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Even now, she doesn’t consider herself an X on the family tree, preferring to keep herself a mild circle, absolved on the page despite her own history of suicidal ideation, panic, and hiding in closets.
As she discussed the “traumatic” nature of receiving a mental health diagnosis, I realized that she was doing so in the context of the family members surrounding the person with a mental illness, and not in the context of people being diagnosed with mental illness;
I’d fooled her, or convinced her. Either way, I knew, was a victory.
But what if there isn’t? What happens if I see my disordered mind as a fundamental part of who I am?
Yale told me to leave immediately. I was not allowed to reenter campus, and so someone confiscated my student ID, and my busy father, who had flown from China to be with me, was tasked with packing my things. I was told to be at JFK on the same night that I left the hospital—so urgent was Yale’s desire for me to leave.
Perhaps if my mother had been able to choose my genetics, she would’ve rearranged some things. I would be someone else entirely.
“We can stay in the car,” Porochista said about Chimayó. “Let’s go and look around. We can see how we feel,” she said, which was a common refrain during that trip, and is a common attitude among the chronically ill.
Sick people, as it turns out, generally stray into alternative medicine not because they relish the idea of indulging in what others call quackery, but because traditional Western medicine has failed them.
The test results all came back negative. People congratulated me on this news, but I sought comfort in those who understood that negative test results meant no answers—meant Dr. J’s diminished interest in my case and thus in my suffering—meant that I had no avenue of treatment to pursue and no kind of cure in my sight line.
They have been with me for too long, I think, to be obliterated, unlike these more recent ailments, which feel like part of the wrong narrative, and make me wonder how many different types of sick girl I can be.
