Madness

by Marya Hornbacher

  He falls asleep around the fifth hour of reruns, and continues to sleep though I bat at him to wake him up. Eventually I turn off the television and the light and lie down and try, uselessly, to sleep.

  I feel my mouth filling with words, words I need to write down right now, and my mind begins to race, words whirling in circles, a cyclone of words. I force myself to try to rest. I breathe slowly, in through the nose and out through the mouth, as instructed by the many books on breathing and "being in the moment" that I've been given over the years. I imagine myself in a beautiful place, on a beach, or in the mountains. I count sheep. Somewhere around two thousand, I fall asleep, thinking gleefully of how much I will write the next day, what with all these wonderful words.

  But I don't write the next day, or the next or the next after that. Because sometime during that night, the words scattered. The whirlwind of words, beautiful strings of sentences, which I pictured as a net of letters, strands of words spun into a kind of silver sugar cone inside my head, whirl away from me, phrases and snatches of words now seething all over my brainpan like a pit of snakes.

  Never mind that. I am alive. I'm full of ideas, ideas I know I will string together again, any second now, but while I wait I become a tiny Tasmanian devil, tearing through my days. The ideas disappear in my wake, one after another, words flying through the air, hitching post, emperor's elbow, hats off to the watchers, the watchers who watch and wait, the whispering watchers who watch and wait and wiggle and writhe, madly alliterating. Flight of ideas—it happens in the early stages of mania. Ideas fly past and I chase them in all directions, but they elude my grasp, a flurry of butterflies that twitch away just as I close my hand.

  At the urging of everyone, I give Lentz a call.

  I feel like I have been sitting in Lentz's office for the past ten years. Jeff is there too. I am slouched in my chair, practically horizontal, madly wiggling my foot. I raise it above my head and watch it wiggle with incredible speed.

  "Have you seen my socks?" I ask Lentz, holding out my foot.

  He glances up. "Very nice," he says. He is looking at his computer, scrolling down through my chart. He tips his head backward and peers down his nose.

  I have been seeing Lentz since I was twenty-three. He has seen me as batty as I've ever been, from florid manias to catatonic depressions. And he has seen me utterly sane. He reads my books and articles faithfully. It seems to matter not a bit to him whether I show up wearing a tailored suit or a pair of grotty pajamas, an old torn coat, and a pair of gardening shoes. To him, I'm not crazy. I'm just the way I am.

  He looks down at his little notepad and says, "Looks like you're feeling a little speedy."

  "A little. Only a very little. A very little bit," I say, holding my fingers about an inch apart. "But I have to get my things done. I can't stop now. I'm on a roll."

  He nods, and says to Jeff, "How would you say she's doing?"

  "She's bats," Jeff says. This bothers me not at all. I have learned to take Jeff with me to the doctor when I am feeling off, since I have no perspective. He sits across from me on the little couch. He's watching me, looking worried. This irritates me gravely. I sigh at him and become more fully involved in the incredible speed of my foot.

  "Marya?" Lentz breaks into my thoughts. I focus now on the tips of my fingers, which feel tingly.

  "I bought a canary!" I announce, looking up.

  "Oh?"

  "She didn't buy a canary," Jeff says with a sigh.

  "I see," Lentz says. "Have you been sleeping?"

  "Not really. I don't like to sleep. Sleep is a monumental waste of time. Sleep is irrelevant in the face of my things. Which I have to get done."

  "She's sleeping about two hours a night," Jeff adds. "Total. She's up and down."

  "I'm up and down," I concur. I pause in my study of my fingers and stare at Lentz intently. "But you have to understand, I need to get my things done."

  "I know you do," Lentz says, poking at his little Palm Pilot, which has the pharmaceutical handbook on it. "It's important that you get them done."

  "It's very important," I say.

  "I know it is. We don't want to break your focus."

  "Very important," I repeat, when suddenly my foot takes off again.

  "How much Geodon are you on?"

  "Eighty milligrams," Jeff says.

  "I'm going to up your Geodon," Lentz says.

  I look up, worried. "Will it make me fat?"

  "No."

  "Will it make me stupid?"

  "No. It should just make you a little less edgy."

  "I can't lose my edge," I say to him sternly.

  "Of course not. How much is she working?" Lentz asks Jeff.

  "All the time. She even works when someone's talking to her. She won't change her clothes because she says it would interrupt her 'things.'"

  "I wrote fifty pages yesterday," I tell him, quite smug.

  "Good for you. Are you eating?" Lentz asks.

  "She's not eating," Jeff says.

  "I'm eating," I say, rolling my eyes.

  "She's only eating fruit."

  "Marya, you have to eat more than fruit."

  "No, I do not," I snap.

  "Are you cutting?"

  "I took all the razors," Jeff says.

  "Totally unnecessary," I snap again, and get up and stroll in circles around the room.

  "Do you need to be in the hospital?" Lentz asks.

  "Absolutely not!" I say, hopping once in protest. "How am I supposed to get any work done? They never let me bring my computer. I can't very well work on construction paper!"

  "I think she needs to be in the hospital," Jeff says.

  I spin around and jab my finger into his chest, hopping again and kicking him once in the shin. "I certainly do not! They don't let me have my cell phone! Which is crucial!"

  "Marya, you're really quite speedy," Lentz says.

  I sit down in the chair and grip the arms to prove a point. "No I'm not."

  "Okay," he says. To Jeff, he says, "Call me if she's still like this tomorrow."

  "I'm going to get lots of work done," I say, very pleased.

  "What are you writing?" Lentz says, standing up and shaking Jeff's hand.

  I tick them off on my fingers. "A play, a novel, an article, and a new series of poems."

  "I look forward to reading them," says Lentz. "Take a Zyprexa."

  "Absolutely I will not," I say in a huff. "It makes me stupid and fat."

  Lentz sighs.

  Jeff goes out the door. I hop after him like a baby chick.

  So this morning, I trot downstairs to start the day. "How are you this fine morning?" Jeff asks, handing me a cup of coffee.

  "I'm good! Well, I felt a little funny this morning—anxiety, a little blue—so I increased my Wellbutrin." I sit down in an armchair. The day is sunny and beautiful. I will feel better in no time at all. This habit of fucking with the dosages of your meds is common among bipolar people; since we don't trust the doctors, we figure our ideas are better than theirs, and so we add and subtract pills all the time. This rarely has good effects.

  That's why Jeff stares at me for a minute, then picks up the phone and dials the emergency nurse line.

  "Oh, for God's sake!" I shout at him. "You are such an over-reactor!"

  He waves his hand at me to shut me up. "Yes, hello? My wife has bipolar. She decided to take"—he glares at me and hisses, "How much did you take, you idiot?" and I cheerfully say, "Thirteen hundred and fifty"—"she took triple her regular dose of Wellbutrin. Thirteen hundred and fifty milligrams. Isn't that an overdose, more or less? What should I do? All right. All right. I'll call right away." He hangs up the phone and dials again.

  "You might have a stroke," he snaps. "I completely can't believe you. This is serious. Why did you do it?"

  I say, "I thought it would help," but he's on the phone. "Hello?" he's saying. "Yes, my wife has overdosed. I need an ambulance right away."

  "This is ridic
ulous!" I'm shouting, slamming through the house. "I only took three extra!" He's ignoring me. The ambulance shows up. I'm sitting in the parlor with my legs crossed, perfectly presentable, and the EMTs stand around the room, looking a little ridiculous.

  "I'm perfectly fine," I tell them.

  "She took an overdose," Jeff says from the doorway.

  "It was hardly an overdose," I say, rolling my eyes. "I took a few extra."

  "She's having a manic episode," Jeff says. "She could have a stroke."

  "Well, I'm obviously not having a stroke," I say. "Really, you can leave."

  They don't leave. They escort me, indignant, out to the ambulance. The ride to the hospital is excruciatingly slow. Arriving at the hospital, I am put in a little room with a security guard outside. I lean out the doorway.

  "Do you have to stand there?" I ask the guard. He looks alarmed, as if he didn't know crazy people could talk. After a panicky minute, he nods.

  "I won't run," I say, and go back into the room. I'm irate. Also a little dizzy, a sort of vertigo. All I did was take three extra Wellbutrin on the theory that perhaps they would cheer me up. Admittedly, I should have looked up the possible side effects of overdose before I took them, rather than after, but still, what a ridiculous fuss they're making about all this. I start to pace around the room.

  I pace faster. Then faster. I want to know where Jeff is. I start to cry. This won't look good. I'm trying to come off as perfectly sane, but this pacing and crying makes me look crazy. I realize this with a touch of surprise—why would I be acting crazy? And I suddenly understand that, in fact, somewhere in my reptilian brain, I honestly don't see myself as crazy. Which, I realize, means I definitely am. I want to go home. Why isn't Jeff here? I'm whipping around the room, holding my head in my hands. I have brought my tome Manic-Depressive Illness with me as reading material while I wait, which I am supposed to be doing calmly, which I am not, and I pick up the book and go stand in the doorway again. I'm sobbing now. The guard is horrified. "Would you find me a nurse, please?" I sob. "Really, if you could find someone who could come talk to me, that would be great." I go back in the room and keep pacing. Seconds, hours later, I don't know, there's a young nurse in the room, What's wrong, how can I help? and I'm explaining that I have bipolar disorder, and I offer her the book in case she doesn't know much about it, and where is my husband, and could she please find my husband, and I didn't mean to commit suicide, I just wanted to feel a little better, and she is making all the right soothing noises—there are some amazing nurses in the world—and assuring me that the doctor will be here soon, and she leaves and returns with Jeff, on whom I fling myself, hysterical, apologizing for making such a fuss, and Jeff pretends he doesn't mind.

  The psych ward people come down and talk to us. The woman says, very earnestly, that I have to learn to take my illness seriously, and I tell her I do take it seriously, but in this case I just want to go home. She tries to talk me into coming upstairs with her, but I'm having none of it. Finally I talk my way out of the emergency room and ride home with Jeff, my forehead on the window, watching the trees flash past.

  "I'm really sorry about that," I say.

  "You're damn right," he says.

  "Really," I say. "I know that was shitty."

  We ride home in silence.

  New medications, increases, decreases. I am trying in my muddled way to manage this—I take whatever meds Lentz tells me to take, I try to keep track of my swinging moods on my mood chart, and the rotation of friends and family comes to my house every day—my mother or father in the mornings, Megan or my aunt and uncle in the afternoon, sometimes other friends. The schedule changes every day, and every day I'm surprised again when someone shows up, and I apologize for needing them there.

  When they leave, the agitation grows, and I pace from room to room, trying to escape the thoughts, the powerful impulses to run away, hurt myself, do something dangerous and extreme. These states scare me, and I know I am crazy, and I don't know if it's going to stop. The hope I felt in the spring eludes me now, seems like a lifetime ago, and at night I curl up in bed, pressing my head between my hands.

  One night, when Jeff joins me there, curling his huge body around me, I tell him, chattering wildly, that I can't take this anymore, not the side effects, not the mood swings, not the terror or manic elation or dull, pressing pain. Screaming in bed, I rock, my body clenched into a fist. I can't take it, I can't live like this anymore, and Jeff rubs my back, I know, I know, he says, we'll go see Lentz tomorrow, okay? I gasp and howl in response, What the fuck for? He's just going to change my meds again. And then the side effects will get worse, and he'll change the meds again, and the side effects will change but they won't go away. Jeff, I gasp, I cannot take it anymore, I want to be dead—

  Don't say that! Jeff sits up and starts to cry.

  The magic words. I'm not supposed to say them, never say them, never say them to Jeff. If I say them, I might believe them, and then what? No, no, I say, uncurling my body and taking his face in my hands and wiping it off. I didn't mean it. I swear I didn't mean it. I'm sorry, honey—I smile brightly. See? I'm right here. I promise.

  Promise me you won't go away. Jeff falls face first onto the bed, his arms wrapped around himself. I rub his ears. He likes that. His mother did it to him when he was little. It makes him feel safe.

  I promise, I say. I swear.

  Sometimes I believe, with every fiber of my being, that I truly can't take it, that I've reached the end of my rope, I've had it, I'm done.

  I'm not done. I will never be done. It will never go away.

  I will never go away, I tell Jeff, and we are quiet, wet-faced, snotty, and I rub his ears.

  At the front desk of the emergency room, Jeff says, "My wife has bipolar," and immediately they press the button to open the door and Jeff ushers me in. Here's a trick: if you ever want to get into the emergency room fast, tell them you're bipolar or schizophrenic. Works every time. They take my vitals—my pulse is racing, my blood pressure is about twenty points higher than it usually is—and show us to a room, assuring us that the doctor will be there soon.

  We're sitting in the triage room—well, Jeff is sitting, and I'm in the corner, having crawled on top of a cabinet behind a tangle of medical equipment, agitated and talking a mile a minute until the doctor comes in, at which point I snap my mouth shut and become mute.

  "Why are you up there?" the doctor asks me, baffled. Jeff and I stare at him. Finally Jeff says, "Because she's crazy"

  The doctor raises his eyebrows. "Ah," he says, still not quite getting it. He asks me a series of questions—what brings me in here today, am I suicidal, do I have a plan. With every question, I look at Jeff. He repeats the question to me, and I nod or shake my head. In this way, we establish for the doctor that I'm nuts and need to be hospitalized. The doctor disappears and is replaced by someone from the psychiatric staff. The man walks in, takes one look at me, and says, "Would you feel better if the lights were off?"

  "Yes!" I shout, then shut up again. He switches off the lights and takes a seat.

  "Tell me what's going on," he says, and Jeff does.

  "This happens every summer," he says. "Around June, she gets hypomanic, in July she's manic, and by August she's gone completely around the bend. It happened again this year. It started with her working around the clock and not sleeping. Then the anxiety set in, about a month ago. She's seen her doctor a bunch of times, and he's been trying to switch her meds fast enough to keep up with the episode, but obviously it hasn't worked. In the last week, she's been afraid to leave the house, just running around being compulsive for days, talking constantly, and then today I came home and she'd been cutting."

  The man is writing on his clipboard. "Is she suicidal?"

  "Yes."

  "Does she have a plan?"

  "She says she doesn't, but she's lying."

  The man looks at me. "Does all this sound about right?"

  "I don't have a plan," I s
ay.

  "She's lying," Jeff says.

  "The point is that you're not safe to be at home, is that right?"

  I nod. By the time we get to the hospital, I'm no longer under the impression that I'm sane. Once I've started cutting, I know I'm not likely to stop until I've done some serious damage, and I don't want that any more than anyone else does. The last place I want to be is the hospital, but I'm not stupid. I know when it's time to go in. I am so terrified of myself and of the vast, frightening world, that the psych ward, with its safe locked doors, sounds like a relief.

  "All right," the man says, and then suddenly we're interrupted by another doctor, who walks in the room and switches on the lights. I flinch and shade my eyes. The second doctor goes through the same questions as the first doctor—what brings me here today, am I suicidal, do I have a plan—and Jeff goes through the same answers—she's having an episode, she's suicidal, she has a plan. Satisfied that the psych staff has it under control, the doctor leaves, and the first doctor switches off the lights again.

  "Sorry about that," he says. "Well, listen. You've obviously done everything you can at home, and we don't want to make you wait when you've already made a serious effort to stay out of the hospital. Give me a minute and I'll get you upstairs." Soon he comes back to get us and escorts us up to Unit 47, where they know me well.

  And then all of a sudden, it's day. I open my eyes and squint in the white light pouring in through the windows. I assess the situation: I am in a room. Upon further consideration, I am in my room at home. I am in bed, probably my bed, unless they've moved someone else's bed in here, though I can't imagine why they would do that, so, I think, very groggy, probably not.