Marya Hornbacher - Madness - A Bipolar Life

a bipolar life

Harper Press

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF

www.harperperennial.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2008

Copyright © Marya Hornbacher 2008, 2009

PS Section copyright © Hannah Harper 2009, except ‘Lives Too Often Kept Dark’ by Marya Hornbacher © Marya Hornbacher 2009

PS™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

Marya Hornbacher asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007250646

Ebook Edition © MARCH 2015 ISBN 9780007380367

Version: 2015-03-26

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Prologue

Part I

The Goatman

What They Know

Depression

Prayer

Food

The Booze under the Stove

Meltdown

Escapes

Minneapolis

California

Minneapolis

Washington, D.C.

Full Onset

Part II

The New Life

The Diagnosis

The Break

Unit 47

Tour

Hypomania

Jeremy

Therapy

Losing It

Crazy Sean

Oregon

Day Treatment

Attic, Basement

Valentine’s Day

Coming to Life

Jeff

The Good Life

The Magazine

Part III

The Missing Years

Hospitalization #1

Hospitalization #2

Hospitalization #3

Hospitalization #4

Hospitalization #5

Hospitalization #6

Hospitalization #7

Release

Part IV

Fall 2006

Winter 2006

Spring 2007

Summer 2007

Epilogue

Bipolar Facts

Useful Websites

Useful Contacts

Research Resources

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

P.S. Ideas, interviews & features …

About the Author

Q A with Marya Hornbacher

Life at a Glance

Top Ten Writers of All Time

Top Ten Musical Artists of All Time

About the Book

Lives Too Often Kept Dark

A Writers Life

Read On

Have You Read?

If You Loved This

Find Out More

About the Author

Praise

By the Same Author

About the Publisher

November 5, 1994

I am numb. I am in the bathroom of my apartment in Minneapolis, twenty years old, drunk, and out of my mind. I am cutting patterns in my arm, a leaf and a snake. There is one dangling light, a bare bulb with a filthy string that twitches in the breeze coming through the open window. I look out on an alley and the brick buildings next door, all covered with soot. Across the way a woman sits on her sagging flowered couch in her slip and slippers, watching TV, laughing along with the laugh track, and I stop to sop up the blood with a rag. The blood is making a mess on the floor (note to self: mop floor) while a raccoon clangs the lid of a dumpster down below. Time hiccups; it is either later or sooner, I can’t tell which. I study my handiwork. Blood runs down my arm, wrapping around my wrists and dripping off my fingers onto the dirty white tile floor.

I have been cutting for months. It stills the racing thoughts, relieves the pressure of the madness that has been crushing my mind, vise-like, for nearly my entire life, but even more so in the recent days. The past few years have seen me in ever-increasing flights and falls of mood, my mind at first lit up with flashes of color, currents of electric insight, sudden elation, and then flooded with black and bloody thoughts that throw me face-down onto my living room floor, a swelling despair pressing outward from the center of my chest, threatening to shatter my ribs. I have ridden these moods since I was a child, the clatter of the roller coaster roaring in my ears while I clung to the sides of my little car. But now, at the edge of adulthood, the madness has entered me for real. The thing I have feared and railed against all my life—the total loss of control over my mind—has set in, and I have no way to fight it anymore.

I split my artery.

Wait: first there must have been a thought, a decision to do it, a sequence of events, a logic. What was it? I glimpse the bone, and then blood sprays all over the walls. I am sinking; but I didn’t mean to; I was only checking; I’m crawling along the floor in jerks and lurches, balanced on my right elbow, holding out my left arm, the cut one. I slide on my belly toward the phone in my bedroom; time has stopped; time is racing; the cat nudges my nose and paws at me, mewling. I knock the phone off the hook with my right hand and tip my head over to hold my ear to it. The sound of someone’s voice—I am surprised at her urgency— Do you have a towel—wrap it tight—hold it up—someone’s on their way —Suddenly the door breaks in and there is a flurry of men, dark shadows, all around me. I drop the phone and give in to the tide and feel myself begin to drown. Their mouths move underwater, their voices glubbing up, Is there a pulse? and metal doors clang shut and I swim through space, the siren wailing farther and farther away.

I am watching neon lights flash past above my head. I am lying on my back. There is a quick, sharp, repetitive sound somewhere: wheels clicking across a floor. I am in motion. I am being propelled. The lights flash in my eyes like strobe. The place I am in is bright. I cannot move. I am sinking. The bed is swallowing me. Wait, this is not a bed; there are bars. We are racing along. There are people on either side of me, pushing the cage. They’re running. What’s the hurry? My left arm feels funny, heavy. There is a stunning pain shooting through it, like lightning, flashing from my hand to my shoulder. It seems to branch out from there, shooting electricity all through my body. I try to lift my arm but it weighs a thousand pounds. I try to lift my head to look at it, to look around, to see where I am, but I am unable to. My head, too, is heavy as lead. From the corner of my eye, I see people watching me fly by.

I am in shock. I heard them say it when they found me. She’s in shock, one said to the other. Who are they? They broke down the door. Well, are they going to pay for it? I am indignant. I black out.

I come to. I am wearing my new white sweater. I regret that it is stained dark red. What a waste of money. We have stopped moving. There are people standing around, peering down at me. They look like a thicket of trees and I am lying immobile on the forest floor. When did it happen? What did you use? they demand, their voices very far away. I don’t remember—everyone calm down, I’ll just go home—can I go home? I feel a little sick —I vomit into the thing they hold out for me to vomit into. I’m so sorry, I say, it was an accident. Please, I think I’ll go home. Where are my shoes?