The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays

by Esmé Weijun Wang

My friends with anxiety disorders, for example, tend to speak of anxiety as a component of their personalities. Laura Turner writes, in her essay “How Do You Inherit Anxiety?,” “It is from Verna Lee Boatright Berg that I inherited my long face, my quick hands, my fear that someday soon I will do something wrong and the world will come to a sharp end.” In their minds, there is no tabula rasa overlaid by a transparency of hypochondria, generalized anxiety disorder, or obsessive-compulsive disorder; such thoughts are hardwired into their minds, with no self that can be untangled from the pathology they experience. Another friend’s obsessive-compulsive disorder has calmed significantly since she began taking Prozac, but she continues to be most comfortable when things are tidy, even though her tidiness is no longer disruptive. She still washes her hands more thoroughly than anyone I know. There might be something comforting about the notion that there is, deep down, an impeccable self without disorder, and that if I try hard enough, I can reach that unblemished self. But there may be no impeccable self to reach, and if I continue to struggle toward one, I might go mad in the pursuit.