Madness: A Bipolar Life

Minneapolis

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.

Washington, D.C.

1992

Sophomore year. I’ve won a scholarship and am completely nuts. I’m at the office, editing for a wire service, racing through the pages, assigning, working, I’m finally a success, I’m taking five classes and getting all A’s, now I can be up all night again, this starvation is better than speed, I’m nearly dead and don’t believe it for a minute, I’m on my sixth pot of coffee, my fingers are blue, my hair is falling out, I’m winning awards, people stare at me with disgust, I couldn’t care less, I sit at my desk all night, how many nights now? The nights become days become nights and I am working, working, working, starving myself to death.

I am nineteen years old. I am lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to a tangle of IVs. My heart monitor barely moves. I weigh fifty-two pounds. I am almost perfect. I lift my arms and admire them, bones covered in gray, dry skin. My fingers run their course over my body: the thin ridge of my collarbone, neck and chest sunken far beneath; the hollow of my cheeks, the way I can run my fingertips along the teeth underneath; the cavern in the center of my body, the way the cage of my ribs curves around the hollow, and my hipbones jut up, the way I can feel my internal organs through the skin. I wrap a fist around each thighbone. My thighs are no longer round. They are just right. They don’t exist. I’ve done it. I’ve erased myself. I’ve won.

I pass out.

THE FIRST CLEAR thought in years: I refuse to die.

1993

The feeling of health, as I slowly gain the sixty pounds I need to keep me alive, is foreign, weird. My body morphs as I stare at it in the mirror. I am going to stay alive. Finally I have grasped that I cannot feed my mind and starve my body to death. Finally, from somewhere, comes this visceral urge to survive. And so here I am, living. I’m working again—I’m going to school, and getting grants, and I get a job teaching undergrad classes, and I make friends, and stay up with them all night talking about books, and I’m going to parties, and learning to eat, and I suddenly have a life. A normal life. I walk tentatively through my days, afraid of breaking the spell, afraid I’ll fuck it up, I’ll fail.

Afraid I’ll go mad again, and lose it all.

1994

I am writing a poem. I am only vaguely aware of myself: the point is the poem. To the effort I contribute the mechanism of my mind: the cogs and wheels groan and begin to chug along. They move faster, sending out a conveyor belt of neatly packaged words. A story, a poem begins to take shape. Pages pile up. I scribble and gnaw on my fingers, getting blood and spit on the paper. The pages are a product of my body. I can touch them. I can eat them if I want. I worry their edges, rip at their corners, throw them to my right as I finish each one, the letters running up to the edge and spilling off onto the desk until I get another piece of paper and continue recording the automatic generation of language from my mind. As the sky outside my window turns from black to midnight blue, as thin clouds stretch across the indigo sky like someone lying on her side, I hurry: morning is almost here. I race to get down the last of the words. The light comes up. I push myself away from the desk, unclench the fist that held the pen, stagger off to bed, fall into a thick, drunken sleep.

I wake up an hour, a few hours, half a day later. I wince at the light. I am a bat. I dangle in the corner of my room, my leathery wings folded over my face. I look at the clock. Did I call in sick to work? What day is it? Do I have class? Am I teaching? Oh, Christ. I let my head fall back on the pillow and stare at the ceiling. I am silent. I do not exist. I am merely a pair of eyes, looking around at the room. The rest of me is invisible. I won’t be visible again until someone sees me. If a woman stands in a kitchen rubbing her eyes and pouring coffee with no one there to see her, does she exist? I will not register in the world until I speak.

I stumble out the door, hop the bus to the university, my head bobbling as we drive over ruts in the road, listening to the slow milling of arbitrary words around my head. The words displease me. They are not in order. Everyone is talking at once. I sit in silence, staring out the window, watching the city go by.

An hour later I find myself standing in front of a classroom with chalk in my hand. They will drop a nickel in me and I will begin to talk.

MY BODY CLOCK is completely screwed up. I’m drinking again. One minute I’m flat on my face in the living room, crying and deep in despair, the next I’m tearing back up, moving so fast my head is spinning, trying to do a million things at once, trying to keep up with the rocketing, plummeting moods.

I can’t so much as clean my apartment. My bills pile up, unpaid. The phone gets turned off. I’m so broke I’m feeding my cat cans of beans. The only things in my refrigerator are a bag of wilted carrots and beer. I guzzle coffee all day and vodka all night.

What’s wrong with me? Nothing. I’m fine. I’ve just become a lazy slob. Get ahold of yourself. Now.

But I can’t. And soon enough I snap.

Full Onset

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.

The New Life

1996

Suddenly, I’m writing a book about my years with eating disorders. I don’t really know how that happened—a writer I know talked me into it, insisted I should—but I sit at my desk all day, pounding it out. The sun crosses the floor of my one-room apartment in Oakland as I race through the pages, barely aware of the world, trying to forget the crazies, the razor, the cut.

Now I’m drinking in earnest. At the end of the day, each day, I head down the street to the liquor store to buy the night’s supply of vodka. I go home, add a splash of orange juice to an eight-ounce tumbler, fill the rest of the glass with the vodka, and spend the evening at my desk writing poetry, then stay up all night reading every secondhand book I can afford. I stagger around my apartment, completely unaware that I am quickly crossing the line from binge drinker to alcoholic. It happens overnight.

And here’s the kicker. On impulse—it just occurs to me—I stop by Julian’s house. Julian is a friend from my adolescent California days, the only semi-sane friend I had. He is a nice guy, kind, a port-in-a-storm kind of fellow. And he is also a little boy, aimless, easy to sweep away. He has no life—now he can have mine.

I pull up to his house, my hair in a crewcut, wearing a tank top, old jeans, and a beat-up pair of boots. He opens the door. His jaw drops. I grin.

We spend a year in a particleboard apartment, drinking constantly, playing grownups. My new life is complete. I’ve abandoned the crazy years, the crazy self, and here I am with a book deal, a future, and a fiancé. We spend the nights in Melendy’s Bar, pool balls cracking, Patsy Cline on the jukebox, swimming in smoke. We talk nonstop, laugh our heads off, plan an extravagant wedding, an extravagant life.

Our families and friends are alarmed, wondering where the hell we got this idea, urging us to wait, but we ignore them—it’s perfectly reasonable that two twenty-two-year-olds who knew each other as kids and have now been living together for all of a year are completely prepared to begin a life together.

Idiots.

WE MARRY in July, and the next day, because this is perfectly obvious, we get in a moving van and head back to Minneapolis. I want to be near my family, my friends, my cousin Brian, who’s been my closest friend since we were kids, the one sane point in the whirlwind of my chaos, the voice on the phone long-distance, the writing on the letters, the hand that held my string as I bobbed and wove in the breeze.

So Julian and I go sailing forward at a breakneck pace. We’re grownups now. I am spending money as fast as I make it, and we jet around the country to lavish hotels in cities, anywhere, everywhere, eating fabulous meals, blowing thousands of dollars, making drunken fools of ourselves, collapsing on endless king-size beds. At home, I careen from parties at friends’ houses to Brian’s downtown apartment, where I talk a mile a minute and we cackle with laughter. He’s the dearest person to me in the world, a person of substance, solidity, sanity, and a deep and abiding gentleness, and he is what I rely on, even if I’m not entirely aware of it, to give my life some semblance of sense. As much as we laugh, he gets me to sit still for a minute, tries to tell me I’m going too fast, that I’m going to crash, but I ignore him, that’s the old me, I’m a different person now. I go racing through the mall, buying everything in sight, staggering under bags and bags of things I’ve bought, who cares what they are? I want it, I have to have it, it’s perfect! It’s gorgeous! I can’t stop shopping, our house fills up with china, crystal, expensive sheets, mountains of books, gourmet cookware, every kind of booze you can think of, paintings, clothes and more clothes and more clothes. We’re like little kids. We are little kids, but don’t tell us that—we’re having a fantastic time. We have our little house, and live our little life. We are the perfect young husband and wife. We have nonstop dinner parties—the glorious food, the fabulous friends, the gallons of wine.

I sometimes feel as if I’ve raced off a cliff and am spinning my legs in midair, like Wile E. Coyote. But I’m fine. It’s fine. It’s all going to be fine. Crazy people don’t have dinner parties, do they? No.

We go to concerts and plays, and never once do I let on that sometimes the music turns colors in my mind, veering toward me, making me flinch. I laugh at the funny parts and clap when everyone claps, even if I’m confused, disoriented, scared.

When I get lost as I drive through the streets of my city, I tell no one. Every night, after a day of writing, I open the bottle of wine, and Julian and I settle in for an evening of drunken glee. I make the fancy meals and wash the wedding dishes and write the thank-you notes for all the million wedding gifts on stationery stamped with my married name.

Crazy people don’t have stationery, do they?

The wineglasses will stave off the madness, surely, or the breakfast nook will, or the husband himself. I’m not going crazy.

Not again.

IT SEEMS TO HAPPEN overnight: one day I am calm, and the next I am raging. It’s very simple. Happens like you’re flipping a switch. Julian and I are going along, having a perfectly lovely evening, and then it’s dark and I am screaming, standing in the middle of the room, turning over the glass-topped coffee table, ripping the bathroom sink out of the wall, picking up anything nearby and pitching it as hard as I can. The rages always come at night. They control my voice, my hands, I scream and throw myself against the walls. I feel like a Tasmanian devil. The room spins, I run up and down the stairs, I can’t stop. Julian tries to grab me, holding my arms until I scream myself out and collapse, exhausted, in tears—but there are nights I manage to squirm free and run out the door. Sometimes I just run as far and as hard as I can, until I can’t breathe, until my heart is about to explode, or until, stumbling drunk, I fall and hit my head on a tree stump or the curb and lie still.

Sometimes, though, I get in my car.

I peel out of the driveway, roaring up Thirty-sixth Street, away from my pretty house and sleepy neighborhood. Slow down! I am screaming at myself, Marya, slow down!

And the madness screams back, I won’t!

It slides under my skin, borrowing my body without asking: my hands are its hands, and its hands are filled with an otherworldly strength. Its hands feel the need to lash out, to hit something, so it tightens its white-knuckled fists on the wheel, its bare foot slamming the gas. My head jerks back. Half in abject terror, half in awe, I watch the lights streak across the sky, bending as I careen around corners, up Hennepin, down through the seething nightlife of Lake Street, past the spectrally brilliant movie theater marquee, the crowds a blur, stoplights are not for me! Streetlights smear behind me like neon streamers. I hurtle forward. The only thing that matters is motion, forward motion, propulsion, I veer onto the freeway, playing chicken with the cars. The road comes at me full speed, it looks as if it will hit me dead between the eyes, but then it swerves around me just in time. The other cars, the median, the guardrail flash around my face, and I in my roller coaster am clattering and screaming along. I wind up in some unknown neighborhood, over by the river or on the north side of town. I turn the car around and, my rage spent, find my way home.