a.m.: call Mom, pay bills. And so forth. I could almost hear the snickers of my former compatriots at the hospital.

  “You’re scheduling!” they’d say.

  “Damn right, and you should, too,” I’d reply. “Who are we, of all people, to invite chaos into our lives?”

  An unplanned life may sound rebellious and free-spirited, and I suppose for some it is. But I need a map with clearly marked boundaries that don’t fall off the edges into “Here Be Dragons” land. I need to see where I’m going, and how I’ll get there. Of course, I know I don’t have to adhere to the schedule. If I want, I can tear it into tiny bits and watch reruns of “Downton Abbey” until I’m thoroughly stupefied. But when the mood goblins come to call and I have to fight them, it’s comforting to know that I’m not faced with forever—that I can take eternity one hour at a time. It’s a much fairer fight that way.

  VIGILANCE: AM I TOO, TOO WONDERFUL?

  I woke up feeling rather strange, and couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Was I sick? No, I felt fine. Was something bad supposed to happen that day? Not that I could remember. I brushed my teeth, took a shower, got dressed. Gradually, I forgot to worry. In fact, worry was the very last thing on my mind.

  I felt—are you ready for it?—content.

  I don’t traffic all that much in simple contentment, so it’s not a trusted feeling. Don’t get me wrong: It’s not that I haven’t had my fair share of joy. Great joy, in fact. Exuberance, ecstasy, exaltation. Bipolar disorder has taught me everything there is to know about the extremes of elation. When I’m manic,
there’s nothing unusual at all about skyrocketing high above the clouds, burning through the stratosphere. I see beauty everywhere I look—too much beauty sometimes. I drink it in until I drown.

  But this wasn’t ecstasy. This was a plain old Tuesday morning. Colors didn’t snap and glow, they were just ordinary colors: red, blue, green. My coffee didn’t taste like ambrosia, my English muffin was slightly burnt. But still, I felt a marvelous sense of satisfaction with my breakfast: it was perfect, and I was complete.

  I didn’t know what to do about this, if indeed something had to be done. If it were hypomania, that would be wonderful. But was it a precursor to mania? If so, I wanted no part of it. Flying too perilously close to the sun may be fine—in fact, it can be spectacular—but it always lands me in trouble. And like Icarus, I have the singed wings to prove it: reckless romances, ruined friendships, financial mayhem, even incarceration. So yes, the moment felt lovely—but was it just a moment, or the beginning of something more? In short, was it okay to let down my guard and enjoy my English muffin?

  I know all this rumination may sound absurd, but acute self-awareness is one of the prices you have to pay if you want to function with bipolar disorder. You constantly have to check in with yourself: What is my emotional temperature now? Am I running too hot or too cold? Is there an objectively verifiable reason for the way I feel, or is it my chemistry running amok? Nothing, not even joy, comes to me without a cost. Every smile has a price tag attached.