The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness

by Elyn R. Saks

That intuition—that there was a secret I had to keep—as well as the other masking skills that I learned to use to manage my disease, came to be central components of my experience of schizophrenia.

My feelings about imminent danger never stopped, but talking about it to my parents did.

I didn’t hear these words as literal sounds, as though the houses were talking and I were hearing them; instead, the words just came into my head—they were ideas I was having. Yet I instinctively knew they were not my ideas. They belonged to the

I became convinced that I was not supposed to talk, particularly about myself. I was not supposed to ask for anything, not even so much as a coffee refill at the drugstore counter. Those houses that told me I was bad on that long-ago day—maybe those houses had been right.

Of course, my family would have gladly paid the phone bill, but my distorted judgment told me I did not deserve to spend money on myself, or to have others spend money on me. Besides, nothing I had to say was worth hearing, or so said my mind. It’s wrong to talk. Talking means you have something to say. I have nothing to say. I am nobody, a nothing. Talking takes up space and time. You don’t deserve to talk. Keep quiet.

Inside, another dialogue was going on: I am bad, not mad. Even if I were sick, which I’m not, I don’t deserve to get help. I am unworthy.

I’m just a bad, defective, stupid, and evil person. Maybe if I’d talk less I wouldn’t spread my evil around.

Evil, crazy; evil, crazy. Which was it? Or was it both?

I was such a horrible disappointment to myself. How could I not be a disappointment to them as well?

Please like me; please want to help me. Please don’t be disgusted with me.

I am worthless, I cannot even control my own mind. Why would anyone want to save me?

Thank god times change. Our bathrooms were cleaned every day.

You are a piece of shit. You don’t deserve to be around people. You are nothing. Other people will see this. They will hate you. They will hate you and they will want to hurt you. They can hurt you. They are powerful. You are weak. You are nothing.

there was no way I could tell any of them that the impetus for my behavior, the commanding impulse, came from inside my head but was not mine. It was someone else commanding me. I was afraid the staff would laugh at me—

I knew, for instance, not to share my ongoing delusions of evil, in particular the part about my being evil and my total certainty that I was capable of horrible acts of violence. Not that these thoughts were wrong; I believed everyone thought this way, but just knew better than to talk about it, much as everyone passes gas, but not in company.

and I vaguely understood the rule that in a social setting, even with the people I most trusted, I could not ramble on about my psychotic thoughts. To talk about killing children, or burning whole worlds, or being able to destroy cities with my mind was not part of polite conversation.

How easily I could have slipped beneath the waves and simply never come back up again.

I wanted them to think well of me. I didn’t want them to look at me and see a crazy person.