The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness (3 page)

It's that man
, I said to myself.
He knows there's no grown-ups
here, he knows I'm here alone. What should I do? I'll hide in this
closet. Must be quiet. Breathe softly, breathe softly.

I waited in the closet, gripped with fear and surrounded by the
dark, until my parents came home. It was probably an hour, but it felt
like it went on forever.

"Mom!" I gasped, opening the closet door and making them both
jump. "Dad! There's someone inside the house! Did you see him? Are
you both OK? Why...why were you gone so long?"

They just looked at each other, and then my father shook his head.
"There's no one here, Elyn," he said. "Nobody's come into the house.
It's your imagination."

But I insisted. "No, no, I heard him. There was someone. Go look,
please." Sighing, my father walked through the house. "There's
nobody there." It wasn't reassuring so much as it was dismissive. My
feelings about imminent danger never stopped, but talking about it to
my parents did.

Most children have these same fears, in an empty house or empty
room, or even in a familiar bedroom that suddenly looks strange once
the lights go out. Most grow out and away from their fears, or manage
somehow to put their rational minds between themselves and the
bogeyman. But I never could do that. And so, in spite of the spirited
competitions I had with my brothers, or my good grades, or the
powerful way I felt when I was on water skis or on a bike, I began to
shrink a little inside, even as I was growing taller. I was certain people
could see how scared I felt, how shy and inadequate. I was certain
they were talking about me whenever I came into a room, or after I'd
walked out of one.

When I was twelve years old, and painfully self-conscious about
the weight that puberty was adding to my frame (and the height that
had suddenly come along with it, as I headed toward six feet tall), I
purposefully went on a crash diet. By then, my parents had given up
bread entirely; they spoke constantly about the need to count calories,
the need to maintain an attractive, healthy, and lean body. Being
overweight was considered a bad thing—it was unattractive; it
indicated that someone was either greedy or lacked self-control. In
any case, they monitored very closely every single thing each of us ate.

This was long before it became trendy or matter-of-fact to be as
conscious of what we put in our mouths (and where it came from, and
what the protein count was, and the carbohydrate count, or where the
item fell on the insulin scale) as people are today. And it was also long
before much was known about eating disorders; anorexia and bulimia
weren't on anybody's radar at the time, and certainly no one we knew
went to a doctor or mental health professional for weight gains or
losses—or anything else, for that matter. All I knew was I'd gotten fat
and I had to get skinny again. And so I set about doing exactly that.

I cut my portions in half. I pushed food around my plate so that it
looked like I was eating it. I said no to the potatoes and skipped
Sunday breakfast. At school, I skipped lunch. I cut my meat into small
pieces, then cut those pieces into even smaller pieces. I eliminated
snacks and never ate dessert. The weight started to melt away, and for
a while, nobody noticed. By the time someone did, I was five-ten and
weighed barely one hundred pounds.

At the dinner table one night, my father cleared his throat in what I
knew was an introduction to a serious parental discussion. "Boys, you
may be excused to do your homework now," he said, and I glanced at

Warren with alarm. What was
this
going to be about? "Your mother
and I need to speak with your sister about a private matter." The boys
left, but not without giving me that ha-ha-ha-you're-in-for-it-now look
that brothers are so good at. I folded my hands in my lap and braced
for whatever was coming.

"Elyn," began my mother, "your dad and I are a little concerned
with-"

My father cut her off. "You're not eating enough," he said. "You're
too thin. You have to start eating more."

"I'm fine," I protested. "I eat what you guys eat. I eat what
everybody eats. It's just that I'm growing."

"No, you're not," said my father. "You're getting taller, but you're
not growing. Your skin is pasty, you can barely stay awake at the table,
you don't eat enough to keep a mouse alive. You look like a war
refugee. Unless you're ill—and I'll be happy to send you to a doctor to
find out—I must insist that you eat three meals a day. Because if you're
not ill, you most certainly will be if this keeps up."

I protested; I argued. I defended my eating habits. "I know what
I'm doing, and I feel perfectly fine," I said.

"Your attitude is very disappointing," said my mother. "This
defiance, not to mention what's happening to the way you look. You've
lost control. This is not what we want for you; in fact, maybe that's
why you're doing this. Is it?"

Various versions of this conversation kept popping up again in the
days and weeks that followed. They watched every bite that went into
my mouth. They counted every bite that didn't. They woke me up
earlier in the morning, made me breakfast, then sat down at the table
and watched me attempt to eat it. On weekends, they took me out to
lunch, then took me out to dinner. In the face of my stubbornness,
they threatened to shorten my curfew and to reduce my movie quota.
They would, they said, have to "take certain steps!" They pleaded; they
offered bribes. I felt myself wilting under the intense pressure of their
combined watchfulness and the constant lectures.

Finally, I'd had enough. "You guys are driving me crazy!" I
protested. "I'm not sick, I'm not going to die, I'm perfectly fine. I know
what I'm doing. After all, I lost this weight on my own, I can put it
back on if I want to."

My father got a very calculating look on his face. "OK, prove it," he
said. "If you think you're so all-powerful, prove it. Put the weight back
on."

I was enraged. My father had finally (and deftly) maneuvered me
into exactly the position he'd been trying to get me into for weeks:
He'd called my bluff. And I had no choice but to comply with what
he'd demanded; otherwise, he could say I was out of control, and then
he'd be justified in doing whatever (he'd never said precisely what) he
felt appropriate.

So I just made up my mind to eat. Which wasn't so horrible,
because I'd always liked food anyway, all food, all the time—I just
hadn't wanted to be fat. In three months, I was back to my normal
weight. "See?" I crowed. "I
told
you I knew what I was doing! I said I
could do it, and I did!" It felt like a great triumph—I'd driven myself
hard in one direction, and then, once challenged, I drove myself hard
in completely the opposite direction. And the whole time, I was in
complete control—or so I thought.

I think of that young girl sometimes, that girl I was. Not yet a
teenager, she may well have had admirable willpower; she might have
been stubborn, or ferocious, or strong, or fearless—or maybe she was
just plain ornery. But one thing she did not have was complete control
of what was going on inside her. And she was going to have to learn
that the hard way.

chapter two

D
URING THE SUMMER
between my sophomore and junior years in
high school, I went, along with some other classmates, to Monterrey,
Mexico, for an intensive summer-term session in Spanish language
and culture at the impressively named Instituto Tecnologi-co de
EstudiosSuperiores de Monterrey—or as we all quickly came to call it,
Monterrey Tec. Although I'd often traveled with my parents, and had
been to summer camp alone, I'd never been so far away from home by
myself. And this trip was to a college campus, in a foreign country,
with relatively little adult supervision.

Part of me was excited about the trip, and the opportunity to be
out from under the close monitoring of my parents; another part was
apprehensive, even scared. It wasn't the challenge of an accelerated
language program; by then, I spoke and read passable Spanish and
was genuinely curious about this country that in some long-ago way
was connected to the Cubans who had come to Miami. But being in an
unfamiliar place, fending for myself, being away from the predictable
routine I took a certain comfort in—it made a kind of pit in my
stomach. The pit grew a little smaller as I settled into my dorm room
and began to find my way around, but it never entirely dissipated.

There were students at Tec from all over the world, and although
the days were filled with intensive classroom work and the occasional
field trip—to Mexico City's historic areas, for example—the evenings
and weekends were mostly our own. Little by little, we ventured out
for meals in little cafes or large, noisy cafeterias. Mornings often began
with
cafe con leche
and maybe a rich pastry layered with dark Mexican
chocolate. At night, we deciphered the menus and ordered
tacos de
polio, empanadas,
or
burritos
washed down with tart limeade (or, for
a few daring adventurers, with a cold tequila). Afterward, someone
might suggest an expedition to a local club, where I mostly stood to the
side; as much as I loved music, I always felt awkward on a dance floor,
and I didn't like the idea of being watched, especially by people I
didn't know.

Sometimes in the early evening, my friends and I would simply
walk through the parts of the city we'd been told were "safe" to stroll
in, near the main square, or
zocalo.
The girls eyed the Mexican boys;
the Mexican boys eyed the girls. There was a lot of flirting and
giggling, and every night a few kids stumbled back into the dorm
many hours past whatever their curfew might have been at home.

I was one of the only people in my group of high school friends
who'd never smoked marijuana. I had strong feelings that smoking
was wrong, that one ought not do it, that even trying marijuana could
end badly. But then the last remaining nonsmoker in our group
besides me tried pot. After many nights of looking on as they lit up, I
finally relented.

I watched as a friend took a lit joint from the person next to him,
put it in his mouth, and inhaled. "Hold it, hold it, don't exhale yet!"
someone instructed. "Wait a couple of seconds. OK, now." And my
friend whooshed out a small cloud of smoke. A few seconds passed,
then a few seconds more.

"Well?" I asked. "Anything?" I hadn't even tried it and already my
chest felt funny; it was as though I were waiting for my friend's head
to burst into flames.

"Yeah, something," said my friend. "It's...soft. I mean, it burns, but
it's kind of soft."

Oh, what the hell,
I thought. "Here, give it to me, I want to try."

I'm not sure there's a particularly graceful way to inhale one's first
joint. It's on fire, after all, and there's ash, and smoke. And of course
it's illegal, so the whole production is vaguely clandestine, even a little
nerve-wracking—it's like you're being inducted into some kind of
secret society, and the tape loop that lists all the dangers of marijuana
keeps running through your mind while you're concentrating very
hard on trying not to look stupid or, worse, uncool.

The second I brought the joint to my lips, I was dead certain that
my parents were going to magically appear on the scene and—do
what?
Never mind,
I thought.
It doesn't matter; they're thousands of
miles away.
And then I inhaled. And, inevitably, I coughed, too, and
my eyes burned and watered. Then I inhaled again, and waited. And
yes, rough and soft described it perfectly. And then I heard myself
laugh a little. Because mostly, it made me feel like laughing. And with
that, the big marijuana question was solved. "It's all OK," I said to my
friends. "I'm OK." And then I passed the joint back to the person
who'd handed it to me.

Off and on for the next few days, I thought about what I'd done. I
didn't
not
enjoy it, but I didn't feel like I needed to rush out and do it
again anytime soon. It was OK, but oddly, that's all it was. Mostly, I
was glad to have done it.

No, I was much more interested in the boys (for all the good it did
me that summer), and in the dark, bittersweet chocolate, and in going
days at a time without having to answer to anybody for much of
anything. I made some new friends, I got some very good grades, and
I saw Mexico, which was beautiful. Experimenting with a couple of
joints was nothing more than a blip on an otherwise great summer.

One weekend night, a few months after I'd come home from Mexico
and was well into my high school junior year (thinking nervously
about SATs and ordering college catalogs), I was out with a group of
friends at a drive-in movie theater. We were in someone else's car; I
had my driver's license, but since I knew I was a terrible driver (I'd
almost hit a cat the first time I drove with my mother), I usually
preferred being someone else's passenger.

"I have some mescaline," someone announced abruptly. "Anybody

want some?"

One friend giggled; another one piped up with "Yeah, sure, why
not?" I just sat there for a minute, looking out through the windshield
at whatever the movie was on the big screen in front of me, trying to
decide what to do. Trying to decide what I
wanted
to do.

"Yes," I said finally. "I do. I want some."

I washed the little pill down with a swallow of warm Coke. There
was a weird kind of silence in the car (except, of course, for the movie
sounds coming through the speaker attached to the window). It
seemed like we were all holding our breath. Waiting. My stomach
turned upside down—from nerves? from the pill? from the prospect of
the unknown? Then suddenly, my stomach felt very warm, and the
warmth radiated back up into my shoulder blades. I'd been clenching
my fists; now, I felt my fingers uncurl, and the palms of my hands fell
open on my lap. And then, we all exhaled in a collective
"Ohhhhhhhh,
looooook!"