Marya Hornbacher - Madness: A Bipolar Life

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON NEW YORK
2008

Copyright 2008 by Marya Hornbacher
All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections
from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company,
215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hornbacher, Marya, 1974
Madness : a bipolar life / Marya Hornbacher.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-618-75445-8
1. Hornbacher, Marya, 1974Mental health.
2. Manic-depressive personsUnited StatesBiography.
3. Manic-depressive illness. I. Title.
RC 516. H 67 2008 616.89'50092dc22
[B] 2007038412

Printed in the United States of America

Book design by Victoria Hartman

MP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The following names that appear in this book are
pseudonyms: Frank, Joe, Jeremy, and Sean.

THE AUTHOR AND THE PUBLISHER DISCLAIM
LIABILITY FOR THE CONTENT OF THE WEBSITES
IDENTIFIED IN THIS BOOK.

For my parents

Prologue: The Cut: November 5, 1994

Part I

The Goatman: 1978

What They Know: 1979

Depression: 1981

Prayer: 1983

Food: 1984

The Booze under the Stove: 1985

Meltdown: 1988

Escapes: Michigan, 1989

Minneapolis: 1990

California: 1990

Minneapolis: 1991

Washington, D.C.: 1992

1993

1994

Full Onset: 1995

Part II

The New Life: 1996

The Diagnosis: April 1997

The Break: July 1997, Nine A.M.

Unit 47: Same Day

Tour: January 1998

Hypomania: July 1998

Jeremy: Later That Summer

Therapy: 1999

Losing It: Winter 1999

Crazy Sean: June 2000

Oregon: August 2000

Day Treatment: Late August 2000

Attic, Basement: Fall 2000

Valentine's Day: 2001

Coming to Life: Summer 2001

Jeff: Fall 2001

The Good Life: Summer 2002

The Magazine: November 2002

Fall 2003

Part III

The Missing Years

Hospitalization #1: January 2004

Hospitalization #2: April 2004

Hospitalization #3: July 2004

Hospitalization #4: October 2004

Hospitalization #6: April 2005

Hospitalization #7: July 2005

Release: August 2005

Part IV

Fall 2006

Winter 2006

Spring 2007

Summer 2007

Epilogue

Bipolar Facts

MY BIPOLAR FACTS

Useful Websites

Useful Contacts

Research Resources

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

The Cut
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 lifethe total loss of control over my mindhas 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 voiceI am surprised at her urgencyDo you have a towelwrap it tighthold it upsomeone's on their waySuddenly 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 remembereveryone calm down, I'll just go homecan I go home? I feel a little sickI 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?

Am I saying any of this? No one stops. They bustle. I must be in a hospital; that is what people do in a hospital, they bustle. For hospital people, they are being very loud. There is shouting. The bustling is unusually hurried.