dispatches from crazyville

I was talking with a student who recently started taking medication. The medication she takes is used to treat bipolar disorder. She said, “I don’t want to be bipolar.”

Nobody wants to be sick. We might want something we get because we are sick, but deep down, we want to be well. And, deep down, we want others to be well.

There’s this trend I’ve noticed in people writing about their experiences with mental illness. People write about their experiences as though they’re trying to one-up or out-crazy each other. Like, “I cut myself ten million times.” Then the next person is like, “Well I drank Windex with razorblades in it” or some shit. This bothers me. For a long time I couldn’t figure out why. Why would someone want to be crazier than someone else? Which makes it seem like people really do want to be sick.

As I mentioned in “Stigma,” I’ve heard people say that people cut to get attention. Everybody wants attention. Universally, people need acknowledgment and connection. That’s not the only reason, or even the main reason, people hurt themselves. People don’t tend to refuse to read books because the authors–let’s say someone like Joyce Carol Oates who publishes prodigiously–by publishing a book, are trying to get attention. Many people respect authors who are trying to express their truths and have their voices heard. No one seems to respect the person who cuts, or the truths they have to tell. People who hurt themselves are expressing and externalizing a tremendous amount of pain in a dysfunctional way. Ignoring something, especially cutting, does not make it go away.

It’s not that people want to be sick. It’s that people need something, and they believe that being sicker will somehow fill their needs. If you’re crazy, really crazy, crazier than anyone else, maybe you’ll get the attention/admiration of someone because of your suffering. And if a person is operating under that presumption and believes that’s the only truth, getting better is terrifying. How will their needs ever be met if they’re common, if they’re just like everyone else? And they desperately need something.

But trying to outcrazy others leads the uncrazies to conclude it’s all for attention. And sometimes uncrazies react with anger, as though crazy behavior takes away something from them. That upsets me, too.

I have more to say about this, but I’m not sure what it is yet.

i rock and sing to my son at bedtime. he falls asleep on my lap and i’m consumed with love for him. so sad knowing he’s growing up and by necessity away from me, independent. and i look forward to enjoying spending all his growing up time with him, as i am in love with this moment of rocking him in the dark. the thought of him moving away to college is choking me, and it’s far away, but it seems also like i’ll blink and he’ll be calling me from some far away place. and i won’t get to hold his body on my lap anymore. and i thought of mothers all over the place, next door, in darfur, in iraq, loving their children, and those children growing up, and they are us. everybody is somebody’s baby.

and suddenly the most important thing i know to do is to be kind to people. how can i be afraid of people when everybody is just the baby of someone? how could i be cruel to a baby?

for a couple weeks after this struck me, i was light. i felt buoyant. like i had figured out the meaning of life.

the idea of someone saying something mean to my son, which i know will happen as soon as his peers are constructing sentences, imagining that look of confusion and hurt on his face, crushes me. then i think of the mothers who lose their children in all manner of horrific ways, and then i think of war. and i know this baby will have to register for the selective service. and i think of him going to war. and then i know for sure i must work for peace. i must work for peace. then i think of the mothers whose children are perpetrators of violence, whose sons stalk women, or solicit sex from children, or who make the orders to crash the plane into the building. what of these mothers?

then i think about my mother. i’m her baby. she loves me this much.

then i think about this blog. anonymous, because i am ashamed, still, of the truth of my body, the scars on my arms, hands, legs. what if my mother knew?

then i think about my son. what if he knew? what kind of burden would that be to a person, to know his mother tried to destroy herself? and it is true. it is my story. i wonder if my mother was self-destructive.

then i imagine my son hurting himself on purpose so clearly i reach out to tell him to stop, to love his body, his little perfect body. don’t hurt yourself. i love you.

and i know why all the people were so upset. because when someone you love hurts, you hurt. and that’s why i didn’t tell anyone. i didn’t want to hurt people. but i would want him to tell me if he was hurting. i would want to share it. because i love him.

i try to imagine sharing my hurt with him. when he’s older. and, again, it scares the shit out of me. i don’t want to hurt him. but i don’t want to lie to him or hide from him either. i’m not talking about when he’s five or anything.

with this blog, i think a lot about the times when i’ve been self-destructive, and times i want to be self-destructive. and i want to treat myself with kindness and gentleness as i would treat my son, as i would want my son to treat himself. and others. and i want others to do the same. my students. my colleagues. my neighbors. the soldiers. women in prison. everybody.

i guess i don’t know what i believe about truth and love.

i don’t know if i should publish this post or not. comments are welcome.

driving, and trying to sit with hurting, without holding it, without letting it go, just being there in it, and it’s a pain of separation, a desperate bubbly pain in my chest, a swallowing hurting, a brick balloon of a pain. i sat with myself and did not turn away, resist, change the subject, shut down, i just felt my feelings. i imagined myself marching into my chest and hugging the hard chalky edges of helplessness compressing my heart and realizing it weighs nothing. but when the heart inflates. jesus. bigger than this fucking body, bigger than i knew. this pain is not my pain. it is human suffering. my heart is full of it. the strength in feeling this deeply is that this enormous hurt springs from enormous love, but i thought i would die. i thought of all the people i will miss when we move across the country and i thought there is no one else like them and i love them i am expansive with my love for them and their love for me, and there are people in washington i will love because a person is all people. and i felt boundless, connected. to me. to everything. and this terror of isolation that lives in me is terror. not fear. not anxiety. jagged, strangling terror. but we are not separate. isolation is an illusion. i can cut myself off from myself, from others, but i am never separate. we’re all constitutionally bound together, matter, energy. you don’t leave me when i move away.

this blog skips around a lot, i know, and i post erratically. i’ll try to post regularly and organize it when school ends.