But I, cheerfully mad as a hatter, am entirely unaware that something has snapped and will never be put back together. Here we are: it’s Tuesday, and now we are quite mad. Not mad as in moody. Mad as in under the impression that I am God.
I am driving through the city. I am speeding. It seems that I have had a good deal to drink, to calm my nerves, for I am just a touch nervous. I woke up this morning and things were a little off. I went to the kitchen for a cup of coffee and stopped in the doorway. Glass covered every surface. I vaguely remembered throwing the coffeepot at my husband’s head. Hell. No coffee. There was blood on the floor; I checked my feet, which were covered with shallow cuts that were more or less painless. I wondered absently if they really were painless, or if I was numb.
It occurred to me that I had to leave immediately, and I went upstairs to collect my purse and shoes. I made it as far as the car when I noticed that I wasn’t wearing any clothes. Oh, for goodness’ sake, I thought to myself, and went back into the house shaking my head. I put on my blue-flowered sundress, and then realized I ought to shower, so I took a shower, and stepped out soaking wet, my dress clinging to me, and then there was a fold in time and now I am driving, very fast. I am downtown. I am speeding through a parking lot, honking at nothing. I run inside a building and find I am at my husband’s place of work. I kiss everyone hello, despite their surprise (perhaps they are surprised because I am all wet?), and I babble excitedly and my husband calls Dr. Lentz and kindly escorts me back to my car and sends me on my way, and it is very important that I put on lots of lipstick, it’s always good to look nice for an appointment with a shrink, it makes one look much more sane, and I am pacing in his office, Please sit down, Marya, really, would you sit down? Have you taken your meds? Are you suicidal? Have you been drinking? Does your husband know where you are? Did you drive here? No, you certainly cannot leave—
Inexplicably, I am in the car again. From out of nowhere, Julian is here and is driving and I am bouncing up and down in my seat, we are going on an adventure! We’re going to California! I want to move to California! Or New York, let’s move to New York! I find a bottle of vodka under the seat and drink most of it because I am clearly a little agitated and shouldn’t be seen like this, it’s embarrassing. And now we are at a hospital. Why are we at the hospital? My husband looks worried. I am sitting on a gurney and they are taking my blood, which apparently I don’t care for because I bat them away and shriek that they are invading my privacy and this is still America and they can’t just do whatever they want. Then, for no reason I can see, I am being wheeled along a corridor. I say I can walk perfectly well and hop up and wheel the chair myself, though the person in the blue pajamas declines to get in; and they unlock a large door and we are in a safe place and they take my shoes.
I sit here in the hospital room painted the shade of pink that is supposed to make people calm. I examine, enchanted, my feet in their blue hospital footies, while someone speaks in soft tones to me and says I am psychotic, but it’s going to be all right. I put on my hat, unperturbed, and ask for some crayons.
Same Day
“For all is well in our little tiny town,” I sing, my hands a blur as I deal out the millionth game of solitaire of the night. I stand up in my chair, sit down in my chair, hop out of my chair, do a little Snoopy dance, my hospital gowns flapping about me like wings—I’ve grown inordinately fond of these gowns and am wearing several at once, “for dramatic effect”—and I sing the Snoopy song, stand on my chair again, imitating Snoopy as vulture, plop down. “I never did like Peanuts much,” I remark to the catatonic man who sits across from me, “but when I was little my parents took me to see the Peanuts musical, and I liked that, but I thought it was kind of ridiculous that all the kids were played by grownups.” I look at the man, who is just off an unfortunate suicide attempt, and, feeling bad for him, I climb onto the table and deal him a game of solitaire too, very pleased with myself for doing so upside down. I spit tobacco juice in a little cup, this nice man having loaned me some chewing tobacco since I am not allowed to smoke. “I don’t mind that stuff,” I say, my lower lip full of chew. “Here,” I say, climbing off the table and coming around to the back of his chair, “old chum,” I say, banging him on the back, “you play like this. You pretend that all the face cards are aces, and so when you get a face card you put it here, and then you go through the deck looking for all the twos or fours, which you use as wild cards, and when you do get an ace, or a joker, we’re playing with two jokers, see, then when you, like I said, do get an ace, you turn the face cards upside down on it and call it a double ace, and after that you flip the cards upward, like regular solitaire”—I am leaning over him, my hands flying over the table like a blackjack dealer’s, my arms on either side of his head, and I’m stacking the deck and shuffling the deck and stacking it and shuffling, and flipping up the cards—“and you start going for a flush or a full house.” I fan out my hand, the result, apparently, of the above machinations, say, “See?” and pound him on the back. “It’s very grand!” I cry, and go skipping down the hall, am shushed (nicely) by the very nice night staff as I skip by, skipping backward back to the desk; “You’re very nice,” I say, “I like you very much,” and I skip on, skip straight on till morning.
Dr. Lentz has explained to me that I’m having the good kind of mania, a euphoric mania. Everything is beautiful, simply gorgeous, I am talking a blue streak and what I’m saying is nearly incomprehensible, seeing as I’m dashing through a thicket of random thoughts so quickly no one can follow (it’s called flight of ideas). I am grandiose, delusional, I’m flinging my body about; I am, to the casual observer, clearly possessed.
It would seem I’m a textbook case. Every symptom of mania I could have, I have, in force: the extreme, minute-to-minute mood swings, rapid speech, the grandiosity, the impulsivity, the delusions, the feeling of complete invincibility, and the absolute conviction that certain untrue things are true. I can hear my thoughts zipping and whistling through my head, and see them snap and sizzle in streaking red lines on a complex grid that was designed by God and given to me personally; I am a millionaire high-society lady and should be treated with the utmost respect due to my superior station; my car can fly. These and various other ideas flash through my head, passing as quickly as they arrive. What causes them? I’m guilty of every precipitating factor you can think of—no sleep, gallons of booze, not enough effort to stick with my medication, a complete inability to grasp the seriousness of my diagnosis—and, it turns out, I have a disorder that has gone untreated for too long. But from my perspective, a manic break is a fine, fine thing, and I can’t for the life of me imagine why everyone is so upset.
The staff of this hospital, at least, is experienced and trained (and did I mention that I like them very much?), so my batshit state is nothing new to them. I’m on Unit 47, where they put patients who aren’t capable of being responsible for themselves—the suicidal, the very manic or profoundly depressed, the schizophrenic during a severe episode of delusion, and the variously psychotic. They dose me with a powerful antipsychotic, probably Zyprexa. It’s a stopgap to get me down off the ceiling while, over the next few days, Dr. Lentz works on figuring out what kinds of meds and how much of them I’ll need long term. I don’t mind taking it, not at all—these people are lovely, absolutely lovely, and so nice!