I read Madness, and for the first time I understand — from the inside — what a precious member of my family has been going through for the past seven years. I will divulge that the madness in my family belongs to a male, but I will not say who or how close. That is hisjourney, his story to tell.
Madness: A Bipolar Life comes out in hardcover, and I interview Marya Hornbacher, and I feel swept in — her sharp intelligence, her charisma, her magnetic pain. Same as his. I suggest he go to her reading that night, and he goes. Goes up to talk to her at the end, says that’s his diagnosis, too, bipolar. Her cycles are wilder and more debilitating than his, but they read each other, know each other’s experience.
Now the paperback is out, and he refuses the doctor’s meds — chooses his own. Except in random moments, he refutes the diagnosis. Stays still. Barely moves inside his life. I cannot guide him. I can only love him. Breathe deeply and sigh out the pain I feel coming from him.
One day he says he feels anxious and has no medicine. I ask if I can hug him. He says yes. And, I hold him, letting my heart energy pour into his. I can feel this transfer, like a blood transfusion. When the transfer is made, we gently pull apart, and he is calm.
A lesson. Ideas I have, are not accepted. Only acceptance is. And Love. Marya Hornbacher writes raw — poetically — of the manically-high and numbingly-low swings. Of lost time. Moments of creative brilliance that are just stunning. In person, she seems calm and strong, also vulnerable. I recognize this in him. It is similar. The night a little over a year ago when he “became” Robin Williams doing Sean Connery in Finding Forrester. I forgot who he really was, and collapsed in laughter.
The next day he asked to go to the hospital.
I remember when my mother was taken to the hospital. I was a teenager and she had swallowed a bottle of pills. She was more pale than her white bathrobe. After I cried for help, an ambulance took her away, and I saw her in the hospital, her arms pinned by a straitjacket, her diagnosis schizophrenia, her complaint when they finally let her out that she couldn’t write poetry anymore.
Today, doctors say she is bipolar. She self-medicates with alcohol and travel. Her disowning me is not personal, I see, after reading Marya’s book.
Madness pulls back the curtain, and I am on stage with her, inside her character. Her journey is fearless and aware. This is what I hope for him.
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