In the community room, she put her hand on my arm and began listing all the famous writers who spent time in institutions. Tennessee Williams, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton. “Sometimes,” she said, “there is a price to pay for being a genius.” I asked my English teacher if I was, in her estimation, a genius and she told me it was too soon to say for sure. “You can’t follow instructions to save your life. You daydream. You seem full of disorder. These are all promising signs.”
