Girl, Interrupted

There is some measure of comfort in knowing that the words I write here will likely never be read. I have given no one the URL to this site and have no plans to do so. If you know this assumption to be false, please do me the favor of keeping it to yourself and read on. I enjoy the comfort my misconception gives me and would hate for it to be dispelled.

The changes of the last week came at a time when I really wasn't able to handle them. A combination of stress and other factors put me in a situation where I wasn't able to bounce back, and misinterpreted many of the things I was told. As a result I was disoriented and depressed, as the previous two posts can attest. In the middle of the week I was explosively enraged to the point where people were avoiding me and I was kicked out of my own home. By the end of the week I was almost catatonic, finding it almost impossible to muster the energy to speak or move. I asked for a day off.

I still had to come in the next morning to fill out some paperwork. I did everything I could to avoid people, but since filling out paperwork and getting it signed involves people my attempts failed miserably. I can't count the number of people I ran into and had to interact with. I think at one point someone asked me where I was going on my day off. I remember replying, "Crazy." Not far from the truth.

I drove into "the big city", which really isn't all that big. But it's what we have so I take it as it is. There are two routes. I took the route that has large cliffs. There are no guardrails, which at times can be quite thrilling. This time it was altogether too inviting. It's been a long time since I've thought seriously of suicide. I could feel the thoughts leaking in like water from a broken pipe in the ceiling. By the time I got into the city I was seriously considering driving to the mental hospital and admitting myself. I'd been thinking of it since the middle of the week, but now I had the opportunity.

I'd brought my writing things. My original thought for how to spend my day off had been to go somewhere to write. Almost by default I went to the local bookstore. If I wrote, I wrote. If I looked up the phone number to the mental hospital, I knew they had pay phones and phone books. At the very least I could get a cup of coffee to try to sort things out.

I've had a couple of people suggest Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen. I never saw the movie when it came out and probably wouldn't have been receptive at the time. I really wasn't interested in reading the book, either. The times I've read books with TS characters in them, I invariably wind up ticcing worse, feeling worse, and wishing I hadn't. The thought of reading a book about a depressed character in a mental hospital had no appeal whatsoever. Nevertheless I bought a copy along with Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar.

After grabbing a cup of coffee and sitting down at a table I tried reading The Bell Jar. I couldn't get into it any more than I could get into the other books I was trying to read at the time. I found the main character alien with alien desires. The desire to interact with people, to wear fine clothes, to go to parties, none of these made any sense to me so I couldn't relate. I've also been trying to read A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. This, too, has been difficult at best. The characters are strong with ambitions and desires to the point that they'd murder others just to get their way. Both of these are well-written. Don't get me wrong. But at the time I was thinking of admitting myself to the hospital or kililng myself. I was not in a mindset to understand either book.

So I put all the books down and wrote. It was glorious. I wrote one of the first set pieces in the book I'm working on. Sixteen pages. I know it'll need serious revision before I'm happy with it, but it's done. It's written. I can move on, knowing the plot moved ahead the way I needed it to. It was nice getting to know my characters again after so long. I've missed them.

As a break I picked up Girl, Interrupted with some trepidation. An hour later I realized I needed to get lunch. I did get lunch, but I kept reading. I'd also come to town to run some other errands. Nothing I especially wanted to do, but things I knew were expected of me. I finished them, then went right back to reading. By the time I had to leave I'd finished the book and wished there was more.

I know Kaysen was writing to an audience that might read with disbelief or morbid curiosity, not knowing what such a world could be like. For me it was eye-opening. For starters I could identify with most of the characters, which hasn't happened with me while reading for quite some time. Their strengths made sense. Their weaknesses made sense. When they lashed out I would've lashed out. When they curled up I curled up, too. It was wonderful.

It was also revealing to me. The chapter on suicide is one of the most accurate descriptions I've ever seen. It doesn't talk about weakness or inability to cope. It doesn't talk about depression. I talks about hows, whys, and whats. I won't go into this further because it spoils one of the most beautiful parts of this book for me. It helped explain something I'd never put together for myself, and had never understood about my one attempt. I didn't have the same experience Kaysen had. Quite the opposite, in fact. But I'm a little closer to understanding my experience now.

The book also served as a warning. I never did look up the phone number and address of the hospital. I still don't know where it is. I can't say that it will always be this way. But this time, at least, I chose not to. I've never been in a mental hospital. There was a time when my therapist told me she would put me in one, if I breached the following things in her presence. I was always careful not to breach any of them -- not in her presence, anyway. I have had friends go to mental hospitals. One described it as one of the more horrid and enlightening experiences she'd had. It gave me energy to work this round out on my own and look for another doctor.

But it also raised some problems for me. I'm beginning to see there's a strong three year pattern going on. I'd hoped it was situational, and in some ways I can still convince myself that's the case. And yet, here it is again and my situation is still quite good. I'm beginning to see another scenario in which chemistry drove the situation, and the situation explained the reaction to the chemistry. I finally have a situation I'm unwilling to poison, yet I still feel the same feelings.

So what am I to do? I could stay the course, do what I always do, burn out, scream, rage, change jobs, move, and start over again. I could contact a doctor, which would require scheduled outages from work. This would mean discussing all this with the Powers that Be. That would mean disclosure. It might also mean not being able to handle it and going back to choice number one anyway. Or I could simply leave a note for my supervisor saying I'll be out for a while and check in to the hospital. Only how long will that be? A few days? A few weeks? What if the doctor decides I simply cannot be released into the public again? Is that what I want? Is that what's best for me? Is it what's best for everyone around me?

I'm actually doing better. I'm re-reading Girl, Interrupted more slowly this time. It's giving me plenty of food for thought. I don't think it'll give me answers. That's not the point. But it might give me a framework to figure this out. It's all I can ask for. It's certainly more than I've had.