Monday, March 13, 2006

So, so, Herr Doktor. So, Herr Enemy.
(from Happy Hour novel)

The shrink who diagnosed me as bi-polar barely spoke English.
Yet in one 30-minute session thought she knew me well enough to stick me with that label, upgrading me from mere depression. I was only 15 at the time and would spend the remainder of my high school years doped up beyond coherence, nodding off in class from the heavy sedatives. I gained 50 pounds, which is fucking traumatic for a teenage girl. Spent many months locked away in dehumanizing, underfunded state-run facilities, since I didn't have health insurance.

And if you tell a kid she's crazy, tell a kid she's anything, her sponge brain will soak it in, her body will act out the role you've cast her. She'll learn to quote Sylvia Plath:

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

Nobody bothered to ask me what was wrong, what was making me so damn nuts.
They would have realized I was just an extra-sensitive, creative and weird young girl surrounded by bratty classmates and closed minded teachers. That's not too abnormal. Who wouldn't go nuts?

Instead, they declared me "mentally ill", a hopeless case, doomed for life. The label would follow me after high school and that, plus my over-emotional nature would land me in the loony bin a few more times.
posted at 9:50 PM |