Gorilla and the Bird: A Memoir of Madness and a Mother's Love

by Zack McDermott

You can’t feel superior to everyone in the room and simultaneously address your own problems. And in this room I didn’t see people with problems; I saw people who were problems.

Like a marriage, the first part is all catalyst—a chemical reaction that can carry you through the first several years in relative bliss. It’s the lull afterward that requires effort.

Our profession gives us a front-row seat to our nation’s most sadistic horror show. And

was time for me to participate once again in the sick joke of a justice system we’ve come to accept as the only logical way

to deal with poverty-induced crime. To bang my head against the immovable wall of bureaucratic indifference

Depression felt as much a luxury as veganism and fair trade coffee. Shut the fuck up, you whiny, ungrateful bitch constantly pinged around in my head.

The Bird’s stories said something entirely different. They said, “Don’t lose yourself, because I still know who you are.” They said, “You are weak right now, so weak that you need to hear about how marvelous I’ve known you to be since you were born; how unconditionally and attentively I’ve loved you since you got here; how I’ve had your back since day one, saw a truth teller where everyone else saw a little smart-ass. You were the toughest to give birth to, the toughest to raise, even tougher than your pothead brother. Yet I went to bat for you against everyone and everything, even when I should have let you face the music, because I see you, who you are, what you are. And you won’t be facing this music alone either. This is just another chapter of The Book of Zachary I’ve been taking notes on and writing in my head for twenty-six years.”

But—and this is one of those scenarios

in which everything before the ‘but’ doesn’t carry much weight—you

Excessive enthusiasm was about as useful as adrenaline coursing through a DMV clerk’s veins.

I never found the defrost button for depression, but I stayed alive and put the turkey in the sink and it eventually thawed out on its own. Shit got better because hard shit usually does.

California quickly revealed itself to be a series of semi-adventures

we couldn’t afford.

“That means each one of these episodes puts you at greater risk of having another. And the line between bipolar one and schizophrenia can be blurry. This episode lasted much longer than your previous. Each one blurs the line a little bit more. Marijuana…”

let Uncle Eddie live like Uncle Eddie?”

reason that told me these thoughts were irrational, that New York City has building codes, that Sheetrock