The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness (29 page)

I did continue pro bono with one mental health law case: that of
Jefferson. Once Steve and I got him into a group home, we turned to
the task of getting him education. Trouble was, he was already
twenty-one, and the relevant laws only provided for special education
for kids under twenty-one. So we tried a novel theory: Since Jefferson
had received no education at all when he was at the mental hospital
for five years, he was owed "compensatory education" for that time.
That theory is now well accepted in special education law, but it was
new when we brought it. And we prevailed, through a complicated and
circuitous route. Jefferson received five more years of education, at
the premier special ed facility in the state.

During the time I worked in Bridgeport, scheduling analysis
appointments with White became difficult. We tried to work around
both my schedule and his, but it was often hard to meet all four days.
And then one day, the question of my diagnosis came up.

We'd discovered that the medical insurance from my CLS job
would pay for some of my analysis. In order for that to happen,
however, White had to fill out a form that specified a diagnosis. I'd
hoped he might write something innocuous—neurotic anxiety
disorder, maybe—so that I could avoid having an official record of
serious mental illness. There would be other jobs in my future, I
hoped, and I wanted access to them without being hobbled. But White
made it perfectly clear to me that it was his intention to complete the
form with integrity, and tell the truth. And I quickly understood
there'd be no negotiating with him on this point.

When we first began our work together, White had discussed my
diagnosis. He thought then that I suffered primarily from depression,
not schizophrenia, which was a huge relief to me. "But let's put aside
the labels for now," he'd said. "They're a distraction, and we have
more important work to do."

Of course, I'd remained intensely interested in his ultimate
diagnosis—depression, even psychotic depression, was still primarily
a disorder of feelings, and that much I could accept. Schizophrenia (or
some variant) was a "thought disorder"—a disorder that was psychotic
at its core—and that was another matter entirely.

Within a day or two, White returned the form to me. I could feel
my pulse pounding in my ears when I saw it in his hand, stretched out
to me. I took it from him, and read the words: "schizoaffective
disorder, depressive type." A psychotic illness. An illness only once
removed from schizophrenia. Seeing those words—coming from
someone I knew, someone whose clinical judgment I couldn't
dispute—felt like death. And so, as if to fully inhabit the diagnosis, I
quickly started to unravel.

That night, while Steve and I were taking a walk, I told him that I'd
seen White's diagnosis and it had startled me. "Mild mental
retardation in the presence of overachievement, as manifested by
successfully completing Yale Law School," I said quietly, sneaking a
look at him out of the corner of my eye, waiting for the reaction.

Steve flushed and began to stammer, knowing how important
White's opinion was to me. "Elyn, I realize White is really smart, but
isn't it possible he's wrong about this? I just don't think you're
mentally retarded." He looked up to see me smiling.

"Gotcha!" I said, and laughed. I could tell from the look on his face
that he couldn't decide whether to laugh with me, or turn and walk in
the other direction.

Despite my laughter, there wasn't much funny in this situation;
any diagnosis starting off with "schizo" damned me, and I knew it.
Why does White think that about me? Am I really that sick? Is
everything I've done, all the progress I've made, a joke? Do I really
belong in a mental hospital after all?

As if to mock me, the universe dropped me into the dark hole
again, and the delusions came back for a visit.

At White's urging, I again increased the Navane; within days, I was
on an even keel. But still his diagnosis haunted me. I was so certain
that I'd made real progress; I believed I'd moved past that first
diagnosis in the hospital. But now the weight of White's verdict was
palpable, even ominous, my own private Sisyphus's rock—I rolled it
up the hill, it rolled back down, I rolled it up, it rolled back down. It
had all the potential to crush me entirely.

I continued to spend a great deal of time with Steve, who had come
to love his work and shared it with me; I found our time together
soothing. Steve found the work he was doing at the halfway house
enormously rewarding, and compared living there with living in the
monastery. I often went over to the house for dinner, or just to sit
around the kitchen table and talk to the people who were in residence.
One day, I came in the door to find that the newest tenant was a
patient I'd known on the ward at YPI. There were a few minutes of
awkwardness between us until we realized that the coffee and the
conversation meant exactly the same thing to both of us, and for the
same reasons.

Spending time at the halfway house reminded me that being ill had
its advantages. Staff in ERs and hospitals pay close attention to very ill
patients, and people at the halfway house almost always had someone
to talk to. But "getting well" means giving up that kind of attention, or
finding other, better ways of getting it. It was the familiar lesson:
Leaving home is great, but few people make the journey without
looking back, at least a few times in the beginning.

That summer I learned of a two-year position at a local law school
(now Quinnipiac University School of Law) teaching legal research
and writing. The position held no prospect for tenure, but it made my
escape from legal services possible; lawyering had never come easily
to me and in Father Panik Village I had found myself completely
overwhelmed. Plus, with this job, I could stay in New Haven, and
continue my analysis with White. And so I applied for it.

In my interview (a vast improvement over the ones I'd bumbled
through at the two legal services offices), the very nice dean, as subtly
as possible, warned me that this teaching job might be well beneath
my talents. I didn't care. I needed to work and I wanted to work;
besides, he didn't have all the information about me. And I wasn't
going to give it to him, either.

When I received the offer, I accepted it on that very day.

"I have to tell you something." This was Steve, in his gentlest voice. I
braced myself, half-knowing already what was coming. "I'm leaving
New Haven, and moving to Washington."

He'd become involved with a woman-a woman I liked a lot,
someone gentle and kind, who made him smile. She'd completed her
degree at Yale and had been accepted into a doctoral program at the
University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Steve wanted to be near her, I
understood that, I supported it; in fact, I'd known for a long time that
it was only a matter of time before there would be actual miles
between us instead of only minutes.

Nevertheless, it hurt, deeply. He was my colleague, my confidant,
my best friend, and in a complex way, my best witness—to my illness,
my darkness, and my struggle to stay in the world and become a
contributing member of a professional community. He critiqued my
papers, he helped keep my fragmented mind together, he charted my
progress (and reminded me I'd made some)—he even finished some of
my sentences. And I often finished his as well. There was nothing he
didn't know about me. There was nothing we didn't talk about,
nothing I didn't want his counsel on, no matter if it was personal,
professional, or academic. And now he was leaving me? No surprise
that my first response to his news was "No!"

"Yes," he said. "It's time."

"I don't think I can manage without you near," I said. My voice was
shaking.

"Yes, you can," he said. "Elyn, your whole life has been the story of
you fighting to get whatever you need, and
getting
it. You're the
quintessential survivor—you've found friends, therapists, professors
who believe in you. And now you're about to begin your professional
life. I didn't do that for you—you did it!"

"But I had your help," I said.

"And you always will have it," he said. "This isn't the end of the
friendship—nothing could make that happen. Come on, admit it,
you'll be going someplace else someday soon as well. You have
important work to do, and where I'm living when that happens won't
make any difference."

We had brunch together on the day he left. I barely got my
omelette down, one slow bite at a time, and the coffee tasted like it'd
been made the week before. Afterward, Steve climbed into his car, a
Ford Pinto he'd bought for $500, and drove away, headed for I-95
South. I stood there watching for a few minutes, thinking back to that
long-ago day when Kenny and Margie Collins had driven away from
Vanderbilt, and away from me. My heart broke that day, and it was
breaking now, but I'd survive—as sad as I was, I knew that. So I got
into my own car and drove (crying all the way) back to the law school
for a meeting. I parked the car and pulled myself together. Steve was
right—I had things to do. It was time to go to work.

chapter seventeen

T
AKING THE TEACHING
job, even though it was not at all
prestigious (as the dean himself had intimated), was one of the best
professional decisions I ever made.

It was one of the smaller schools I had been in, with less pressure
and tension than Yale; the students were hardworking and
aspirational, eager to listen and learn (there was, however, a
significant flunk-out rate, unlike Yale). My major responsibility-
grading their memos and briefs—was time-consuming, but
straightforward, and on some days mostly easy. In spite of my
awkwardness about speaking in public, the give-and-take I had with
these students helped shore up my confidence. I began to think of
myself as a real teacher.

One of my colleagues there was a professor named Sandy
Meiklejohn, a grandson of the famous philosopher and First
Amendment scholar, Alexander Meiklejohn. Sandy had been a tennis
pro in between graduating from law school and practicing law, and
had been surprised that he was able to land a teaching job. Once there,
he discovered that the family tradition of teaching (Alexander senior
had been dean of Brown University from 1901 until 1912 and
president of Amherst College from 1913 until 1923) ran deep in him as
well. Sandy loved teaching, and in spite of having a reputation of being
hard on his students, he was also the favorite professor of many—he
didn't patronize and he didn't pander. And he was a wonderful role
model for me.

Sandy and I became good friends and shared many working
dinners together; he was a kind and intuitive "coach" during my
wobbly early days as an academic, and helped me with a paper I was
trying to put together for publication. For obvious reasons, I'd become
interested in what attributes or characteristics comprised
"competency" for people who wanted to decide for themselves to take
(or not to take) medication for psychosis. How did the law define it?
How did the medical establishment understand it? And how
should
we understand it? Since Sandy had studied contractual capacity, his
feedback on another competency topic was vitally important to me.

That teaching year seemed almost to fly by, and I was doing
well—better, certainly, than I could have expected. I'd adjusted to the
many changes in my life as trouble-free as I'd ever done. The teaching
job made it easier for me to schedule my appointments with White,
and although I longed to be drug-free, I'd stayed on the Navane and
an antidepressant, Elavil (amitriptyline) (but occasionally tinkered
with the dosages, of course). I felt confident about my teaching, I'd
made some new friends, and my article on competency was coming
along nicely, with Sandy reading the drafts and giving me some ideas
about where I might send it. My hope was, if I could get the article
published in a law journal, maybe (after another year working with
White), I'd feel safe enough to apply for a position someplace else and
leave New Haven behind.

And then White told me he was going retire very soon—to be
precise, in three months.

As though someone had hit a switch, I was almost immediately in
terrible shape—worse than I'd been since Oxford and those first few
horrible months at Yale. Within days, withdrawn and almost mute, I
began rocking and gibbering again, whether I was alone or in White's
office. I was surrounded by destructive energy and unspeakable fear.
"Please don't go," I begged White. "You can't. The world is coming to
an end."

Fortunately, the law school was in moot court competition, so I
really needn't do anything other than show up—which was a good
thing, since I was incapable of speech. One day, I brought all my
jewelry into White's office, along with a check for a large amount of
money—nearly all I had. "I want your wife to have this jewelry," I told
him. "I won't need it anymore. And I won't need the money, either, so
you take it."

"Elyn, you know I can't accept this. Do you think it's time to go to
the hospital?"

No!
No hospital. Mostly, I stayed in my apartment, curled up and
muttering on the couch. Friends brought me cigarettes and food, but I
couldn't eat. I started to talk about violent things whenever someone
was with me. "I've killed many people," I said. "And now that White
has been taken over by the devil, I might have to kill him as well. And
he's not the only one."

Steve was traveling to universities around the country,
interviewing with various psychology doctorate programs. He'd called
many times to check up on me, but I wasn't picking up the phone, so
he called our friends, who told him what had happened. He
immediately returned to New Haven.