The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness

by Elyn R. Saks

It was around this time that I read Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. Even though it was fiction, Plath described the central character’s gradual descent into shattering mental illness in a way that could only have come from her own struggles.

When you’re scared, on the verge of a meltdown, you instinctively know to head someplace where you’ll be safe; when you reveal something so intimate as psychosis, you want the witnesses to be people you trust.

It’s a little like having a meteor land in your backyard without hitting the house. You can either focus on the meteor, and what almost happened, or you can focus on the fortunate miss and what didn’t happen.

As exasperating and frightening as my years-long process of tinkering with my meds was for my friends and physicians, I understand now that it was hugely important for me to do it; it was a necessary stage of development that I needed to go through to become my full-fledged self. It was the only way I could come to terms with the illness.

When you have cancer, people send flowers; when you lose your mind, they don’t.