He nods amiably. “Ever wish you were dead?”
I consider it. “I wish I wasn’t crazy.”
“Ever attempted suicide?”
“Not exactly.”
He raises his eyebrows, then skips on. “Let me ask you a couple of questions.”
The questions are endless, and with each one, I feel a little crazier. But I also start to feel like he might know what’s going on. Which means there might be something he could do.
“You say you had an eating disorder? How long ago?”
“Started when I was nine. I finally started getting a handle on it a couple of years ago, when I was about twenty.”
“What about cutting, any history of cutting?”
“A little bit. Ages ago.” I’m torn between wanting his help and not wanting to seem crazy. The cutting was crazy. I don’t care to elaborate.
“What about drinking? Drugs?”
“Drinking? I suppose so, yes. But not too much. Nothing that would cause concern.” I’m thinking, Drinking? All the time. Until I can’t see. Until the crazies go away. I drink myself sane. I’m not about to tell him that. That’s the last thing I want him to know. I’ll tell him anything he wants to hear except about the drinking. It’s my last hope to keep myself from going totally over the edge. “No drugs,” I say.
“Do you have a habit of being impulsive? Things like shopping, making snap decisions? Taking sudden trips?” The more he asks, the less I can answer. Snap decisions? Always. Shopping? Until I’ve nearly gone broke. Trips? I just took a trip. Lit off at night, drove six hundred miles to see an old friend, on a whim.
“What about sex?” I slept with the friend, too, without thinking about it, then felt like shit. “Not to pry, but would you say you sleep with a lot of people? More than you mean to? Sometimes it feels like you don’t want to but can’t stop?” For as long as I can remember. I can’t begin to count the beds, the nights when it felt easier just to close my eyes than to get myself home.
“Do your thoughts race?”
I sit up. “That’s it,” I say. “That’s what I mean when I say crazy: I can’t get the thoughts to stop. It’s torture. It’s hell.”
“Do you ever feel like you’re not in your body, like you’re numb?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Sometimes during the rages. Sometimes when I get really happy. It comes and goes.”
“Does it bother you?”
“I don’t know. It’s just weird. It feels like I might just go flying off.”
“Does anything make the feeling go away?”
“I pinch myself.”
“Does it work?”
“Not really.”
“Do you ever cut yourself?”
“Not anymore.”
“When you did, did it help?”
“Yes,” I say flatly.
“Good for you for not doing it anymore.”
“I slipped once. Nearly killed myself. I’m not interested in doing it again.”
“Slipped?”
“Slipped.”
He lets it slide.
“How far apart are the mood swings?” He keeps saying that! What’s he talking about? “Every few months, weeks, days?”
“I wouldn’t know about mood swings,” I say. “It’s nothing that specific. It’s just, I don’t know—” Now that I think about it, it’s obviously fucking mood swings. “More like I just go flying around, up and down. Sometimes days. Hours. Minutes. So fast I can’t keep track. I’ll be going along in a perfectly good mood and suddenly I’m pitching shit all over the house. I’ll be lying in bed feeling like I’m dead when suddenly I’m up and running around. It’s maddening. I’d give anything to be just normal for an entire day. Just a day. That’s all I’m asking.”
“What about sleep, do you sleep? Can’t fall asleep or can’t stay asleep? Wake up early even when you don’t want to?”
“I would sell my soul for one good night of sleep. I lie awake for hours, then prowl the house all night. By morning everything feels surreal.”
“Nightmares?”
“When I sleep.”
“What about work, what kind of work do you do? Do you find it hard to work? Easy? Can you stop working? Or do you just keep going?”
“I’m a writer. I write and write. I would write until I was dead, the way some dogs will keep eating and eating until they die. I can’t stop. And then, suddenly, I have nothing to say. It goes away. The words are gone.”
He’s studying my face.
“Do you ever feel hopeless?”
The word yawns open in my chest. “Not really,” I say, looking out the window.
“But sometimes?”
“Sometimes.”
“When?”
I still don’t look at him. “When I stop to think about it.”
“About this?”
“About any of it. About being crazy.” I chew my thumbnail and look at him. “It’s getting worse,” I say. “It’s getting harder not to think about it.”
“Does anything help?”
I snort. “A drink?” He doesn’t laugh. “Not really,” I say. “No.”
Nothing. Nothing makes it go away.
He finally scribbles something on his notepad and clicks his pen. He looks at me.
“You don’t have depression, that’s for sure.”
“No shit.” What a relief.
“You have bipolar disorder.”
I sit there. “Is that the same as manic depression?”
“The very same.”
“You’re joking.”
“I’m serious.”
“That’s crazy. I mean, manic depression: that’s crazy.”
He shrugs. “Depends on how you look at it. I wouldn’t say it’s crazy. I’d say it’s an illness.”
“Bipolar disorder,” I repeat. “Do you take Prozac for that?”
“Not a chance,” he says. “You’re right that the Prozac makes you feel crazy. I’m going to prescribe a mood stabilizer. It should help.”
My chest floods with a mixture of horror and relief. The relief comes first: something in