I am driving through the dark, very fast. I glance at my speedometer: 110 mph, but that isn't so very fast after all, when you consider, and compared to other things and speeds, and there is no danger for I am invincible, I am flying, and it is very urgent that I get there, to the place I am going, I must arrive immediately, the space between places upsets me, the map in my mind sprawls out in all directions, I crest the top of a hill, or maybe a mountain, it's really quite high, the air is thin and cold, the vast and utter spill of the blue-black sky, like velvet, but spinning, crawling within and around itself, amazes me, the molecules of sky (but are there molecules of sky? Is it truly a thing in itself?) seething, and the sparks of stars are electric—I feel the hill must lead down into the deeper dark, for the road spins out before me like a snake's tongue unfurling and I see no side of the road, the road is suspended in the sky like a magical bridge over what must be a long divide, the mountains splitting apart from one another, withdrawing into themselves and leaving this wide swath of bottomless sky, and I turn off the lights and I fall through space, I fly, my wheels leave the road and I am free.
I am feeling my way through the little market in town. I am near the mustard, and I search the shelves for something to keep me alive, for I have to hide away from the world, and I need food in case of fires, bombs, or acts of God. The aisles seem to lean over me, threatening to collapse, and the bright white lights in the buzzing dairy case confuse me. I keep to the back of the store, not wanting to go out front, where the clerk might see me and suspect me, or someone might open the jingling door, coming in for their morning coffee and the paper—when I came in it was just barely getting light, the purple sky reeling overhead—and I can't have anyone see me, for they might see how crazy I am, they might know. I need to get out of here before I am seen. I hurry through the market, dropping things into my basket, anything in a can, sardines, soup, peas and carrots, beans, tuna, smoked oysters. I need to stock up, I need to fill the shelves at the beach house with food, like a bunker, keeping me locked away from the world for a while, condensed milk, pickled beets, my hand grabs things off the shelf and drops them in the basket, it doesn't matter what they are.
I stand staring at my hands as I count out my money, the clerk's eyes boring into me, I can feel them, he suspects, he can see. I mumble, Thanks, and at last it's over. I hurry out to the car with my bags. I make my way to the house, driving like mad on this narrow road, hunched over the wheel, knuckles white, because I am afraid that I will drive off a cliff, just jerk the wheel and go flying over the edge, and I can't do that, I can't, I don't want to die. I peel up to the house on this quiet, still-sleeping street, gray wooden fences and lush vines crawling over them, and towering, brilliantly colored flowers glowing in the mist—this is the terrifying outside world that threatens to swallow me whole. The house is familiar today, as if I have been here as a child, but I don't know whose it is. I am alone. I lock myself in and draw the curtains, because it is safer in here where there are locks on the windows and doors.
The cans I bought are impossible to open. The can opener is complex, so I will starve; I will bury myself under the house; yes; I stop crying, much reassured.
I sit at the table with my arms wrapped around myself. I hold myself to the chair so that I do not stand, for if I stand, I might go to the drawer, get the knives, and then who knows what I'd do? I want desperately to be sane. But I can picture myself having just done it, the first stab, and the look on my face, horrified, But I didn't mean to, I couldn't help it, I take it back—
I know, sitting here in the house by the ocean, that if I so much as touch a knife, I'll do it again, and this time I might, as they say in the business, succeed. The desire to do something with my hands, to strike, to break, is so powerful it's all I can do to hold them under my arms, crossed tightly across my chest. I keep myself sitting, because I am afraid that if I stand, even if I make it past the drawer where the knives are kept, I might grab my keys and get in my car. And I know, I know, that if I do that, I will drive myself off a cliff. At this moment, I understand with all my being why someone would commit suicide: there is no other way to get away from yourself, and I want nothing more than to finally escape the incessant shrieking of my mind, the crawling madness that has infested every part of me, body and brain. Don't ask me why I am focused, particularly, on the knife drawer and the idea of driving off a cliff. They happen to be the means of death my mind fixates on, and they keep me sitting in my chair for I don't know how long. Hours? Days?
Of course, I get up now and then. I get up to get another bottle. Then I put myself back in my chair, as if I am a little kid who refuses to eat her peas and is not allowed to leave her place until she finishes every last bite. I sit at the table with my feet on the chair, peeling the label off a bottle of whiskey, swimming in the drunken, tumultuous sea of my thoughts. I take a swig, set the bottle down, and study it as the liquor burns a path down my throat. It suddenly dawns on me that the drinking may be one of the things that is making me as crazy as I am. It is one of the things that has brought me to this point. I put my head on the table, hand wrapped around the bottle, and close my eyes. I know I can't stop. And I know, finally, that if I do not stop, the madness will get worse, that the alcohol is like pouring gasoline on an already smoldering fire.
I find myself opening the phone book and looking up a twelve-step group. A few minutes later I'm driving like hell toward what seems the only chance I have to save my own life.
Hi, someone says. He's enormous, wearing biker leathers and a red bandanna. I'm Steve, and I'm an alcoholic.
Hi, Steve, the room recites. My vision veers in and out, and my hands shake so hard I can barely hold the Styrofoam cup of bad coffee. The coffee has little waves in it. It spills over the sides.
Hi, Susan. Hi, Sandra. Hi, Peter. Hi, John.
They come to me. I look around in confusion.
What's your name? someone asks gently.
Marya, I say, barely audible, my mouth sticky and dry.
They wait for me to say And I'm an alcoholic. A beat. They move on. Hi, Andrew. Hi, Joan.
They talk for an hour. I have no idea what they say. My brain skitters over the sound, catching snippets of sentences, a laugh. The circle of faces revolves around me, the room spins, and I grip the arms of my chair to keep myself from tipping over. And then suddenly the meeting breaks up, I'm wandering outside, and it seems that half the group hurries after me, calling my name. They crowd around, looking at me urgently, touching me on the arm. I look up at them, overwhelmed and confused, and try to follow the questions that come at me in a flurry:
How long since your last drink?
Are you feeling all right? You look a little—pale.
Have you eaten lately?
Do you need another cup of coffee?
Why don't you come back inside and sit down. You don't seem so steady on your feet.
I am pushed back into the meeting room and guided onto a couch. Someone hands me a cup of coffee. They pull up chairs.
So, someone says. Are you sober?
I stare at them. I think so, I say.
Have you had a drink today?
Just a couple.
When was the last time you ate?
I try to think. I can't remember, I say.
Someone produces a banana. Eat this, they say. Come with us, they say. I am being herded into someone's house. You need sugar, they say, and pour me orange juice and a bowl of sugary cereal and I try to figure out what to do with the spoon. They talk to me and I try to understand what they're saying, and my brain is soaked with booze, addled with madness, but they are good people, and they are feeding me, and I am so relieved I start to cry.
They pat me on the shoulder. Hey, they say. 'S'all right. You'll be all right.
I don't think so, I say.
Inexplicably, my aunt—my mother's sister, whom I adore—is sitting at the kitchen table with me. I am very startled to find her here. She doesn't explain her presence. Turns out I've been hiding in the family beach house on the Oregon coast. It's hers and my mother's, so I suppose there's no real reason she wouldn't be here.
It seems I've called my mother at some point in the last few days. I've been gone for weeks. My parents—now divorced, my mother living in Minneapolis with her new husband, my father with his new wife in Arizona—knew only that I was on a hiking trip with a friend. They've been worried about me for months, listening to me get crazier and crazier during our infrequent phone calls. Whatever I said to my mother when I called from Oregon must have tipped her off that I was not doing so well. (No, not so well.) She called her sister, who lives in Oregon, and asked her to come get me. She also called my sister-in-law, a doctor in a Portland hospital, and made certain that a bed in the psych ward was waiting for me.
But I know none of this. All I know is that I am in the beach house, and my aunt is here, and I am near tears with relief. I try to feign normalcy—give her a hug, tell her I just needed a little getaway, the beach house seemed the very place. I don't tell her that I didn't even know I was in the beach house. I smile and tell her I'm writing. I babble and chatter, my speech getting faster by the second. I flit from topic to topic, unable to stop, and she nods, looking at me strangely, worried, and I don't want her to be worried, I don't want her to think I'm crazy.
Out of nowhere I hear myself lighting into HMOs and their evils, their failure to cover mental health services, and I am being extremely articulate, honing my argument, and now I am sobbing, and I say I don't know what I'm going to do, I have no way to get help, and I think it's possible I may need some help, nothing serious, but maybe just something to get me back on my feet, but they won't cover anything and it's all a bureaucracy with no connection to real people with real problems who need help. I watch tears drip from my nose onto the wood grain of the kitchen table and try to get ahold of myself, to start speaking in a nice, detached, intellectual way. This will surely persuade my aunt that I am perfectly fine, outburst aside.
Oh, sweetie, she says.
That makes it worse. I crawl up the stairs to the bedroom and climb into bed, sobbing so hard I am pretty sure I am going to break. The feeling of despair is so pure and clean it seems to slice a razor-sharp path through my body. My body gapes open, filling in slowly with the knowledge that there is no hope. I find this peaceful. My aunt is bending over me with the phone. I hold it to my ear. My mother's voice. More soothing noises. I am crying too hard to hold the phone, so I hand it back to my aunt.
Now I am in a car. The towering green-blue pines and rocky cliffs that crowd against the two-lane road go by. Now we are at a hospital. Now we are in a tiny, windowless room. Now I am in a chair. My aunt is here. We are locked in. I do not understand the room. There is a TV screen that shows someone in a uniform pacing back and forth outside. My aunt explains that it is a security guard. To secure what? Me. I am concerned and ask if the figure has a gun. She tries to explain. The uniformed person makes me incredibly agitated. I have a great many questions about this new situation. I cry, wanting to know if they will come to get me, if they will let me out, if they will help me.
I don't know what happens next.
I am in a cage. I am dreaming, but I am not asleep. It is a daydream. But then it is night; I do not know how to explain it to the figures in the room, who surround me. I cannot move; I flail but in a very contained sort of way because it would seem my ankles and wrists are restrained. The figures in the room murmur, which must mean I'm crazy again, because otherwise they would speak in normal voices. But I am strapped down + they murmur + I cannot lift my head + for it is full of medicines to calm me + aha! It is not a cage for there is no roof! Which means = it is a bed with bars. And the figures peer over me and study me as if I am a rat. Or perhaps I have just been born and they are admiring my perfect little ears. And then a face comes into focus: a savior! Surely he will tell me where I am, for if he is here and I am here then = he must know where we are but there is a sudden flower; it is a sunflower; I shriek, Sunflower! It is the color of rust; is that even possible? Is there a flower the color of rust? I realize it is threatening; why has he brought me this flower; it seems to say I know you. Rather than saying, for example, Get well, obviously. As a daisy would say; however, I dislike daisies, have always disliked them, to the point of truly hating them, for no reason that I am aware; van Gogh painted sunflowers! The sunflower is redeemed. So I take it and eat it. Then they take away my sunflower, which I love very much; they say, We'll just put this in a vase; which is so uninspired a notion I laugh at them for they must be very boring to one another and themselves; I am not boring; I am, I discover, full of ideas; I mention the green beans; I can lift my head! I announce that I will leave if they don't give me a dress to wear to the occasion; and some fabulous shoes.
The next thing I know, I am coming to, and everyone in the world is standing above me. My mother is in here somewhere. I am aware of her presence. My father is or is not here, it's not quite clear. I understand that if he is not here yet, he will be soon, for this is a highly unusual situation, and he will need to come explain it to me.
There are bars on the bed. The people murmur. I am here, and they are here, which means I am somewhere, somewhere safe, and I don't have to drive anymore, and the shrieking has stopped, and my mind floats in a bath of sedatives, sunning itself on its back like a seal.
I am mad. The thought calms me. I don't have to try to be sane anymore. It's over.
I sleep.
When I come to again, the sound has been shut off. My head has become a kaleidoscope. It turns and turns, and the shards of color tumble and arrange themselves differently every time. At some point the colored patterns organize themselves into the shapes of people and things, and my head becomes a telescope instead. I watch them on their little planet, unsure how far away they are. They come and go, the view from the telescope emptying out, focusing now on the plastic light on the ceiling above, which is another strata of space, which has a light, which is possibly a star. Then they reappear in the telescope again and I am much relieved. When I move my telescope from side to side, the figures and the colors pan past so fast it makes me dizzy.
I am sedated. I don't understand what's going on. I know only that I am in a hospital and that my family is here. Someone is beside me, my doctor, my mother, my friend, and I murmur a few things, and I hear my sentences begin to tangle into incomprehensible, nonsensical gibberish, and it frustrates me, trying to make myself understood, and I slide back into sleep.
The things that happen are out of order. Nothing follows. My facts are my facts alone.
I travel from bed to bed. Today I am in a bed without bars. A nice woman with short blond hair is talking to me. I feel as if I am underwater. I establish for myself that she is my doctor. Her voice echoes, garbled, in my head. I concentrate on what she is saying. I try to keep myself afloat. Do you understand me? Oh, yes, I nod, wanting to be polite. She is saying something about medication. She uses the word helping. We are trying to [burble burble]. We want you to know [burble]. Your mother and father are here. Tell me how you. We are. They are. We will. Better soon. As soon as we.
I hear myself say something. My own voice is very near, so near I am not sure if it makes it from the echo chamber of my skull out into the air. I remember I had many questions that I was saving up for when she came. My questions trip over one another, and I can't keep one sentence separated from the other. The words tangle up. She says, I'm sorry, I don't understand. I try to explain myself, but I am sinking, my eyes start to close, I hear myself mumble, getting farther away. Marya? You're not making any sense. She stands to go. I'll come back later, she says. Frustrated, sinking, I nod.
I am upright. I am wearing my robes. I stare at the table, where a peanut butter sandwich has appeared, though it confuses me and I don't know what to do with it. My hands lie in my lap. My hands are heavy. Someone is watching, and I lift my head. I have visitors. They furrow their brows and look sad. I tell them not to worry, it will be fine. My mouth will not cooperate. I would be embarrassed but I can't concentrate that long.
I shuffle across the room to the little table where they keep crackers and oranges and tea and powdered hot chocolate and lukewarm water. The water is lukewarm so we can't scald ourselves. The movie plays in a loop. From the faraway place in my head, I watch my insane game of one A.M. cribbage with a speechless enormous man who sometimes inexplicably laughs and struggles with a pencil to mark down the score. I do not know how to play cribbage. I have never known how.
My feet in hospital footies are tucked under me. I am a smallish creature, a rabbit or a mouse, swimming in miles of hospital cotton, dazed and riding fluorescent dreams. The colors of the cards blur red-black as I turn my head. I study three dead flowers in a Styrofoam cup: two yellow, one purple. I struggle to remember their names. A man named Beast tried to kill himself last night. I say I am sorry about that. He talks to me slowly and I raise my eyes. He says, Do you know flowers, and I say, Yes. It takes a moment to force the word but I say, Yes, I know flowers, and he says, Do you know a flower like a firework, an explosion, but purple, or blue, and I picture the wet bush flush with balls of blue outside the kitchen window, after the rain, when I stared at it for hours, letting the coffee go cold in my cup, clinging to the cup in the face of the astonishing blue while I cried. This was maybe yesterday or maybe last year. It was in the house on the coast or it was in my childhood home or it was somewhere I can't remember now. I pick through the rubble of my brain. My brain is an archaeological site. Yes, I say, carefully deciphering the complexities of my cards, yes, hydrangea. We stare at each other, amazed.
It is very late now, it is the same night or another night, and the man with the clipboard walks from room to room glancing up at the dry-erase boards outside the doors to check our erasable names to distinguish one drugged figure in the bed marked WINDOW from the one in the bed marked DOOR. He will mark on his yellow sheet: B (BACK), L (LEFT), F (FRONT), R (RIGHT). I am A (AWAKE). This too will go down on the yellow sheet and soon they will come, cooing, to give me an A (ATIVAN), because wouldn't it be nice to sleep?
There are two beds in my room. This means I am better now. It means I am oriented. When I came they must have asked me questions to which I did not know the answers—Do you know what day it is? What year? Who is the president? Do you know where you are?—but to which I apparently do know the answers now. Hospital, I must have said, and that was the right answer so I won, and the crowds cheered. They have moved me from the room where I began, where they murmured, a lifetime before, or last week, where there was only one bed, the emergency psych room. Now there are two beds. Sworls of threadbare blankets wrap around our two figures like cotton galaxies. The thick blue dark gently presses its fingers into our eye sockets, the shallows of our open mouths, the crook of an arm pulled close to the body for heat. A damp and heavy sleep fills the room, a third body, breathing.
These are my facts. There are other facts. I do not learn these facts until much later. The other facts are as follows: I crashed into a depression that lasted for another nine months. The two-year mania in California that led into the psychosis that sent me tearing across the country with Crazy Sean and landed me in the hospital in Oregon for two weeks came to a sudden halt as depression took hold. It was the next stage of the cycle of bipolar: manic depression hits both extremes, one following the other. The higher you fly, per cliché, the farther you fall. After a manic episode, the body and mind are exhausted, completely spent. I hit the wall. I picture myself flattened against it like a cartoon character, two-dimensional, sliding down.
I've spent my fair share of days flung across the bed, racked with a dull, aimless grief, and I've curled up on the floor in a corner of the room, my thoughts black and seething, and I've understood the word despair, the word defeat. I've felt the loss of the will to breathe, and felt the momentary wish to die. But it was momentary. I was always able to pull myself out. Or, really, mania always returned and sent me lying again.
This is different. I do not have the energy to pull myself free. I do not have the energy to even care that I am trapped. This is beyond caring, beyond a will to die, beyond will. Death is there, but you can barely lift your hand to reach out for it, and you cringe at the faintest suggestion of light. You can wish for death, but it is like wishing for sleep, a sense of exhaustion so profound that your whole body aches. And just as sleep does some exhausted nights, death eludes you. It is right there. You feel it. But it won't come close enough. And if you have the energy to cry, that's why.
Down, down, down. It doesn't feel like depression; I am not sad. I am underwater. I am a body. I follow the world through my telescope. I am drugged, and so feel nothing at all, as the doctors scramble to find some combination of meds that will stabilize me. I sleep almost around the clock. The doctor explains to me that I am very sick. She explains to me that I need to stop drinking or I will never get better, it will always be this bad. My parents explain things to me too. They speak slowly. They explain to me, over and over, where I am, but I am profoundly confused. They sit in the hospital all day, every day, propping up my head with their hands, answering my endless, repetitive questions, wondering if I will return to sanity soon, or at all.