Paolina Milana - Committed: A Memoir of Madness in the Family

Copyright 2021, Paolina Milana

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

Published 2021

Printed in the United States of America

Print ISBN: 978-1-64742-042-0

E-ISBN: 978-1-64742-043-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020925791

For information, address:

She Writes Press

1569 Solano Ave #546

Berkeley, CA 94707

Interior design by Tabitha Lahr

She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of their respective owners.

Included photographs are from the authors personal archive.

This book is dedicated to madness and to all of the people and circumstances in my life that have helped me find the magic within.

Youre only given a little spark of madness.
You mustnt lose it.
ROBIN WILLIAMS

THE PEOPLE AND PLACES AND EVENTS depicted here are all real, as true to my memory as possible. In order to preserve anonymity, a few names and, in certain cases, identifying details have been changed. No composite characters or events were created in writing this book. Some people and events were purposely omitted, but that omission has no impact on the integrity of the story. It is my hope that the truth I share does justice to all those involved and that my story is read as one of faith, inspiration, commonalities, understanding, forgiveness, and resilience.

Youve got to put the past behind you before you can move on.
FORREST GUMP

THIS BOOK IS THE COMPANION to The S Word, my memoir about secrets. It took me a decade or so of therapy to process my childhood and then more than ten years to put pen to paper to tell it. The first part of my story published in 2015 and shared my memories of what it was like for me coming of age surrounded by crazy. From the age of about ten until I left home for college, I learned to keep secrets to survive: as a first-generation Sicilian Catholic good girl trying to serve as family caregiver; as the daughter of a mother who hid her paranoid schizophrenia from doctors and the outside world for far too long; and as a teenager exploring her own sexual awakening and finding herself in too deep with trusted authority figures who abused their power.

And I did survive.

Committed, this book you now hold in your hands, is the rest of this story. It shares my memories of being a college student trying to be normal while keeping my family cray-cray at bay. And it focuses not just on my mothers mental illness, which still raged on, but on that of my little sister, who at age twenty-four also was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

Insanity had taken root in my family tree, and I was tasked with tending our garden.

This part of my story is the end of what came before as much as it is the beginning of what would come as a result. By the time Committed publishes, it will be twenty years since I escaped the madness I was born into and journeyed further, learning to balance my own madness with the magic that also resided in me. The road has been long and, in truth, never-ending. But this book represents closure for me, and how I finally began to put the past behind me in order to move on.

Ones mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.

August 1985

ONE YEAR.

I took a deep breath and looked around at my windowless cell of a dorm room. Could I really survive living here?

When Iowa State University told me I had signed up too late for the Fall 1985 semester and would be placed in temporary housing, I never imagined this to be what they meant. I walked over to the army cot that was to serve as my bed and sat on it. Kicking off my sneakers, I absentmindedly nodded, now understanding fully that for ISU, the words temporary housing were synonymous with kitchenette: my home away from home was the place where the other students would be washing their dishes and making use of shared cleaning supplies. I would be living in the very center room of the all-freshman, all-female sixth floor of a building called Willow that looked prison-like from the outside, and, according to the campus map, was the residence hall located the farthest from any of the classrooms.

What had I signed up for?

I could still see that look on my paps face when hed dropped me off just a few hours earlier and gotten a tour of where Id be staying. His expression had clearly asked, This is where youd rather live than your own home?

My silent response had been, Yes, without hesitation. But now, left here by myself, I was no longer sure.

I had chosen the cot to the right of the sink, the one farthest from the door that was the only way in or out. I could already imagine girls gabbing in the hallway right outside at all hours of the day and night, and I made a mental note to pick up some ear plugs. Maybe Id get two sets and give one to my roommate, who had yet to show up.

As I turned to face the faded yellow walls, I became fascinated by their appearance: I couldnt tell if they were concrete or cinder blocks or real bricks. Maybe the walls werent made of anything permanent. Maybe they were like the Hollywood movie sets constructed of Styrofoam. I reached over with my hand and started stroking the bumpy texture. Ouch! I pulled away and made another mental note: No leaning against the very hard, very real, and very razor-sharp walls.

I didnt know what else to do with myself, other than sit and think. And thinking wasnt always such a good thing. The voices in my headwhen given the chancehad a lot of opinions, none of which were necessarily words of wisdom. I used my time to argue with them:

Why dont you unpack?

And put my stuff where?

Oh, right. Why dont you take a shower?

Where are the showers?

I looked down at what I was wearing: A pair of too-tight Gloria Vanderbilt jeans, so old and faded that they barely had any blue left in them, and a grayish-white cotton T-shirt with smudges of dirt left over from moving boxes. I lifted my arms up overhead to tighten the ponytail holder around my long, curly brown hairwhich, surprisingly, wasnt as frizzy as usual. Chicago in August was hot enough. Ames, Iowa, was even hotter, with temperatures in the high 90s and humidity that made it feel well over 100 degrees.