Tag: bipolar
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Why We Cut Ourselves
The memory of me sitting down at ten years old, digging a hole into my leg with a knife and a needle (see yesterday’s post), feels distinct from the times I pulled blades over my arms and legs. The childhood act seems premeditated: a kid in the middle of summer, bored and looking for something…
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A Weekend Note from the Home Asylum
I’ve received emails from people, responding to posts about my recent psychotic breakdown. Some of them are friends who ask: 1. If I’m okay and 2. Do I really want to do this? Write about my mental illness? They’re concerned that it will set off another episode. They might have a point. Then there are…
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The Pattern of a Breakdown
As chaotic as madness is, there is a pattern to it. This latest episode, for instance: it really began in November, when we set the clocks back and lost an hour of sunlight. Even in Los Angeles, as we approach winter solstice, it turns dark before five o’clock. Each day in December, with its lessening…
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How Madness Hides
My smile in the photo isn’t a lie, but an attempt. It was my idea to take the family Christmas portrait, one of those last-ditch efforts to get into the holiday spirit. We took it Christmas eve. Sixteen hours later I crumpled into a corner of the kitchen, screaming about childhood and the demon in…
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You Don’t Have to Have a Merry Christmas
The darkest evening of the year was yesterday, though for most people, it was just the longest evening of the year. Winter solstice. The shortest day. Here, in L.A., dusk came along around 4:30. That’s too soon for me. Going to bed has, for nearly forty years, been a reckoning with the shadow that comes…