The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness (14 page)

Think about having a bad flu, on a day when you can't stay home
huddled under the covers. You have business, you have
responsibilities. And so, summoning up reserves you didn't know you
had, you somehow make it through the day, sweating, shaking,
nodding politely to colleagues while barely controlling the
nausea—because you know that if you can just pull it off, then you can
go home, where your couch (or your bed, or a hot bath, or whatever
you define as comfort and safety) is waiting. You hold it together, and
then, once you're home, you collapse. For two straight years, I did my
work, met my obligations, made it through the day as best I could, and
then fled to Mrs. Jones, where I promptly took the chains off my mind
and fell apart.

chapter eight

F
OUR YEARS AFTER
coming to Oxford, I finally completed my
graduate degree in 1981. The whole endeavor had taken twice as long
as I'd thought it would, on that long-ago day when I first walked
around the ancient campus. I'd lost two full years to my illness.

Although (to me at least) the jury still seemed to be out as to
whether or not I was sane, there seemed to be some consensus that I
was reasonably intelligent: The examiners' response to my thesis was,
by Oxford standards, excellent, much more than I could've hoped for.
Their report said that while the extent of my thesis was appropriate to
the degree I would receive (a Master of Letters, or M.Litt.), the quality
of it was equal to that of a Doctor of Philosophy, or D.Phil., the highest
degree that the university offers.

Happily, I had enough presence of mind to be proud of myself and
what I'd accomplished. I hadn't given up. I'd managed to stay out of
the hospital for two years, and the academic work I did during that
time had been judged better than good, by objective critics who had
no reason to be kind to me in their criticism. And there was no
denying that Mrs. Jones had been the determining factor in all of that.

And so, after giving the matter careful thought, I decided it would
be best for me at this point to stay on in England for one more year, so
that I could continue my sessions with her. I had the financial means
to do so—my parents gave each of us gifts each year, and how I spent
that money was up to me. At that point, I couldn't imagine a better
investment than my own mental health. In addition, the rate for my
treatment was so much cheaper in England than in America—$12 an
hour vs. $60, at that time—that it just made sense to stay right where I
was, to continue with an analyst who knew me, knew my history, and
had earned my trust.

However, since I was not a student anymore, I had to move out of
my college house and find someplace else to live. Through a friend, I
heard about a young, divorced mother, Janet, who lived in an old
house with her four-year-old daughter, Olivia, and was looking for a
tenant. I met with Janet and liked her immediately. The house was
warm and comfortable, and the part of it in which I would live was
exactly what I'd hoped it would be. We agreed—I would move in. In
an unlikely gesture of bravura at the time, I'd bought a moped a
couple of years earlier, so now I had friends, some measure of
freedom, and a lovely, peaceful room of my own—there had been a
time, not too long before, when I could not have imagined having any
of it.

In fact, as I began that third year of working with Mrs. Jones, it
was encouraging to me to see that some areas of my life improved a
little each day. Dating was out of the question, of course—I wasn't
sure if or when I'd ever be able to think about a romantic relationship.
But I had friends, good ones. I had a nice place to live, with the
occasional added bonus of an endearing little blond girl named
Olivia—Livy—who brightened up every hour of every day I spent at
Janet's house. And I was beginning to make an actual plan for my
future.

Even though I was no longer taking classes at Oxford, I often went
to lectures there, and drew up my own self-imposed reading list as
well. I'd decided that going any further with philosophy was out of the
question—too many bad memories from the previous four years,
struggling through the densest of that literature while in the grip of
psychosis. Instead, I was increasingly drawn to the study of
psychology and law. I was fascinated by the insanity defense, for
example, and the complicated civil issues in mental health law, such
as involuntary commitment. As I paged through psychology,
psychiatry, and law texts, the case histories on the pages often seemed
eerily familiar to me—how easily I could have been any one of them.
How easily I could have slipped beneath the waves and simply never
come back up again. I wondered if there were a role I could play in the
lives of people who suffered in a way that I understood only too well.

My living circumstances created an environment in which it was
both easy to think and easy to heal. I hadn't spent anything remotely
approaching "quality time" with my own family in a very long time,
and Janet went out of her way to include me at mealtimes and
holidays. Sometimes in the evening, we'd sit together in the living
room and watch television—good British TV, something I'd not taken
much advantage of until then. Often, her artist mother, Katherine,
would join us.

Janet was soft-spoken and kind, with wonderful natural instincts
as a mother. Although she didn't talk much about herself, I learned
enough about her life to know that things hadn't always been easy.
Olivia's father was not in the picture at all, and Janet's own father had
died when she was young. She was very close to Katherine, who'd
struggled with bouts of depression. It was two or three months before
I told Janet about my own hospitalizations, but when I finally did, I
characterized them as being for depression; I never hinted at the
psychosis or the terrifying fantasies. I was too ashamed of what she
might think, and afraid that she might see me as some kind of threat
to her daughter. I know now I could have trusted Janet with anything,
and on that day, when I sat nervously in her living room and risked
telling her as much truth as I could, she was understanding and
compassionate, with no judgment whatsoever in her response.

And of course, every day, there was sweet Livy. Affectionate and
bright, she loved to draw and color, or play in make-believe scenarios
where I was the teacher and she was the student. She couldn't wait to
learn to read, and go off to school like the bigger kids in the
neighborhood. She was quite content to snuggle in my lap while I read
to her, but was just as happy if I was being the Wicked Witch of the
West—she'd insist that I do the witch's cackle-laugh while chasing her
around the room, and then she'd fall down on the carpet in a giggling
heap. Unscheduled silliness, with no goal except to enjoy the moment
and the little girl who was sharing it with me—it felt exactly like the
sun coming out after a long, long rainy season.

Even with my daily appointments with Mrs. Jones, and the research
and reading I was doing to prepare for the next phase of my life, I still
had way too much free time on my hands, something that I knew had
never been good for me. I needed to find a way to fill the empty hours.

I decided I wanted to make some sort of contribution, to repay my
debt to the professionals who'd taken such good care of me, hoping
that in the process I might be able to help others. I believed that I
understood the experience of being in a hospital for the mentally ill in
a way that the staff (or at least most of the staff ) might not—which
logically, I thought, would make me a good volunteer.

I'd been away from the Warneford long enough that I believed I
could go there without being recognized. And so, one morning after I'd
taken great pains with my appearance and rehearsed my best
interview behavior, I met with the Warneford's head of volunteers,
and we began what seemed like a very promising conversation.

"Thanks so much for meeting with me today," I said.

She nodded and smiled. "My pleasure," she said. "Now, tell me all
about yourself, Miss Saks, and why you want to volunteer here."

"Well, I'm an Oxford graduate trying to decide whether to go on in
psychology or law when I go back to the States," I said. "Whatever I
ultimately do, I would like it to be something about helping people
with mental illness. So I thought that volunteering here might be a
good place to explore this, and also get some valuable experience."

With a kind of understated enthusiasm—she seemed to convey the
idea that she thought I was a good catch—the woman began to discuss
some possibilities at the Warneford where I might be of use. As we
talked, I felt encouraged, even optimistic; it would be my first
experience in any kind of "professional" capacity, and it just seemed
right that it would take place at this particular hospital.

And then she mentioned the hospital unit where I'd actually been a
patient. At a momentary loss for words, I sat up straighter in my chair.

"Well, I'm not certain that would be the best place for me," I finally
said. "I was a patient there myself, not so very long ago. First I was in
the day hospital, and then later I stayed for a while, as an inpatient,
hmmm, well, I just don't know how staff would feel about that. I
mean, maybe it would work out, but on the other hand I suspect that
another unit would perhaps be better, at least in the beginning."
Stop
talking now, Elyn. It's not going at all well.

An expression flitted across the woman's face, and then it was
gone, replaced by a tight attempt at a smile. "I see," she said, moving
some papers on her desk from one stack to another. Then she folded
her hands. In my experience, this was rarely a good sign. "You know,
Miss Saks, I'll have to look into this further," she said. "It's not entirely
clear to me at this point that there are any
actual
volunteer vacancies
right now, you understand, I'm sure. In any case, thank you for
coming in, I'll be in touch just as soon as I know more."

I tried to hold on to my original optimism as I left the building. I
replayed the conversation in my head—that went well, didn't it?—then
got on my little moped and motored home. And I waited.

When she hadn't called in a couple of days, I called her, and left a
message. The following day, I called again, leaving another message.
Still nothing. After I called a third time, and once again heard nothing
in response, it finally sank in what my revelation had done. It was a
painful way to learn a lesson, but it's one that I've carried with me for
the past twenty-five years.
Never tell them anything you don't have to
tell them. Never volunteer any information they don't ask for.

I licked my wounds for another day or two, raging and muttering
about my disappointment to Mrs. Jones. Then I applied again for a
volunteer position, this time at Littlemore Hospital, another
psychiatric institution in Oxford. Littlemore, too, was built in the
mid-i8oos, but for poor people, and the buildings had a similar sense
of gloom and doom. During the interview and on my application, I
said nothing whatsoever about my own psychiatric history. They
accepted me immediately, and scheduled me to be there five to ten
hours each week.

At Littlemore, I worked primarily on the Activities Unit, where the
patients, most of them chronically ill, came to spend time every day. I
led exercise groups and art groups, and sometimes I just sat in the
dayroom and chatted quietly with the patients. From the very first, I
had no nervousness or anxiety whatsoever about being with them; it
seemed completely natural to me to be there, to do whatever I could to
make someone's burden of illness even a little bit lighter.

One of my favorite patients was Tom, a tall, nice-looking man,
somewhat overweight (probably from the meds he was taking, which
were notorious for this side effect). He'd come from a fine family and
was a former patient of R. D. Laing, the prominent "anti-psychiatry"
psychiatrist of the sixties. Intelligent and articulate, Tom regaled me
with stories of the LSD parties Laing used to stage in the woods for his
patients. I wondered exactly why he was in this unit, but I presumed
that he needed this kind of structure to remain as intact and coherent
as he seemed to be.

There was another patient, Robert, a short, muscular man, who
initially didn't seem ill at all to me. Then I learned that before he came
to the Littlemore, he'd been a patient at the fabled Broadmoor in
London, one of the British hospitals for the criminally insane. One
day, as I was rounding up patients to go on a day outing into town,
Robert walked up to me, his fists clenched, his face quite red and
angry, and he muttered something unintelligible in a way I can only
characterize as a threatening snarl. What on earth? Somewhat
alarmed, I asked the staff what was going on.

"Oh, Robert killed his first wife," they said casually. "That's why he
was in Broadmoor in the first place. And now he's just gotten engaged,
so he's probably a bit wound up."

Oh, so it wasn't just that the man was crazy—he'd actually
killed
somebody.
I wondered if maybe I'd momentarily reminded Robert of
his wife. And the next day, when he was the only one who wanted to go
into town with me, I felt a sinking sensation in my stomach. Was he
angry at me? Was I in some kind of danger from this man who'd killed
one woman, and perhaps could be provoked by unseen forces to kill
another?

He was just fine on the trip, both going and coming. That was
when I learned that for all my good intentions, I could be
simultaneously on the receiving and the giving end of the stigma that
goes along with mental illness.