More or Less Maddy

by Lisa Genova

“I don’t think anybody should feel bad if they get diagnosed with a mental illness because it’s just information about you that helps you know how to take better care of yourself.”

tired from having lived the day rather than tired of living the day.

One kiss, and she’s back on the carnival ride.

She’s tired of Instagram but can’t stop scrolling. As she views post after post, she senses a different kind of tired, a presence encroaching at the edge of her consciousness, familiar but not yet discernable, like the shadowy shape of someone she knows approaching from a distance at twilight, closer than it was yesterday.

Based on her schedule, she’d have to say an Italian-speaking existentialist politician who appreciates the flute. Yeah, corporate America can’t wait for her to graduate.

“Taylor is her own genre. She’s every genre. I want to do something that makes me feel as good as listening to her Red album.”

She is going to Taylor Swift’s house tonight. She’ll walk to Rhode Island if she has to.

But this chose her. Without her consent, like an arranged marriage, till death do they part. She wants an annulment, a divorce, an open window onto a fire escape, a new doctor, a time machine. Some way out of this.

But now she’s in a mental hospital. She’s bipolar. Mentally ill. Crazy. She imagines her bridge from childhood to adulthood crumbling on either side of where she stands, leaving her stranded in the middle, neither here nor there, nowhere. The invitation requesting her presence at a normal life has been rescinded. In its place, she’s been invited to an abnormal life, the box for WILL ATTEND already checked, leaving her no choice.

Each pill that Maddy swallows feels like another shovelful of earth tossed onto her coffin. She swallows the first pill with a big swig of water. New Maddy is bipolar. She swallows the second. Old Maddy is dead.

Before her hypomania ripened to rotten, there was a delicious sweetness to her thoughts and life. She had a massive amount of unearned confidence in her ability to do anything that struck her fancy. She made big dick energy look flaccid by comparison. It embarrasses her now to think about being this way, but her amped-up swagger gave her the absolute freedom to do whatever the fuck she wanted without permission or second-guessing herself, without worrying what anyone would think, whether it was good or bad.

She misses her favorite jeans, her clear face, her steady hands. She misses who she was before her diagnosis. She misses herself.

Every day, she wonders if the side effects of her treatment are worse than the symptoms of her illness.

The language of this illness is a curious thing. Some people will say she has bipolar, while others will say she is bipolar. It’s a subtle distinction in wording, a linguistic sleight of hand, but the difference in meaning feels significant.

Does feeling bad mean she’s depressed? Does feeling good mean she’s manic? Is any intense emotion a prelude to her next hospitalization?

Her bipolar, medicated, robot face is smiling.