The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays

by Esmé Weijun Wang

For one season, I saw shadowy demons darting at me from all angles, and I couldn’t control my response, which was to jump to the side or duck or startle at things that no one else could see. If I was with someone, I’d pretend afterward that nothing had happened, and usually my companion or companions who knew of my diagnosis would generously pretend that I hadn’t just ducked, rather dramatically, for no reason. But I was mortified. It didn’t matter how pulled-together I seemed when I was dodging specters that no one else could see. I knew that I looked crazy, and that no amount of snappy dressing could conceal the dodging. Because such movements were a necessary concession to my craziness, I responded by trying even harder to seem normal when I wasn’t being assailed by hallucinations. I went dancing. I drank Jameson on the rocks and ate potato skins in Irish bars and pizza joints. I did all the normal things I could think of.