Manic

To my mother and father

If you come with me on this journey, I think
a word of warning is in order: manic depression is not a safe ride. It doesn’t go from point A to point B in a familiar, friendly pattern. It’s chaotic, unpredictable. You never know where you’re heading next. I wanted this book to mirror the disease, to give the reader a visceral experience. That’s why I’ve chosen to tell my life story episodically, rather than in any chronological order. It’s truer to the way I think. When I look back, I rarely remember events in terms of date or sequence. Rather, I remember what emotional state I was in. Manic? Depressed? Suicidal? Euphoric? Life for me is defined not by time, but by mood.

I’ve tried to stay as true as I can to what I remember. But mental illness creates its own vibrant reality, which is so convincing it’s sometimes hard to figure out exactly what is real and what is not. It gets even harder as time goes by, because memory is the first casualty of manic depression. When I’m manic, all I remember is the moment. When I’m depressed, all I remember is the pain. The surrounding details are lost on me.

But the illness, ironically, has impaired me far less than the treatment. I’ve long since lost track of all the psychotropic medications I’ve had to take over the years, or the nature and number of their side effects. More devastating, however, was the course of electroshock therapy (ECT) I went through in 1994. ECT can be of great help as a last-resort treatment, but it’s notorious for wiping out memory. For a while, I forgot even the simplest things: what part of town I lived in, my mother’s maiden name, what scissors were for. Some of this was eventually restored, but I still have trouble recalling past events and retaining the memories of new ones. The world has never seemed as sharp and clear as it did before the ECT.

In some cases, the events I describe can be documented by police or hospital records (although some of the hospitals no longer exist). I’ve elected to change the names of most of the people and institutions depicted, to protect their identities. The experiences I’ve written about are often difficult and private, and I prefer just to tell my own story.

Telling my story is what’s kept me alive, even when death was at its most seductive. That’s why I’ve chosen to share my personal history, although some of it is still painful to recall even through a haze of medication, mental illness, and electroshock therapy. But the disease thrives on shame, and shame thrives on silence, and I’ve been silent long enough. This book represents what I remember. This book is my truth.

Terri Cheney
Los Angeles, California

I didn’t tell anyone that I was going to Santa Fe
to kill myself. I figured that was more information than people needed, plus it might interfere with my travel plans if anyone found out the truth. People always mean well, but they don’t understand that when you’re seriously depressed, suicidal ideation can be the only thing that keeps you alive. Just knowing there’s an out—even if it’s bloody, even if it’s permanent—makes the pain almost bearable for one more day.

Five months had passed since my father’s death from lung cancer, and the world was not a fit place to live in. As long as Daddy was still alive, it made sense to get up every morning, depressed or not. There was a war on. But the day I gave the order to titrate his morphine to a lethal dose, the fight lost all meaning for me.

So I wanted to die. I saw nothing odd about this desire, even though I was only thirty-eight years old. It seemed like a perfectly natural response, under the circumstances. I was bone-tired, terminally weary, and death sounded like a vacation to me, a holiday. A somewhere else, which is all I really wanted.

When I was offered the chance to leave L.A. to take an extended trip by myself to Santa Fe, I was ecstatic. I leased a charming little hacienda just off Canyon Road, the artsiest part of town, bursting with galleries, jazz clubs, and eccentric, cat-ridden bookstore/cafés. It was a good place to live, especially in December, when the snow fell thick and deep on the cobblestones, muffling the street noise so thoroughly that the city seemed to dance its own soft-shoe.

There was an exceptional amount of snowfall that particular December. Everything seemed a study in contrast: the fierce round desert sun, blazing while I shivered; blue-white snow shadows against thick red adobe walls; and always, everywhere I looked, the sagging spine of the old city pressing up against the sleek curves of the new. But the most striking contrast by far was me: thrilled to tears simply to be alive in such surroundings, and determined as ever to die.

I never felt so bipolar in my life.

The mania came at me
in four-day spurts. Four days of not eating, not sleeping, barely sitting in one place for more than a few minutes at a time. Four days of constant shopping—and Canyon Road is all about commerce, however artsy its facade. And four days of indiscriminate, nonstop talking: first to everyone I knew on the West Coast, then to anyone still awake on the East Coast, then to Santa Fe itself, whoever would listen. The truth was, I didn’t just need to talk. I was afraid to be alone. There were things hovering in the air around me that didn’t want to be remembered: the expression on my father’s face when I told him it was stage IV cancer, already metastasized; the bewildered look in his eyes when I couldn’t take away the pain; and the way those eyes kept watching me at the end, trailing my every move, fixed on me, begging for the comfort I wasn’t able to give. I never thought I could be haunted by anything so familiar, so beloved, as my father’s eyes.

Mostly, however, I talked to men. Canyon Road has a number of extremely lively, extremely friendly bars and clubs, all of which were within walking distance of my hacienda. It wasn’t hard for a redhead with a ready smile and a feverish glow in her eyes to strike up a conversation and then continue that conversation well into the early-morning hours, at his place or mine. The only word I couldn’t seem to say was “no.” I ease my conscience by reminding myself that manic sex isn’t really intercourse. It’s discourse, just another way to ease the insatiable need for contact and communication. In place of words, I simply spoke with my skin.

I had long since decided that Christmas Eve would be my last day on this earth. I chose Christmas Eve precisely because it had meaning and beauty—nowhere more so than in Santa Fe, with its enchanting festival of the
farolitos
. Every Christmas Eve, carolers come from all over the world to stroll the lantern-lit streets until dawn. All doors are open to them, and the air is pungent with the smell of warm cider and piñon.

I wanted to die at such a moment, when the world was at its best, when I could offer up my heart to God and say, thank you, truly, for all of it. It’s not that I’m ungrateful. It’s just that I’m not capable anymore of the joy a night like this deserves. Joy is blasphemy now that Daddy’s dead; your world is simply wasted on me. And that, I think, is reason enough to die. This unwritten prayer was the only suicide note I intended to leave.

Christmas Eve dawned bright and cold, with snow in the forecast for early that afternoon. I was on the fourth day of my latest manic spree, which meant my mind was speeding so fast I had to make shorthand lists to keep up with it. I’d already carefully laid out what I was going to wear as my farewell attire: a long black cashmere dress—not to be macabre, but because cashmere would never wrinkle and black would hide any unexpected blood or vomit. I’d also laid out all the pills I’d saved up over the past year, including all the heavy-duty cancer meds my father had never lived long enough to take. They were neatly arranged in probable order of lethality, and grouped into manageable mouthfuls, approximately ten pills per swallow. Counting them one last time, I realized I had well over three hundred assorted tablets and capsules, which meant an awful lot of swallows. What I didn’t have was sufficient tequila to wash them all down. Water wasn’t an option. I needed the interaction.

So it couldn’t be helped. I pulled on my gloves, hat, and coat, grabbed my car keys off the counter, and dashed off to the nearest liquor store, praying it was open. The snow was falling just heavily enough to slow my progress, but I was in luck. Not only were they still open, but my favorite tequila, Lapiz in the cobalt blue bottle, was on sale. I bought a fifth, then turned around and bought two more. There seemed little point, after all, in economizing. The old sales clerk, who had waited on me many times that December, held out his hand and wished me a merry Christmas. I shook his hand briefly, then turned back and gave him a big hug and a kiss on both cheeks. “Merry Christmas,” I said, as something cold and sharp twanged inside me. I had promised myself no good-byes.

The snow was falling thick and fast by the time I got back to the hacienda. The car heater wasn’t working very well, and I was shivering so hard I could barely open my purse to get the house key. I hated being cold. Rummaging through my purse with half-numb fingers, I wondered if the body felt the grave, and if that final chill ever truly left the bones. Five frustrating minutes later, I realized the key wasn’t anywhere in my purse, nor was it in the car, nor was it lying outside in the snow. It was, quite simply, somewhere else; and I was locked out of my most desperate dream.

Fortunately, my cell phone was in the glove compartment, charged and ready. A helpful operator took pity on me and managed to find me the only local locksmith working on Christmas Eve. But it would be at least an hour, the locksmith told me, before he could make it over to Canyon Road. “Better bundle up and stay warm,” he said. “I’ll do better than that,” I thought. Uncorking the bottle of Lapiz, I took a long, deep swallow, and started singing Christmas carols alphabetically to myself.

I’d been around
the alphabet three times and back again by the time the locksmith finally arrived, a good hour and a half later. I was singing at the top of my lungs by then, and didn’t hear his key tapping against the ice-encrusted window. All I saw was a pair of red-rimmed eyes under big white bushy brows through my windshield, and I was drunk enough to think of Santa Claus. “Door,” I said, pointing. “’s locked.”

While he fiddled with one key after another, I asked him all about his work, about life in Santa Fe, about life in general. The old manic craving to know everything was fierce upon me; but luckily, I’d found a willing participant. In fact, I could barely ask my questions before he answered them, at length and in depth. It hit me that he was talking even faster than I was, and that his answers didn’t sound quite right. There was something wrong with him, something slightly but significantly off. I looked at him while he was talking and realized that he was younger than I thought. And practically toothless. A single front tooth was framed by two stragglers at the bottom. The rest of the gum was raw and black, like a thick slice of calves’ liver. And his eyes weren’t just red, they were bloody, the whites shot through with virulent streaks.

Even through the heavy haze of tequila, I heard a warning bell go off. Step back, I said to myself. Get formal. Slow it down. But we were already well into this strange rhythm: me asking, him answering, me listening hard with all of my body. I didn’t know how to stop it, and was worried about offending him. Before I could figure out what to do, his supply of keys ran out. He was stumped. The only thing left to do was break the window.

I loved the idea of smashing glass at that moment. I wanted to do it, but he refused. Wrapping his hand in a greasy old rag, he told me to stand back and close my eyes. Then he bashed the pane once, twice, and on the third blow the glass tinkled onto the tile floor. There’s nothing quite like breaking something—the law, a pane of glass, whatever—to embolden a manic mood. “This calls for a drink,” I said, as he unlocked and opened the door.

I laid it all out: shot glasses, lime wedges, a shaker of salt and a newly opened fifth of tequila. Since this was probably the last toast I would ever make, I wanted to say something profound, but more than that, I wanted the drink. “Here’s to breaking through,” I said. When we clinked our glasses, I saw a patch of blood on his shirtsleeve. “You must have cut yourself on the window,” I told him. “Sit down, and I’ll take care of it.”

“It’s nothing,” he said, pulling his arm away.

“Sit down,” I repeated. Two years of taking care of an increasingly infantile father had given me a competent, no-nonsense air of authority when it came to nursing. He sat down, started unbuttoning his cuff, then stopped.

“I can’t,” he said. “A lady like you shouldn’t see this.”

“I’ve seen blood before,” I said, laughing.

“It’s not that.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Are you burned?”

“No,” he said, squirming.

“Scarred?”

“Not really.”

I reached over and put my hand on his sleeve. “Then don’t be silly. You’re bleeding all over my table.”

Without looking at me, he finished unbuttoning his cuff and rolled up his sleeve, thereby exposing, from wrist to bicep, the single greatest display of pornographic tattooing I had ever seen on one man’s body.

“I’m like this all over,” he said. “I used to do drugs. My judgment wasn’t so hot back then.”

Inadvertently, his bicep flexed, sending the fat couple engraved across it into a copulating spasm. I felt my face flush red, but I couldn’t look away. It was grotesque but mesmerizing in a freakish, carnival side-show way. And strangely innocent: as devoid of sexual appeal as the Sunday funnies.

I couldn’t help myself. I burst out laughing, and told him I’d seen far worse on my travels. He didn’t respond, nor would he meet my eye. I started to clean the small cut on his upper forearm, hoping to relax him, but if anything, the contact made him more nervous. “I’m so sorry,” he kept saying. “If I could, I’d burn them all off.”

“It’s okay, really. Hold still.”

“No, I’m hideous,” he insisted. “Sometimes I just want to die.”

There are lots of easy ways to respond to a statement like that—superficial, cheery bits of wisdom—but the irony slowed me down. Here I was, just waiting for this poor man to leave so I could finish killing myself by midnight; and I was supposed to reassure him of the sanctity of life? I poured us both another shot of tequila.

He pushed his glass away and shook his head. I saw a tear begin to form at the corner of his eye. Toothless, tattooed freak or not, he was suffering, and I knew only too well how that felt. I turned his arm over, exposing his wrist with its dancing, fully erect horned devil. I moistened the area with tequila, sprinkled it with a little salt, then bent down and licked between the tendons. Then I tossed back the shot, slammed the glass down on the table and sucked on my lime.

“That’s what I think of your silly tattoos,” I said. “Now have a drink. It’s Christmas Eve.”

Manic intentions are always good; manic consequences, almost never. I hadn’t really meant anything sexual by my gesture. I just meant it kindly, one injured animal licking another’s wounds. But then he stood up all at once and grabbed me by the arms, pulling me close to him and kissing me full on the mouth. I tried to break loose, but his grip was too strong, his mouth too insistent. I didn’t want sex. I just wanted to talk for a minute or two, then I wanted to die. Plus his mouth tasted foul—dark and sour—and I couldn’t get rid of the image of those liverish gums. A strong wave of revulsion swept through me, part tequila, part bile. I struggled once again to get free. I felt his hold loosen, took a dizzy step backward, and heard “No!”—the single word “No!”—and I don’t know which one of us said it before the world went black.

I woke several hours later
, sprawled across my bed, strangely stiff and sore and damp all over. I was alone. When I reached down to pull up the comforter, my fingers grazed my thighs and I felt a familiar cold, wet stickiness. I must have started my period, I thought, but then I smelled sweat—not a sweat I knew, but a man’s sweat. My inner thighs were throbbing, almost too sore to move, but I looked down at them. They were smeared with blood, fresh red bruises just beginning to shine through.

It really shouldn’t have mattered so much. I would be leaving this body for good, I kept telling myself, as soon as I could get up and swallow the waiting pills. But it did matter. It mattered a lot. In the same way that I wanted to leave a neat, spotless house, so I wanted a clean death. No loose, messy ends left trailing behind me, and especially no good-byes, not even to my innocence. I’d already said more than my share of good-byes.