The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness (13 page)

While the content of what Mrs. Jones said to me was not always a
comfort (more often than not, it was startling, and had the effect of
catching me up short), her presence in the room was. So calm, so
reasonable, no matter what bizarre words and images she or I used.
No matter what I said to her, no matter how disgusting or horrible,
she never recoiled from what I said. To her, my thoughts and feelings
were not right or wrong, good or bad; they just were.

I must have looked an odd sight around the Oxford campus,
making my appointed rounds in solitude, still occasionally muttering
to myself, still lapsing (badly) in self-care, forgetting to eat, thin
enough for a good strong wind to blow me away, and always, always,
burdened with a large bag of books. In the bag were the texts I needed
for my academic studies, of course, but others as well: psychiatry
books; abnormal psychology books; a book on suicide that Dr.
Hamilton had recommended months before; a book by Dr. Storr on
the personality types that often were the underpinnings of actual
mental illness ("depressive" and "paranoid" were two that particularly
resonated with me).

Because the odd thing was, I didn't think I was particularly crazy,
or that what I often thought or felt was unique to me. Instead, I had
come to believe that everyone had these thoughts or feelings, this
sense of a force or evil energy pushing on them to do evil or be
destructive. The difference was, they all knew how to manage it, how
to hide it, how to control it, because that was the socially appropriate
thing to do. They had stronger wills, and better coping skills, than I
did. They knew how to keep their demons in check; I did not. But
perhaps I could learn.

As my sessions with Mrs. Jones increased, and I became
accustomed to spooling out the strange products of my mind, my
paranoia began to shift. Although the nameless, faceless creatures
from the sky had no less power over my fears and thoughts, the actual
human people in my daily comings and goings seemed less scary and
more approachable. No longer a faceless, threatening mass, existing
only to judge or possibly harm me (or be targets for
me
to harm), they
were becoming individual persons—human beings, as I
was—'vulnerable, and interesting, perhaps with something in common
with me, possibly even friendship. Slowly, I made one friend, and then
two. One evening, I had a companion for a lecture; a few days later, I
went to a small dinner party. Blinking and shaky (as though I'd been
in a cave, and the light, as welcome as it was, was something I'd have
to get used to), I began to move back into the world again.

In time, I found myself involved in actual friendships, in particular
with three other students: Dinah and Patrick, both Brits, and Sam, a
fellow American. Dinah was tall and very thin, like me, although she
was often dressed more like a hip undergraduate than the Oxford
scholar she was. She had been hospitalized briefly after college for
depression; that made me feel closer to her, and less weird. Patrick, on
the other hand, was charming, at ease, and apparently very well
adjusted and comfortable with himself.

Sam—also quite tall, and handsome as well, with huge, expressive
eyes—was often anxious about money and even more neurotic than I
was about the workload. In spite of long, slogging hours, he wasn't
convinced he would be able to do the work and finish out his degree
program in time. Although he had a girlfriend in London, he seemed
more like a loner than I was; he played the guitar (he wrote music),
and often spoke to himself as he walked through our college house,
behavior which (like Dinah's earlier treatment) reassured me that I
wasn't the only nutty one.

The four of us were soon inseparable. We would cook our meals
together, or go to Brown's, a north Oxford restaurant that served
passable American and British food. We didn't see movies, or watch
any television; in an effort to be culturally responsible, I did go off to
the opera a couple of times, but didn't like it much. Instead, we spent
endless hours talking late into the night, sitting together in our college
house or, when the weather permitted, up on the house roof, near the
chimney.

As friends wall do once the newness of friendship becomes
something more comfortable, I finally told them more about myself,
confessing my history, even the more difficult part—it was only fair,
after all, as they'd done the same with me. Learning to trust, learning
which secrets were safe to tell—this was all part of the difficult terrain
I was learning to navigate.

So they knew I had intermittently been hospitalized, and was now
struggling through psychoanalysis. Nevertheless, there were whole
parts of myself I tried desperately to keep hidden. I knew, for instance,
not to share my ongoing delusions of evil, in particular the part about
my being evil and my total certainty that I was capable of horrible acts
of violence. Not that these thoughts were wrong; I believed everyone
thought this way, but just knew better than to talk about it, much as
everyone passes gas, but not in company. But as hard as I tried, I'd
sometimes find the wrong words coming unbidden to my lips—for
example, the memorable night we all sat on the roof and I casually
mentioned having killed many children.

"It's a joke!" I quipped as fast as I could, noting with alarm the
expressions on their faces—uncertainty at first, and then, slowly, a
hint of horror. "A stupid joke! Oh, come on, everybody wants to kill
kids once in a while, don't they? Except of course they don't—hey, it's
not like I actually did that! Or would do that, you know that, right?
Don't you?" Yes, they all said, they certainly did, don't be ridiculous,
Elyn. They knew I'd been kidding around with them, they weren't
worried about me, I hadn't frightened them. But of course, I had, and
I knew it.
Got to keep control
, I thought.
Get a grip. Keep a grip.

In spite of my occasional lapse, these three dear friends made me
happy, when for so long, nothing much had. They filled a place in my
heart that needed filling; it was just like Kenny and Margie and Pat all
over again—a small group of friends, laughing together, studying
together, sharing a life that was focused on (indeed, held together by)
our books, and our deadlines, and an emphasis on intellectual rigor. If
I could make friends like these, I thought, then I could find a way to
save myself.

Despite sometimes being too sick to work, I was making progress
on my degree. Some days, it was so slow and difficult that it felt like I
was carving rocks, and there were times I lost faith that I'd ever be
happy with my work, or produce enough of it to finish in an acceptable
manner. But the daily routine kept forcing me to concentrate my mind
and push the evil presences to the side. I had no required classes at
this point—my only fixed appointments were with Mrs. Jones—so I
had large chunks of time to write. I switched my program to a thesis
degree, so I was required to write one long paper instead of many
short ones and I wouldn't have to take an exam. I decided to write
about Aristotle's philosophy of mind, and taught myself French so
that I could read an important medieval commentator on the subject.
I wasn't always up to the task, but each time I slipped backward a
step, I'd simply resolve to move forward two more.
Work harder,
work longer, keep working.

As helpful as my relationship with Mrs. Jones was proving to be, the
intensity of what I was feeling for her opened some kind of door, and
the psychotic thoughts marched right through it, growing more and
more violent every session.

Me: "I had a dream. My mother and I are standing outside. We
hear an explosion and look off into the distance. We see a mushroom
cloud. My mother and I embrace, crying, telling each other that we
love each other. Then we are both killed."

Mrs. Jones: "Your rage is so great that you destroy the planet. And
your mother—and I—we do not protect you. You hate us for that. Your
hateful feelings cause the world to explode. You tell your mother that
you love her, and you want to make contact with her and with me. But
then your rage kills everyone off."

Soon, Mrs. Jones herself became the overt object of my fantasies.
Notwithstanding Freud, my psychosis had not gotten in the way of my
developing an intense transference to her, and that transference was
not pretty. "I know you say you are my analyst," I snarled at her one
afternoon. "But I also know the truth. You are an evil monster,
perhaps the devil. I won't let you kill me. You are evil, a witch. I'll
fight."

She never even stirred in her chair, and her reply was measured in
tone. "You have hateful feelings toward me, Elyn. You hate that I know
things that you don't know. You hate that you feel you need me. You
put your hateful feelings in me and that's why you think I am
dangerous. You fear that bad part of yourself."

"Are you trying to kill me?" I hissed. "I know about the bombs. I
can make a bomb, too. You are the devil. You are trying to kill me. I
am evil. I've killed you three times today. I can do it again. Don't cross
me. I've killed hundreds of thousands of people with my thoughts."

Psychotic people who are paranoid do scary things
because they
are scared.
And when you're both psychotic and paranoid, it's like
that sweaty midnight moment when you sit bolt upright in your bed
from a nightmare that you don't yet know isn't real. But this
nightmare went on all through the daylight as well. The closer I felt to
Mrs. Jones, the more terrified I became: She was going to hurt me.
Maybe she was even going to attempt to kill me. I needed to take steps
to prevent that from happening.

Walking by kitchen stores, I stared through the display windows at
the knives, thinking that I should buy one and take it to my next
session. Once, I even went into a hardware store to look at the axes,
wondering which one, if any, might protect me. For a while, I carried a
serrated kitchen knife and a box cutter in my purse to my
sessions—just in case.
She is evil and she is dangerous. She keeps
killing me. She is a monster. I must kill her
, or
threaten her, to stop
her from doing evil things to me. It will be a blessing for all the other
people she is hurting.

At the very same time I was terrified of Mrs. Jones, I was equally
terrified I was going to lose her, so much so that I could barely tolerate
weekends when I would not see her for two days. I'd start to unravel
on Thursday and be nearly inconsolable until Tuesday. In the
intervening time, it took everything I had to protect myself—and my
friends—from what was going on in my head: "Yes, of course, let's get
a hamburger, OK, let's discuss that book we both read," all the while
plotting ways to keep Mrs. Jones from abandoning me:
I will kidnap
her and keep her tied up in my closet. I will take good care of her. I
will give her food and clothes. She will always be there when I need
her to give me psychoanalysis.

And then, once back in her office again, I'd tell her every single evil
thing.

Me: "I will not let you go on vacation this year. I have a weapon. I
wall take you to my room and put you in my closet. You wall stay wdth
me. You wall not have a choice. I won't let you go. Throw. So."

Her: "You feel absolutely dependent on me, like a baby, and that
makes you angry. You imagine ways to keep me near you, and some of
these ways have violence in them, so that you wall show me that you
are stronger than I am."

Her tolerance and understanding seemed endless, and her steady
and calm presence contained me, as if she were the glue that held me
together. I was falling apart, flying apart, exploding—and she gathered
my pieces and held them for me.

Psychosis is like an insidious infection that nevertheless leaves some
of your faculties intact; in a psychiatric hospital, for example, even the
most debilitated schizophrenic patients show up on time for meals,
and they evacuate the ward when the fire alarm goes off. So it was for
me. Completely delusional, I still understood essential aspects of how
the world worked. For example, I was getting my schoolwork done,
and I vaguely understood the rule that in a social setting, even with
the people I most trusted, I could not ramble on about my psychotic
thoughts. To talk about killing children, or burning whole worlds, or
being able to destroy cities with my mind was not part of polite
conversation.

At times, though, I was so psychotic that I could barely contain
myself. The delusions expanded into full-blown hallucinations, in
which I could clearly hear people whispering. I could hear my name
being called when no one was physically around—in a corner of the
library, or late at night, in my bedroom where I slept alone.
Sometimes, the noise I heard was so overwhelming it drowned out
almost all other sound.
Stop, stop, stop. No. Stop.
Days went by when
I simply could not bear to be around anyone; unless I was with Mrs.
Jones, I stayed alone in my room, with the door locked and my lights
out.

"Elyn, are you angry with me?" asked Sam one afternoon.

"No," I said. "Why?"

"Because you're avoiding me. You didn't come out to dinner with
us, you didn't answer your door last night or the night before, and

right now, you're scowling at me."

It's because I can't hear you,
I wanted to tell him.
It's louder than
you, and if my energy goes to you, I won't have any left to fight it. I
will not be able to keep it at bay. You will be in danger. We will all be
in terrible danger.
I was just enough in the real world to know that
what I was thinking much of the time wasn't real—or at least it
wouldn't be real to him.