Chapter 14
A week goes by. And still, I spend a huge chunk of each day crawling around in circles, rocking, and yelling in voices I can’t stop. For the thousandth time it seems like, my husband urges me to take medicine. Gee, I'd love to, dear, but can't you hear this?
“Hell no to the meds, Lizzie! You just need to buck up. Remember what happened in the hospital? Those moron’s nearly killed you.” I wish they had, I snap back.
Little did I know the words, I wish they had, would blast echoes off the walls of my rapidly deteriorating mind when I become aware that an insidious personality change has shattered its way to the forefront; I'm swinging from manic to obsessive at the drop of a bat! Even when I'm rational! For instance, any quality time I spend with my children, which pretty much takes up all my sane time, ends up with me bouncing all over the place, but ten times worse than Tigger. At dinner, I will only eat chopped hamburger and mashed potatoes. This type of bizarre behavior continues for several more weeks, until one day, as I rummage through the silverware drawer I ask, “B, where are the knives?”
Silence. “I put them away.”
“What for?”
Silence. “Because I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU IMPLYING? That I'm a mental defect, therefore I will hurt myself? . . . Dammit, B, that's insulting. And . . . and racist. Are you some kind of closet racist? Because that's how those sickos think!”
Totally gobsmacked by the accusatory and utterly irrational leap in logic, B still manages to hold onto his temper, and instead, shows me a jagged, red horizontal line on the inside of my arm.
My eyes yoyo to the floor. “I didn’t do that.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Well . . . it was an accident.”
He shakes his head.
Silence. “I need help. It’s not going to get better, is it?”
He shakes his head again.
“Ok.” I slam the drawer shut. “Call a psychiatrist.”
He nods.
I run upstairs just as the switch goes off, and become a child. The rocking begins, but for the first time, instead of embarking on a house cruise, I stay put and lapse into sing song.
Twinkle, Twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.
How I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder when I’ll die.
How I wonder when I’ll die.
