Madness
Authors: Marya Hornbacher
A Bipolar Life
Marya Hornbacher
Table of Contents
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2008
Copyright © 2008 by Marya Hornbacher
All rights reserved
For information about permission to reproduce selections
from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company,
215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hornbacher, Marya, 1974–
Madness : a bipolar life / Marya Hornbacher.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
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978-0-618-75445-8
1. Hornbacher, Marya, 1974—Mental health.
2. Manic-depressive persons—United States—Biography.
3. Manic-depressive illness. I. Title.
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Printed in the United States of America
Book design by Victoria Hartman
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The following names that appear in this book are
pseudonyms: Frank, Joe, Jeremy, and Sean.
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ContentsFor my parents
Prologue:
The Cut: November 5, 1994
[>]
Part I
The Goatman: 1978
[>]
What They Know: 1979
14
Depression: 1981
19
Prayer: 1983
20
Food: 1984
[>]
The Booze under the Stove: 1985
23
Meltdown: 1988
[>]
Escapes: Michigan, 1989
35
Minneapolis: 1990
37
California: 1990
39
Minneapolis: 1991
41
Washington, D.C.: 1992
44
1993
45
1994
45
Full Onset: 1995
47
Part II
The New Life: 1996
[>]
The Diagnosis: April 1997
[>]
The Break: July 1997, Nine
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[>]
Unit 47: Same Day
73
Tour: January 1998
82
Hypomania: July 1998
88
Jeremy: Later That Summer
[>]
Therapy: 1999
106
Losing It: Winter 1999
112
Crazy Sean: June 2000
114
Oregon: August 2000
121
Day Treatment: Late August 2000
[>]
Attic, Basement: Fall 2000
141
Valentine's Day: 2001
149
Coming to Life: Summer 2001
[>]
Jeff: Fall 2001
155
The Good Life: Summer 2002
159
The Magazine: November 2002
[>]
Fall 2003
[>]
Part III
The Missing Years
[>]
Hospitalization #1: January 2004
175
Hospitalization #2: April 2004
[>]
Hospitalization #3: July 2004
186
Hospitalization #4: October 2004
189
Hospitalization #5: January 2005
192
Hospitalization #6: April 2005
196
Hospitalization #7: July 2005
202
Release: August 2005
207
Part IV
Fall 2006
[>]
Winter 2006
242
Spring 2007
[>]
Summer 2007
258
Epilogue
[>]
Bipolar Facts
[>]
MY BIPOLAR FACTS
[>]
Useful Websites
[>]
Useful Contacts
[>]
Research Resources
[>]
Bibliography
[>]
Acknowledgments
[>]
The Cut
November 5,1994
I am numb. I am in the bathroom of my apartment in Minneapolis, twenty years old, drunk, and out of my mind. I am cutting patterns in my arm, a leaf and a snake. There is one dangling light, a bare bulb with a filthy string that twitches in the breeze coming through the open window. I look out on an alley and the brick buildings next door, all covered with soot. Across the way a woman sits on her sagging flowered couch in her slip and slippers, watching TV, laughing along with the laugh track, and I stop to sop up the blood with a rag. The blood is making a mess on the floor (note to self: mop floor) while a raccoon clangs the lid of a dumpster down below. Time hiccups; it is either later or sooner, I can't tell which. I study my handiwork. Blood runs down my arm, wrapping around my wrists and dripping off my fingers onto the dirty white tile floor.
I have been cutting for months. It stills the racing thoughts, relieves the pressure of the madness that has been crushing my mind, vise-like, for nearly my entire life, but even more so in the recent days. The past few years have seen me in ever-increasing flights and falls of mood, my mind at first lit up with flashes of color, currents of electric insight, sudden elation, and then flooded with black and bloody thoughts that throw me face-down onto my living room floor, a swelling despair pressing outward from the center of my chest, threatening to shatter my ribs. I have ridden these moods since I was a child, the clatter of the roller coaster roaring in my ears while I clung to the sides of my little car. But now, at the edge of adulthood, the madness has entered me for real. The thing I have feared and railed against all my life—the total loss of control over my mind—has set in, and I have no way to fight it anymore.
I split my artery.
Wait: first there must have been a thought, a decision to do it, a sequence of events, a logic. What was it? I glimpse the bone, and then blood sprays all over the walls. I am sinking; but I didn't mean to; I was only checking; I'm crawling along the floor in jerks and lurches, balanced on my right elbow, holding out my left arm, the cut one. I slide on my belly toward the phone in my bedroom; time has stopped; time is racing; the cat nudges my nose and paws at me, mewling. I knock the phone off the hook with my right hand and tip my head over to hold my ear to it. The sound of someone's voice—I am surprised at her urgency—
Do you have a towel—wrap it tight—hold it up—someone's on their way
—Suddenly the door breaks in and there is a flurry of men, dark shadows, all around me. I drop the phone and give in to the tide and feel myself begin to drown. Their mouths move underwater, their voices glubbing up,
Is there a pulse?
and metal doors clang shut and I swim through space, the siren wailing farther and farther away.
I am watching neon lights flash past above my head. I am lying on my back. There is a quick, sharp, repetitive sound somewhere: wheels clicking across a floor. I am in motion. I am being propelled. The lights flash in my eyes like strobe. The place I am in is bright. I cannot move. I am sinking. The bed is swallowing me.
Wait, this is not a bed; there are bars. We are racing along. There are people on either side of me, pushing the cage. They're running. What's the hurry? My left arm feels funny, heavy. There is a stunning pain shooting through it, like lightning, flashing from my hand to my shoulder. It seems to branch out from there, shooting electricity all through my body. I try to lift my arm but it weighs a thousand pounds. I try to lift my head to look at it, to look around, to see where I am, but I am unable to. My head, too, is heavy as lead. From the corner of my eye, I see people watching me fly by.
I am in shock. I heard them say it when they found me.
She's in shock,
one said to the other. Who are they? They broke down the door. Well, are they going to pay for it? I am indignant. I black out.
I come to. I am wearing my new white sweater. I regret that it is stained dark red. What a waste of money. We have stopped moving. There are people standing around, peering down at me. They look like a thicket of trees and I am lying immobile on the forest floor.
When did it happen? What did you use?
they demand, their voices very far away.
I don't remember—everyone calm down, I'll just go home—can I go home? I feel a little sick
—I vomit into the thing they hold out for me to vomit into.
I'm so sorry,
I say,
it was an accident. Please, I think I'll go home. Where are my shoes?