The Dark Side of Innocence: Growing Up Bipolar - Couverture rigide

Cheney, Terri

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 1439176213 ISBN 13 : 9781439176214

Editeur : Atria Books, 2011

Synopsis

The Dark Side of Innocence From the "New York Times"-bestselling author of "Manic: A Memoir" comes a gripping and eloquent account of the awakening and unfolding of Cheney's bipolar disorder. Full description

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Extrait

1

A little boy died
When he was seven.
He went straight up
To Heaven.

—My version of a nursery rhyme, age seven

Killing yourself at any age is a seriously tricky business. But when I was seven, the odds felt insurmountable. My resources were so limited, after all. We lived in a one-story house, so there was nowhere to jump. The cabinet where the good silver was kept—the one with the knives that could make a nice, clean slice—was locked, and my mother had the key. We did have a swimming pool in our backyard, but who was going to teach me how to drown? I’d only just learned how to dog paddle.

It all started two nights before my seventh birthday, after a fight with my brother, Zach. I was a delicate-looking thing, pale as porcelain, with long red hair that flowed down to the middle of my back. Zach was ten, and big for his age. I didn’t care.

“You’re sitting in my chair,” I said.

Zach didn’t stop eating. “So?” he mumbled.

“Move.”

“You move.”

I could hear my voice growing shrill. “Move.”

“No, you move.”

My mother intervened. “Honey, let Zach sit next to his dad for a change. You come sit next to me.” She patted the empty chair to her right.

Except for fancy occasions like Thanksgiving, we always had our meals at the L-shaped kitchen counter. My father would sit at the head; I’d sit next to him; then my mother; then Zach. I don’t know who had assigned these places, but that was how it had always been.

I felt my hand tighten into a fist. I could just go back to my room. I wasn’t that hungry anyway. But something deep inside me kept me standing there, transfixed. That something was so familiar, so real and omnipotent, I’d given it a name: the Black Beast.

I tried to negotiate.

“Not now,” I argued.

“Now,” the Black Beast insisted.

My fingers clenched tighter, so hard that my nails gouged into my palms.

Daddy hadn’t come home from work yet, so his chair was empty. There was still time to fix this, if indeed it needed fixing. You could never tell with Zach. Of everyone in my family, I felt that he was the only one really keeping track of things. At ten, he could already see straight through me. He knew I was not adorable.

I gave him fair warning. “Zach, I swear, if you don’t move now, you’re gonna be sorry.”

He ignored me and reached for a tortilla chip, his hand passing right in front of me. Big mistake.

I grabbed the nearest fork and stabbed, hard, into his flesh. There was a moment’s bloody satisfaction, like when you bite into a good, rare piece of steak and the juices flood through your mouth. The fork stood up straight from the back of Zach’s hand. I’d skewered him like a bullfighter.

My mother swore and ran to get the first aid kit while Zach screamed. Thank God she was a registered nurse and knew exactly what to do. I don’t remember much of what followed—just that I was sent to my room, where I waited in terror for my father to come home.

It was the night of December 5, 1966. It was a good time to live in suburban Southern California. Building was booming, but you could still drive a mile or two out of town and picnic in orange groves. The smog was bad, but it produced brilliant sunsets. Out in the real world—the grown-up world I only caught whiffs of now and then—trouble was brewing: in four years, words like “Kent State” and “Cambodia” would enter the national consciousness. The Beatles would break up, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix would die.

But in Ontario, the little corner of the world where I lived, some forty-odd miles east of LA, none of that seemed to matter. Euclid Avenue, the eucalyptus-lined main street of town, was named one of the seven most beautiful avenues in the United States, and a good Sunday still consisted of church and a stroll beneath the trees. No one knew then that a blight was about to kill them all off, one after the other. In 1966, all was green and thriving.

Things weren’t exactly perfect at 1555 North Elm Court, but you couldn’t tell from the outside. The garage was freshly painted, the pink geraniums my mother had planted on a whim were blooming, and a brand-new fire-engine red Dodge Comet stood in the driveway, waiting for us to hop in. But come around midnight, and you might hear a different story: voices brittle as icicles, aiming for the heart. I could hear them through my bedroom door, although I couldn’t quite make out the words. Something about money, usually; and sometimes, when the frost was particularly thick, the single word Rebecca. On those nights, I fully expected to wake up and find all the pink geraniums withered and dead. But to my surprise, they continued to bloom, and the neighbors looked on us as a fine family.

And so we were. Zach was tall for his age and strapping, with a shock of red hair even more vibrant than my own. My mother and father were both handsome people, trim and photogenic. In the few pictures I possess of us, we look like a Kodak commercial: smiling, smiling, smiling. I remember hating being photographed as a child, and perhaps that accounts for my awkward grin. But even I could look angelic when I chose.

“There’s something wrong with her.”

My mother’s normally cool, firm voice quavered. She was either on the edge of tears or extremely angry, I couldn’t tell which. I pressed my ear up against the crack in the den door, trying to listen harder.

“There’s nothing wrong with her. She’s only seven. Besides, she’s number one in her class.” My father’s Kansas twang was followed by a crackle; no doubt a page of the Daily Report being turned.

“Put that goddamned paper down and listen to me. You call what she did to Zach tonight normal?”

Another crackle, then silence. “She won’t do anything like that again. I’ll make her give me her word.”

My mother laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. “She’d say anything to get you to forgive her. I mean it, Jack, I’m worried. One minute she’s sweet as pie, the next she’s a little fiend. And all those days she claims she’s sick when she really isn’t—”

“That’s just to stay out of school. All kids do that.”

“Not for weeks at a time. I tell you, something’s wrong with her.”

I heard the sound of a cup or a fist banging down on the table. “Nothing’s wrong with my baby. Christ, she’s number one in her class.”

“You already said that.”

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?”

There was a moment’s silence, and then my mother began to cry. She rarely cried, except when she was so frustrated she couldn’t find the words to express herself.

“You always take her side,” she said.

“There are no sides here,” my father said, his voice softening. “It’s just us.”

“I don’t know how to handle her anymore. And it’s not fair to Zach.” My mother was openly sobbing now.

“Shhh,” my father said. “If there’s a problem, I’ll fix it. You know I always do.”

I was glad I was only eavesdropping. I couldn’t have stood the sight of my mother’s tears. I crept back to bed, deeply ashamed of whatever was so clearly “wrong” with me.

Wrong with me, wrong with me. I knew my mother was right, of course; I’d always known I was different from other kids. I just didn’t realize how much it showed. How was my father going to “fix it”? What would they do to me if they ever found out how bizarre I really was? It wouldn’t just be a matter of being grounded then. They’d take me away and lock me up somewhere, and I’d never see my daddy again. I’d have to be more careful.

“Careful,” I whispered into my pillow.

My father stood in my bedroom doorway. There was a crease on his forehead that I’d never seen before.

“Why did you do it?” he asked.

“He made me do it,” I said with as much bravado as I could muster. How could I begin to explain what I didn’t understand myself? My father couldn’t possibly know, because I couldn’t possibly tell him, that “he” did not refer to Zach. “He” was the Black Beast, the monster that ruled over me and manipulated my moods. The Black Beast didn’t live under my bed or in the closet, like a proper childhood monster should. He lived inside my heart and head, leaving little room for hope or joy or any emotion lighter than sorrow. Sometimes he weighed a zillion trillion tons, and it was all I could do just to breathe.

But then at other times, the Black Beast switched my mood in exactly the opposite direction. I’d be agitated, irritable, giddy, and silly, all in quick succession. One minute the prick of a tag on the back of my sweater would make me writhe and scream; the next I’d be roaring with laughter at my own private jokes and pirouetting down the aisles of the supermarket. Those were “Disneyland days,” as my father called them, and although life in an amusement park can be exhausting, I still preferred them to the days in the dark.

Most children have a secret friend. But I never considered the Black Beast my friend. He was bigger than any mere childhood whim: he was a living, breathing creature that inhabited my body. I couldn’t just stuff him away in the toy chest and sit on the lid.

We fought constantly. I didn’t always want to do or say or feel the things that he commanded, because they often got me into trouble. But he was stronger than I was, and very persuasive. I’d originally named him “Black Beauty,” after one of my favorite bedtime stories, in an attempt to make him seem more like a pet. It didn’t work. When the Black Beast wanted his way with me, there was simply no stopping him.

I didn’t dare tell my father about this—or anyone else, for that matter. I thought that no one could possibly want a child possessed by a beast. So I cried that night instead: big, gulping sobs, bigger than my mother’s, because I needed my father’s allegiance more than she did. She was so attractive, she could get any man she wanted. I was a scrawny almost-seven-year-old, and there was nowhere else to turn. I shook off the covers and held out my arms. “I’m so sorry, Daddy,” I said.

He came over and sat on the edge of my bed. “Do you promise never to do anything like that again?”

I nodded, crying harder. Daddy looked around and picked up Toto from the foot of my bed. Toto was the tattered stuffed dog I’d had since I was three, my constant ally, my dearest friend.

“Swear on Toto,” he said.

“I swear,” I said. The sobs were coming so thick and fast by then that I could barely get the words out. And then at last—at last—my father took me in his arms and pressed me to his chest. My breathing slowed down instantly, the throbbing in my neck and temples eased. But just as my tears began to subside and I felt the universe slip back into its proper orbit, he held me out at arm’s length and shook his head. “You know, I’m very disappointed in you,” he said. “I want you to lie here and think about that for a while.” Then he got up and went back to the den.

I clutched Toto and thought about it. Thought about it, hard. There were really only two avenues open to me:

1. 
   I could win back my father’s love, or
   
2. 
   I could die.
   

Don’t ask me how I knew about suicide at such a tender age. The Black Beast knew all sorts of things that were better left unknown. I was fascinated by death; always had been. The nuns thought it was wonderful that I studied my catechism so intently, but the truth was, to me the Bible was just a great grisly story. The same was true of fairy tales: I wolfed them down. Not the saccharine Disney versions, but the unexpurgated Grimms, with their sawed-off heels and lopped-off heads and altogether dark and nasty vision. It satisfied something deep and hungry inside me to know that there was a way out of this life.

At the moment, though, it seemed easier just to try to win back Daddy’s love. I’d done it before—I knew how. Winning back my father’s love meant getting an A-plus at something. Not an A, mind you. Mere As were for ordinary folk who didn’t have that extra special something it took to rise above the pack. My father made it clear to me: every A-plus earned crisp dollar bills, while straight As merited only pocket change.

I applied desperate logic. It seemed to me that all my father really lived for was my outstanding progress in school. He never talked much about his work as a real estate developer; he had no hobbies that I knew of; and when he came home, my mother greeted him with warmed-over argument. But he’d sit for hours in his brown leather chair, listening to me talk about my latest achievement, his face intent and a proud-to-bursting smile lighting his eyes. Nothing my mother said could disturb him then. “Jack, the gas bill’s overdue.” “Jack, your meat loaf’s getting cold.” “Jack, did you hear me? I’m talking to you.”

So I figured I must be the reason he kept coming home. Narcissistic? Perhaps. But there must have been some truth to it. No doubt he loved my mother and Zach, but he seemed to love those A-pluses best of all. I don’t know what they meant to him; I only knew the light in his eyes.

But how to get the A-plus? I looked over at the blank sheet of construction paper lying on my desk—my latest homework assignment—and shuddered. How could I possibly ace it? Everything was wrong, all wrong. The paper wasn’t supposed to be white, it was supposed to be manila and marked across with thin blue lines so that I could print neatly between them. That was how it had always been; that was how it was supposed to be.

I’d told my parents about my dilemma, calmly as I could, and they’d searched the local stationery stores for lined manila paper, with no luck. Finally, my mother wound up buying the offending blank white paper, and for a moment I considered blaming her for my predicament. But deep down I knew it wasn’t her fault—it was mine. I was the one who had claimed to be too sick to go to school for the seventh day running, so I wasn’t there to pick up the special paper that went along with the assignment.

All my mother knew was what she had heard over the phone from Sister Mary Bernadette: write a story about yourself and draw a picture to illustrate it. But how could I tell a proper story without the little blue lines? My handwriting wasn’t anywhere near good enough yet; it would sprawl all over the page. The result would be . . . catastrophe. I’d get a C—maybe even a C-minus.

No. Never. Death first.

It never occurred to me that my thoughts might be a little extreme. I knew what I knew: I had to stay the head of my class. That was what held the fabric of my existence together: I had to be the best. The smartest, the most promising, the one to keep an eye on, the one to come home for. So there was really no other option left. If an A-plus was impossible, I’d simply have to die.

A shiver of fear ran through my body. I knew what death looked like, from having come across my pet mouse Jitsy last year, lying stiff and motionless in her cage. Her little red eyes were closed. I poked her and tried to shake her awake. When she didn’t respond, I ran to find my father.

“It’s not that kind of sleep,” he explained, gingerly picking her up by her tail and laying her in a shoe box. “Jitsy won’t be waking up.”

I was only five then, and I didn’t understand. “How come?”

“She’s gone to Heaven,” my father said.

Heaven I understood. We’d learned all about it in school. Heaven was the place where good souls went to eat as much ice cream as they wanted the whole day long. Of course, there was that other place, but I didn’t want to think about it. Zach had shown me pictures from his third grade catechism: bodies twi...

Revue de presse

“Cheney’s chilling account of her struggle with bipolar disorder brilliantly evokes the brutal nature of her disease. . .Edgy, dark and often cynical, Manic is not an easy book to read, but it has heart and soul to spare.” — People

"The Dark Side of Innocence is a magnificent depiction of the ravages of bipolar illness in childhood. Cheney has the wondrous ability to put herself back in the mind of a child, and we feel with her the exhilarating highs and desperate lows, as well as the terrifying confusion created by an illness for which she had no name...In an age when more and more people recognize that bipolar disorder may affect children too, Cheney’s intensely personal account provides much-needed hope and understanding about a highly stigmatized illness. A real tour de force." —Elyn Saks, author of The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness, and recipient of the 2009 MacArthur Award

"Rewind the life of any adult with bipolar and you will find a childhood we would all desperately like to forget. Terri Cheney unflinchingly remembers...at long last, someone with the courage to break the silence." —John McManamy, author of Living Well with Depression and Bipolar Disorder

“Eloquent, riveting...a tale that is hard to set aside.” —Ed Renehan, author of The Lion's Pride

"This will be big." —Library Journal

"Once again, Terri Cheney has written an educational but bittersweet book that moved me deeply." —Muffy Walker, MSN, MBA, President, International Bipolar Foundation

"As the father of an adult son with a severe mental illness, I found myself choking with emotion as I read Terri Cheney’s riveting and illuminating account of her childhood growing-up with bipolar disorder. What did I miss as a loving father? Were there signs? Could I have saved my son? Cheney provides us with important insights from the eyes of the most innocent among us—our very own children." —Pete Earley, New York Times bestselling author of CRAZY: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness

"Her story is a sound first step toward understanding your child's pain and finding solutions." —Publishers Weekly

“Cheney gives us a poignant, enlightening view of her struggles as a child.” —The Daily Beast

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Atria Books
• Date d'édition: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1439176213
• ISBN 13: 9781439176214
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 288