The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness (28 page)

The professor looked at me in a knowing way. "You don't really
understand," he said kindly. "These people are different from you and
me. It doesn't affect them the way it would affect us."
If only he knew,
I thought to myself.

My Note, "The Use of Mechanical Restraints in Psychiatric
Hospitals," was published in the
Yale Law Journal
in 1986. The pride
I felt was almost too enormous to be borne. A few months later—after
graduation—I received a call from a lawyer at the Bazelon Center for
Mental Health Law, then and now considered the premier public
interest law firm representing people with mental illness. Bazelon,
located in Washington, D.C., advocates in both the courts and in
Congress on behalf of a constituency that in most cases is unable to
advocate for itself. "I read your Note with great interest," she said, and
then went on to explain that she'd used the information in it to form
and bring a major class action lawsuit challenging the use of restraints
in a certain Midwestern hospital. My Note helped someone. My work
had made a difference. It helped another attorney and it helped
patients who were no different from me. No different at all.

Graduation was (as it is, I suspect, for almost everyone) a time for
reflection. For me that meant asking how I had gotten here, what had
kept me out of the hospital and in the classroom, and how I could
ensure that safety in the uncertain time ahead.

First, I was in consistent talk therapy, with a psychoanalyst who
understood me and treated me with respect. With his painstaking
interpretations of my behaviors, White helped me open a window onto
myself, showing me that my psychosis served to protect me from
painful thoughts and feelings. My psychosis actually played a role in
my psychological life—the unconscious mind serving as a defender of
the conscious mind. For some reason, knowing that made everything
less toxic, more malleable. I may not have been in complete control of
my psychosis, but I wasn't totally at its mercy, either.

In addition (as with Mrs. Jones, but unlike all the medical doctors
to date), White did not recoil from me. He never put me in the hospital
(under the guise of protecting me while actually protecting himself),
but stood his ground when I was most frightening, and vowed to
protect me. He knew better than anyone that most of the time, I was
literally scared out of my wits.

When it came to the difficult issue of medication, White
encouraged but never forced me. For all my intense ambivalence
about taking drugs, I nevertheless did take them most of the
time—because in White, I had a medical professional who actually
listened to me, trusted me, and rewarded my trust in him.

In Steve, I'd finally found a true friend, almost a soul mate, who
saw and accepted my illness, yet viewed it as not at all central to who I
actually was. That connection—to a good person, a smart person, an
affectionate, funny, and accepting person—made me feel truly human.
And it made me feel hopeful that I'd find other people like Steve, and
that they, too, would see past my illness and value the real me.

I'd been in an academic program that offered equal parts structure
(which I needed) and unstructured time (which I needed to learn to
manage). Everybody, on some level, needs a good day-care program:
Mine was the Yale Law School.

So I'd made it through, and managed to construct some survival
tools. I'd found a school that helped me flourish, a psychiatrist who
made me feel life might well be worth living, and a friend who made
me feel human. And while it might be a long time before I'd find a man
who made me feel like a woman, what I had on graduation day was
not half bad, given all I'd been through. Graduation was a
victory—and in fact, the administration chose me and another student
to be class marshals, the students who go up on stage to receive a
diploma on behalf of their graduating class. My entire family was
present when I made that walk, and I couldn't help but think how far
we'd all come.

It was a very good day.

And yet. There was the not-insignificant matter of the law boards, and
the job hunt, and having to move out of the dorm, and finding a new
place to live. The day after graduation was all about change, and I'd
never been good with change.

I decided to stay on in Connecticut for a while; I wasn't yet ready to
leave White, and he concurred. And Steve was staying around, too. He
was intending to apply to graduate schools in clinical psychology, but
needed to get some more experience with clinical work first. So he
took a live-in job at the halfway house for the severely mentally ill
where as a law student he had worked with the residents.

My law board exam was scheduled for July; the job hunt had to
wait until I passed. I was somewhat sleepless in the days leading up to
the exam, and just a little nervous—anyone would have been, not just
me. But I'd done well in the practice exams, and besides, for three
years everyone at Yale had reassured us, "Don't worry, the bar review
course will teach you everything you'll need"—I had no choice but to
trust that they were right. I did receive one additional piece of advice:
don't think.
So I didn't, and managed to score in the ninety-ninth
percentile of those taking the exam that day.

Steve and I had a few more cases at the Legal Services
Organization to finish up. One day soon after the bar exam, when the
structure of exam preparation and the anticipation of the day itself
had passed, I walked into the LSO office and greeted Sally, one of the
secretaries there who'd become a friend.

"How's everything?" I asked. "Do you want to vandalize the law
school with me? I don't know who's listening to this, but it's a master
plot to do with the questions. Points. Points of view. Should I jump out
the window?"

"What are you talking about?" Sally asked, half laughing.

"I'm just kidding around," I said. "Kidding has to do with sheep.
I'm sheepish. Have you ever killed anyone? I've killed lots of people
with my thoughts."

The smile left Sally's face. "Elyn, you're scaring me a little here."

"Don't be scared," I said. "I'm just a cat. The fish is delicious. I'll
just go do my work now."

"Oh, no, wait," she said. "I think you should stay here for a few
minutes..."

I sat down, then started singing, then stopped. "Do you mind if I
make a hat out of that clothes hanger?" I asked Sally. "And after that, I
think I might jump out of the window."

Quickly, Sally and another secretary, Maria (who'd become a
friend as well, thankfully), called Steve Wizner, the Legal Services
director. Wizner came immediately from wherever he'd been, was
briefed by the others for a few moments, and then called me into his
office. "So what's going on, Elyn?" he asked. "You seem to be a little
upset—everything OK?"

"I'm ever so well, thank you, ever so well," I chirped. "I've been
making up songs for the films. There's a bootleg traffic in legal briefs
going on. We'll be sued, but my name is not Sue, thank you very much.
How did you get to be so tall? Don't fall." I was laughing hysterically,
and having trouble not falling off my chair onto the office floor.

Nearly two years before, I'd told Wizner about my illness and my
history, and he'd known all along about the treatment I'd been
getting. "I'd like to call Dr. White," he said.

"I don't think that's necessary," I said, "but you can if you want."

When he'd reached White, Wizner told him what had been going
on, and then handed me the phone. "Up the Navane to twenty
milligrams, Elyn," said White's calm voice. "Now, please."

Handing the phone back to Wizner, I reached into my bag, pulled
out the bottle, and obediently popped the appropriate number of pills.
"All better now!" I cheerfully informed Wizner—and we both started
laughing, him with relief, me still delusional but cogent enough to be
embarrassed at the scene I'd caused. My actual recovery, however,

took a little longer.

In the three years since I'd last been hospitalized, this was only the
second time I'd become overtly psychotic with anyone other than
White or Steve, and it was part of the pattern: I'd set goals for myself,
meet them successfully, then fall apart at the seams. Once again,
everything familiar and comfortable in my life was going away or
being left behind. What was ahead was new and frightening. The
scaffolding had been removed, and I wasn't sure that I could sustain
the structure all by myself.

When I become psychotic, a kind of curtain (of civilization, of
socialization) falls away, and a secret part of me is revealed. And then,
after the psychosis passes, I suffer overwhelming shame: I have been
seen.
Now they know.
But something about this episode was
intrinsically different from the ones that had come before. I'd worked
with Sally, Maria, and Wizner for three years; I trusted them, and they
trusted me—as a friend and also as a professional who'd been judged
competent to handle patients and cases in a responsible manner. So,
in retrospect, I think it was somehow almost normal that I'd go to that
office to fall apart. When you're scared, on the verge of a meltdown,
you instinctively know to head someplace where you'll be safe; when
you reveal something so intimate as psychosis, you want the witnesses
to be people you trust.

In the days to come, I was oddly reassured to realize that my
instinct for survival seemed to have gotten better over the
years—instead of having the episode in the street, or the grocery store,
or in line at the bank, I'd somehow managed to stave it off until I could
get to a safe place. Although my colleagues there were not necessarily
prepared for what happened, the relationship we'd all formed gave
them the tools to manage it, and manage me as well. They were calm,
they did the right thing, and the moment passed.

My first "real" job interview was with New Haven Legal Assistance,
probably the best such job in Connecticut. I was nervous, but no more
medicated than usual. My record was good; I thought I had a decent
shot at it. Afterward, the office's lawyers called Steve Wizner to say
that notwithstanding my strong record and my seeming to be a nice
person, they couldn't offer me the job. Basically, I'd flunked the
interview—I was, they said, "practically comatose."

At my next appointment (with Connecticut Legal Services—CLS—
in Bridgeport), I was advised by the staff attorney who first
interviewed me to "act perkier" when I met with the executive
director. Now, "perky" had never been in my playbook—and I'd never
seen it listed anywhere as a job requirement. Maybe I just needed an
extra cup of coffee. Whatever the case, I managed to make a credible
impression and was offered and accepted the position at CLS.

The office was in an old, run-down house in what had been a nice
part of Bridgeport years earlier but was now in the heart of the slums.
I began representing clients immediately, half-time on family law
cases, half-time on housing cases. At a typical legal services office (and
Bridgeport was that), there's little time to reflect, to learn, to think or
strategize. Resources and staff are minimal, and the clients themselves
are usually in such dire straits by the time they make contact with the
office, there's often very little the lawyers can do for them. My first day
on the job, I was asked to go—alone—to Father Panik Village, at the
time the sixth-largest public housing project in the country, and
notoriously one of its worst, with forty-six brick buildings on forty
acres, and a population of nearly five thousand people, low-income
families who grew more embattled every day: with guns, drugs,
domestic abuse, and overall mayhem and chaos.

Panik was the name of the priest who'd originally championed this
Bridgeport Housing Authority project during the Depression;
nevertheless, the word's connotations were apt. I said I would go
there only if someone else accompanied me, which was quickly
arranged. I was also assigned a case that first day that was scheduled
to go to trial in just a week. No preparation had been done. No one had
actually seen the client. The case settled.

I quickly realized I'd been spoiled at LSO. We handpicked our
cases there, and chose only the most interesting ones, or those that
might elucidate some point of law. We worked with experts in the
various fields (who were happy to return our phone calls when we
identified ourselves as Yale students), we had ample time for research
and strategizing, and we had staff support. We had time to work, and
time to think; in fact, thinking was actually prized.

At CLS, I spent most of my time negotiating with slick lawyers who
represented sleazy slumlords or wife-batterers. I had no time to make
or return phone calls; I had no time to research or think about the
law, and it was the thinking part that was so integral to my love for the
law. Though I liked and even admired many of the people I
represented (when I could find the time to really talk with them), I
found the work itself unrelentingly grueling, and was soon
overwhelmed. I wasn't Perry Mason, I certainly wasn't Joan of Arc,
and at the end of each day, I was barely sentient. I worried that I
wasn't helping my clients as I should. Frantically, I began to look for
some other place, any other place, that would have me. I felt
somewhat guilty about wanting to go, but not guilty enough to stay.

In 1993, the last of the Father Panik Village residents were
relocated. A year later, the buildings were demolished, a fitting end to
the overly optimistic idea of high-rise, high-density communities as
the solution for low-income housing—now recognized by
contemporary city planners as an unworkable (and often inhumane)
nightmare. On the site now, there's a sprinkling of new, single-family
homes and duplexes, with recently planted yards and young sapling
trees. The word is, Bridgeport's on its way back. I sometimes wonder
if any of my clients made it back as well.