Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 145746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145746 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 729(@200wpm)___ 583(@250wpm)___ 486(@300wpm)
“Do they know what triggers something like that? If it’s anything?”
“A lot of people have their first episode when they’re college age. Different things can trigger it. Stress. Lack of sleep is a huge one. Remember that big project I was working on?”
“And you weren’t sleeping much.”
“Right, not sleeping, but also never tired. Like a bottomless well of energy. And feeling confident in a way that I never had before. That’s hypomania. All the energy without the bad stuff. That sweet spot when everything is clicking and the world is your oyster. Everything is perfect, until it’s not.”
“What happened?”
“I just remember feeling this sense of euphoria, like I could do anything. I wrote the script that won my fellowship when I was manic. I wrote my Golden Globe script when I was manic. I felt like the brightest, most unstoppable, most creative version of myself. That’s hard to give up, and it can be tempting to skip the meds. Just let that wave take you for a while because you think you know where that line is. Once the mania really kicks in, though, it’s so much harder to find that line, much less know when you’ve crossed it.”
“What does it look like? Mania, I mean.”
“Forced speech, which I definitely experienced.”
“Is that the talking fast thing?” I ask, and she shoots me a surprised look. “I remember you doing that a few times, and I just thought you were… I don’t know, excited about the thing you were working on.”
“You might get really agitated, restless, angry sometimes, racing thoughts.” She pauses and bites her bottom lip. “May have a heightened sexual appetite or behave in ways that are… out of character.”
I’m quiet, but her admission rattles something in me. That night was one of the most painful of my life. It was college and we were young, yeah, but it was the end of, up to that point, the most important relationship I’d ever been in. I haven’t been hurt that way since, but I also haven’t loved that way again.
“I didn’t know what was happening,” she says, her voice shrinking. “I didn’t understand that I was acting different. I just knew I felt different, more confident, and it felt better. I felt invincible and alive. Like my skin was on fire. Funny enough, that is sometimes how I know a manic cycle is approaching. When I feel that heat, that buzz, it signals me to call my psychiatrist so we can try to head it off.”
“When you disappeared,” I say, “it wasn’t about not being able to pay your tuition, was it?”
“It was some.” She groans, closing her eyes. “I spent all the money my aunts sent for tuition. For weeks after I left school, things I’d ordered online kept arriving at the dorm. Thank God for Dr. Garrison. She forwarded everything to me in Georgia. Most of it was shit we couldn’t use. We sold as much as we could, but we couldn’t recoup all the money I spent.”
“Dr. Garrison knew?” I frown. “How?”
She closes her eyes and squeezes my hand before going on. “Remember Flame? That sculpture installation in the fine arts department?”
“Chap Brody’s? Yeah, what about it?”
“I became kind of obsessed with it. I would go see it multiple times a day. I know now that was probably tangled up in my parents’ death and the fire and all of that, but that night something kept telling me that if I could just destroy it, everything would be better. So after I left your apartment, I broke in.”
My brain stumbles and it takes a few seconds to collate my memories from that time, to find the words.
“Wait,” I say. “I kind of remember some, like, incident. There was just talk on the yard about it for a few days, but we thought it was a prank, or… but… that was you?”
“Yeah, Dr. Garrison was great about downplaying it, keeping it as quiet as possible, but I punched through the glass with a rock.” She extends her arm and traces a network of tiny scars crisscrossing the back of her arm woven into an SOS tattoo. I’ve noticed it before, but something always held me back from asking about it.
“The campus police came,” she says. “It was… bad.”
“The police? Did they think you were committing a crime? They didn’t know you… that you’re—”
“I didn’t even know, so they certainly didn’t. And mental illness is often criminalized.” She levels a meaningful look on me. “With Black folks, even more so. Instead of recognizing it’s unusual that a young woman is running around naked, the cops—”
“Naked?” My jaw practically unhinges.
“Yeah.” She scrunches her nose. “Did I forget to mention that part?”
I feel sick and helpless, like it’s happening right now.
“Dr. Garrison was alerted when the alarm went off,” Verity continues. “She realized pretty quickly what was going on. Not my specific diagnosis, but that it was some kind of break or episode. She made them take off the cuffs—”