The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness

by Elyn R. Saks

But explaining what I’ve come to call “disorganization” is a different challenge altogether. Consciousness gradually loses its coherence. One’s center gives way. The center cannot hold. The “me” becomes a haze, and the solid center from which one experiences reality breaks up like a bad radio signal. There is no longer a sturdy vantage point from which to look out, take things in, assess what’s happening. No core holds things together, providing the lens through which to see the world, to make judgments and comprehend risk. Random moments of time follow one another. Sights, sounds, thoughts, and feelings don’t go together. No organizing principle takes successive moments in time and puts them together in a coherent way from which sense can be made. And it’s all taking place in slow motion.

In fact, it is not necessarily true that everything can be conquered with willpower. There are forces of nature and circumstance that are beyond our control, let alone our understanding, and to insist on victory in the face of this, to accept nothing less, is just asking for a soul-pummeling. The simple truth is, not every fight can be won.

Schizophrenia rolls in like a slow fog, becoming imperceptibly thicker as time goes on. At first, the day is bright enough, the sky is clear, the sunlight warms your shoulders. But soon, you notice a haze beginning to gather around you, and the air feels not quite so warm. After a while, the sun is a dim lightbulb behind a heavy cloth. The horizon has vanished into a gray mist, and you feel a thick dampness in your lungs as you stand, cold and wet, in the afternoon dark.

No one looking at me would have known there was a storm going on inside. But there was a storm, and it was horrible.

But the beauty of my surroundings made no impact on me at all; for all I knew I could have been walking in an underground cave. I felt only desperation, and a profound isolation that every day seemed to burrow more deeply into me. What a waste of oxygen it was for me to draw breath.

When you’re really crazy, respect is like a lifeline someone’s throwing you. Catch this and maybe you won’t drown.

But now thoughts crashed into my mind like a fusillade of rocks someone (or something) was hurtling at me—fierce, angry, jagged around the edges, and uncontrollable. I could not bear them, I did not know how to defend myself against them, and I could not bear to be near anyone when I was experiencing them.

Kleinian analysts employ the same words and images that the analysand uses—and as a consequence, Kleinian analysts can sometimes sound just as crazy as their patients do. These simple yet often startling exchanges between doctor and patient operate something like arrows shot directly at whatever it is that’s upsetting the person being analyzed. If the arrow hits, it punctures the target; what results is something like a valve opening and long-pent-up steam being released.

Because the odd thing was, I didn’t think I was particularly crazy, or that what I often thought or felt was unique to me. Instead, I had come to believe that everyone had these thoughts or feelings, this sense of a force or evil energy pushing on them to do evil or be destructive. The difference was, they all knew how to manage it, how to hide it, how to control it, because that was the socially appropriate thing to do. They had stronger wills, and better coping skills, than I did. They knew how to keep their demons in check; I did not. But perhaps I could learn.

Her tolerance and understanding seemed endless, and her steady and calm presence contained me, as if she were the glue that held me together. I was falling apart, flying apart, exploding—and she gathered my pieces and held them for me.

For two straight years, I did my work, met my obligations, made it through the day as best I could, and then fled to Mrs. Jones, where I promptly took the chains off my mind and fell apart.

I wondered if there were a role I could play in the lives of people who suffered in a way that I understood only too well.

When I put my arms around Mrs. Jones, though, I began to cry uncontrollably, soaking her shoulder. She had been the tether that held me to the outside world, the repository for my darkest thoughts, the person who tolerated all the bad and evil that lay within me, and never judged. She was my translator, in a world where I felt most often like an alien. How could I survive in this world without her?