The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness by Elyn R. Saks Read Free Book Online

talking about it the other night. We're trying to decide what's the
best thing to do."
    "Do about what?" I asked.
    "About maybe telling her. That she really needs to take a shower
once in a while." She wrinkled her little nose. "And shampoo her hair.
You know? Nothing fancy or anything. Just—well, I don't know, what
do you think? Do you think we should just tell her straight out? Might
hurt her feelings, maybe. Or should we just leave little hints, or maybe
a note? Not a mean one, of course. But something that might help her
out."
    "My gosh," I said. "That is a tough one. But how nice of you to be so
concerned about her. I think you should just straight-out tell her. It's
always best to be direct with people, at least in my opinion."
    She nodded. "Yes, I guess so. But still, the idea of hurting
somebody's feelings...Well, anyway, thanks for talking to me about
this."
    I wondered, afterward, what Susie and her friends decided to do
about the unfortunate girl, and what her response to them had been.
But it never occurred to me to ask. And it certainly never occurred to
me—then—that the girl in the dorm who needed to take a shower, the
one they'd been talking about, was, of course, me.
    Even a casual observer will agree that many college freshmen
quickly become away-from-home slobs; after all, for the first time in
their lives, nobody's after them to hang up their clothes or straighten
out their messes. But I'll bet that even as the dirty laundry piles up to
the ceiling and dorm rooms start to look like hovels, very few of those
kids actually neglect to bathe or shampoo or brush their teeth
regularly—because that would almost certainly guarantee an instant
end to their social life. What, then, was happening to me? After all, I'd
been brought up by attentive parents, in a family with means, plus two
brothers who wouldn't have hesitated to tell me, "You stink!" So why
was I unlearning the most basic of lessons: simple cleanliness?
    Schizophrenia rolls in like a slow fog, becoming imperceptibly
thicker as time goes on. At first, the day is bright enough, the sky is
clear, the sunlight warms your shoulders. But soon, you notice a haze
beginning to gather around you, and the air feels not quite so warm.
    After a while, the sun is a dim lightbulb behind a heavy cloth. The
horizon has vanished into a gray mist, and you feel a thick dampness
in your lungs as you stand, cold and wet, in the afternoon dark.
    For me (and for many of us), the first evidence of that fog is a
gradual deterioration of basic common-sense hygiene—what the
mental health community calls "self-care skills" or "activities of daily
living." Once away from my parents' watchful eyes, I grew inconsistent
about asking myself the taken-for-granted questions. Or maybe I was
muddled sometimes about what the right answers to those questions
should be. Are showers really necessary? How often do I need to
change clothes? Or wash them? Have I eaten anything yet today? Do I
really need to sleep every night? Do I have to brush my teeth every
day?
    Some days, the answers were clear as a bell: Yes, of course. For
heaven's sake, Elyn, clean yourself up! And so I did. But other days,
the questions and the answers were just too hard to sort out. I don't
know, I don't know. Or, simply, I just couldn't remember: Did I do
that already? Did I do it yesterday? Taking care of myself meant doing
more than reading a book or finishing a term paper; it meant
strategizing, organizing, keeping track. And some days, there just
wasn't enough room in my head to keep all that together. I'd left the
Center, I'd left my parents, and everything slowly began to unravel.

    Like most college freshmen, I'd gone off to school not entirely clear
about what I wanted to major in or what I wanted do with my life. But
I'd narrowed it down a little. Something having to do with English,
maybe, because of my great love for books and for WTiting. Or perhaps
the legal profession—I could picture myself