The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness (17 page)

American), and no doubt it made me sound like I was putting on airs.
In fact, I'd unconsciously adopted a lot of British behavior—I was
arm's-length with people I didn't know, and was somewhat taken
aback when students addressed some faculty members by their first
names, or asked personal questions or made casual comments that
seemed rude or invasive to me. For the last five years I'd been referred
to as "Miss Saks" in any professional setting; the shift to "Elyn" felt
odd and a bit disorienting.

My correspondence with Mrs. Jones had provided me with a kind
of safety valve or repository for all my ravings. I knew that the person
who was reading my letters knew me, understood me, and understood
the context in which I was
WTiting.
But once I had no time to write her,
there was no place for the craziness to go, and the pressure slowly
began to build. In addition, I wasn't in any sort of treatment or
therapy, or taking any kind of medication. There were plenty of
indications that I should do something—talk to somebody, take some
kind of pill. I knew that much; I was not, after all, stupid. But pills
were bad, drugs were bad. Crutches were bad. If you needed a crutch,
that meant you were a cripple. It meant you were not strong enough to
manage on your own. It meant you were weak, and worthless. For me,

my worth was defined in and by
work.

I need to work.
I tried to ignore the fact that I was convinced the
person teaching legal research was making derogatory comments
about me during lectures. I tried not to pay attention to the other
students, who of course believed me evil and defective, and talked
about me when I was out of earshot. There was no peace or respite to
be found in my living quarters—that's where my endlessly cheerful
roommate studied. I wanted to call Mrs. Jones, but Emily was always
there, and the thought of her overhearing that conversation appalled
me. If I just tried hard enough, concentrated hard enough, I could
defeat this thing by myself.

And then I started to have intensely psychotic thoughts about my
contracts professor, a young, smart, and funny woman, full of verve,
whom I quickly grew to idealize.
She's looking after me. She's God. She
has the power to make everything all right for me. She knows about
the killings and wants to help. I won't let her kill me, though. She
wants to help me. She'll take care of me. She has the power because
she's God. I will bask in her God-like glow.
I spent hours each night
awash in these thoughts, wondering if I should thank her for
everything she was doing on my behalf. Should I bring her a gift of
some kind? Or should I write a note instead?

And always, my head hurt from thinking these things—a pounding,
searing, real pain, not like the physical pain of a headache, but an
intense throbbing inside my skull someplace; sound waves. There
were days that I feared that my brain was actually heating up and
might explode. I visualized brain matter flying all over the room,
spattering the walls. Whenever I sat at a desk and tried to read, I
caught myself putting my hands up to either side of my head, trying to
hold it all in.

One day, as Emily and I were talking, I turned away from her to
see a bearded, scrawny, wild-eyed man behind me, holding a large
knife and poised to pounce. Terrified, I gasped. The hallucination
immediately disappeared.

"Elyn, what's wrong?" Emily asked.

"Nothing," I said. "Nothing's wrong."

Only two weeks into the semester, I couldn't bear it anymore, and
decided I needed to take myself off to Student Health Services. At my
first appointment, I met the American version of Dr. Barnes, the
rather hapless young psychiatrist who'd treated me in Oxford. A
beginning intern, Dr. Baird was visibly taken aback at my
near-incomprehensible blabbering. The technical term for what I was
doing (where one says words that sound similar but have no real
connection with one another) is "word salad"—although in my case,
"fruit salad" might have been more apropos.

"My name is Elyn. They used to call me 'Elyn, Elyn, watermelon.'
At school. Where I used to go. Where I am now and having trouble."

"What kind of trouble?" she asked.

"There's trouble. Right here in River City. Home of the New
Haveners. Where there is no haven, new or old. I'm just looking for a
haven. Can you give me haven? Aren't you too young? Why are you
crying? I cry because the voices are at the end of time. Time is too old.
I've killed lots of people."

"Well, er, now then, Elyn," she began, looking first at her
notebook, then back at me. "I think you're having some psychological
difficulties. There's a word called 'delusion,' which refers to a fixed
and false belief that's not based on evidence. This appears to be what
is going on with you."

I thanked her for the lesson. She closed her notebook and said she
would see me the following week.

When I left that appointment, I left scared. Things were out of my
control and I didn't know where to turn for help. The one person who
I knew could make me feel better was an ocean away. I became
especially concerned with who might get hurt if my head literally were
to explode.
The innocent bystander problem.

A couple of days later, on a Friday afternoon, I became convinced
that I couldn't last the weekend, and went to see the on-call person at
Student Health Services. The psychiatrist on call there was nice, and a
bit more with-it than the first young woman I'd seen; this young
mental health professional spoke with a Latino accent and seemed
extremely empathic. Within minutes of meeting her, however, I
quickly decided that I needed to conduct my end of our conversation
from inside her small coat closet. I stood up and walked over to it,
then squeezed myself in. She wasn't having any of it.

"If you don't come out now and talk with me, Elyn, I'm going to
have to hospitalize you."

Dutifully, I came out of the closet and sat down. "There's a war in

China," I said. "One needs to be heavily armed. Are you God? Have
you ever killed anyone?"

"No, no, I haven't," she said quietly. "Elyn, after we speak for a
while, if you go back to your room, how do you think you will manage
for the rest of the weekend?"

I shook my head. More gibberish came out of my mouth.

She called another therapist into the office, a young male social
worker, small and wiry, with a no-nonsense manner.
He's nice,
I
thought.
Not scary. Not scary yet.

After asking me a few more questions, and basically getting
nothing for their trouble, they announced that they thought it best to
give me a little medication.

"It's called Trilafon," the woman said. "It's a neuroleptic. It'll help
with your confused thinking."

I knew exactly what a neuroleptic was—antipsychotic medication,
with terrible side effects, like heavy sedation, arms or legs that won't
stop trembling (sometimes irreversibly), and a worst-case scenario
that included death. There was no way I was going to take their stupid
drug.
Why should I take a drug, when all I'm doing is saying what
other people think but for some reason don't say? We all think like
this, our brains are all like this; it's not as though I'm psychotic or
something.
Did I say this out loud? I wasn't sure.

The two of them called in a third person—the chief of psychiatric
sendees, a short, older man with white hair. Somber. Distinguished.
All three urged me to take the medication.

"No, no," I said. "I can't do that. Call my friend Jean's husband.
Richard. He's a neurologist. They used to know me in England, but
they're in Washington, D.C., now; they'll tell you. Richard knows all
about my brain, he will know what's best to do."

They shook their heads. They began to look like dolls to me.
Puppet dolls. "Elyn, if you don't agree to take the medication, we
might have to put you into the hospital."

That sent a shock through my body that forced me to focus my
mind, forced me to tighten my speech and manage the words that
came like marbles out of my mouth. "None of this is necessary," I said
as firmly as I could manage. "Simply being here, talking to you—I'm
feeling better now. If you take me to a hospital, they'll let me go. You
can't hold someone who's doing as well as I am. I'll get out right
away."

It was an act, but it worked. They agreed to let me spend the
weekend in the Student Health infirmary instead. And while they kept
arguing for the Trilafon, they promised not to force it on me.

I'd won the battle. But I was about to lose the war.

The social worker accompanied me back to my dorm room to get
my things; then we walked back and I checked into the infirmary, on
the highest floor of the Student Health building. I wasn't happy, but I
tried to comfort myself as best I could.
At least you're not in the
hospital. That was a close call.

I sat on the edge of the bed for what seemed like long minutes,
then decided I ought to take a look around. To my surprise, I
discovered that I could easily walk to the elevators with no
interference from anyone, and take them all the way down to the
ground floor, which is exactly what I did. I stood outside on the front
steps of the building for at least a half hour, smoking a cigarette and
thinking about what I should do next.

It was a beautiful New England autumn evening, with a clear sky
full of stars. The air was fresh and bracing, and there was a sense of
peace and order on the campus.
I don't belong here,
I thought.
I
should be in the library working; this is all a big mistake, a
regrettable misunderstanding. But it's at least ten o'clock, too
dangerous to be walking around this neighborhood alone. They
might get upset or angry if they notice me missing. Oh, what the hell,
best to go back upstairs and spend the night here.
Sighing, I went
back inside and headed for the elevators, leaving the lovely night
behind.

As I walked back onto the unit, one of the nurses saw me. "There
she is!" she shouted.

Startled, I bolted like a fox who'd heard the bay of the hounds.
Hurtling through the nearest door, I ran down the fire stairs, and
heard them running after me. Their voices echoing down, their shoes
thumping on the metal steps. Barely one flight ahead of them, I made
it down to one of the lower floors, where I found an open door. It
seemed to be a child's playroom. Panting, I crouched down and
crawled under a tiny table, folding myself into the smallest ball I
could. I heard the commotion outside, people calling out my name,
running back and forth down the halls looking for me. Eventually,
someone came into the room where I was hiding and switched on the
lights.

"I found her!"

I pleaded with her, incoherent. "Masses of mastiffs are coming!
These masses, diseases! Why are they doing this to me? Why?"

The staff quickly gathered to confer with one another, and stayed
close to make sure I didn't get away. By the time the on-call clinicians
arrived, I was back in my room, sitting calmly on the bed, and able to
form an intelligible sentence.

"What's going on, Elyn?" asked the social worker.

I shrugged. "I was bored, I decided to take a walk."

"I see," he said. "And were you thinking of leaving while you were
taking this walk?"

"I was thinking of it," I admitted, "but I decided to stay."

"A good decision," he said, and then he smiled. "And how are you
feeling now?"

"Fine. I'm fine. It's all OK."

"Yes, you do seem OK to us now," he said. "But the infirmary staff
think you're too difficult to manage, so you can't stay here."

As nice as he was, his message was clear: I was being kicked out of

Student Health. Shameful. I couldn't decide whether to burst into
laughter or burst into tears.

The psychologist and social worker instructed me to spend the
night at my dorm and come back the next morning, so they could see
how I was doing. I agreed. They gave me a small packet of Trilafon,
with the encouragement that it would make me feel better.

I would never take any of that Trilafon; the only time I really even
thought about it was days later, when the packet fell out of my pocket
after constitutional law class, and my professor, rather embarrassed,
returned it to me the following day.

However, I was dutiful about returning to Student Health the next
morning. I hadn't slept, my fantasies filled the room, and I couldn't
seem to get my mouth to work when it came time to meet with my
psychologist and the social worker.

"One. Tempo at the time. Time is a number," I told them.

"You seem upset today, Elyn. Can you tell us how you're feeling?"

"There's the killing fields," I said. "Heads exploding. I didn't do
anything wrong. They just said 'quake, fake, lake.' I used to ski. Are
you trying to kill me?"

"No, of course not, we're only here to help you. Have you thought
any more about taking some of the medicine?"

At that point, I crawled under the desk and started to moan and
rock. The faceless creatures hovering near, invisible to everyone but
me, were about to tear me to pieces. "They're
killing
me. They're
killing
me! I've got to try. Die. Lie. Cry."

"We want to get you some help, Elyn." The psychologist said she
was going to her office to make some calls and that the social worker
would stay there with me. I huddled right where I was, rocking and
moaning under the desk. The creatures wanted to kill me, and the
doctors wanted to send me to a hospital. I knew this for an absolute
fact. I had to get out of there.