God Head by Scott Zwiren
My rating: 4/5 cats
scheiße
so this all takes place in the head of a manic depressive character. and it is pretty intense.
the book is broken up into seasons: winter 1984, summer 1985, etc. and there is a lot of missing time. it is not terribly difficult to fill in the gaps because the character is stuck in a loop of home, hospital, menial jobs, reaching out to contact people from his unafflicted past, suicidal thoughts, medication, delusions. there is no relief from any of it. the book begins in the summer 1991, and then backtracks to winter 1982, where all the problems seem to begin, and then continues chronologically, ultimately ending at summer 1990, where you loop back riverrun joyce-style. so you do get a sense of progression, as he sinks deeper into his madness and medication and temporary relief.
he has his moments of clarity:
Having the presence of mind to know “I think I’m God” instead of “I am God,” and especially to say “I’m manic” makes my admission debatable. The hospital is overcrowded and it may mean I’m coherent enough to go home. I always become perilously coherent in a small room before inquiring psychiatrists. Sitting in front of them I become my own worst advocate and they’re ready to release me.
I don’t know where I should be.
but a lot of the time it is more like this:
But when I’m done and I’ve eaten and was not hungry the thoughts come back. I can’t go to sleep. I can’t concentrate on television, a book or music, there’s no diversion possible. I count the hours until Monday morning. If it’s Monday it is four hours until i have to wake for work, If it’s Sunday, oh God let it please not be Sunday. I move to another chair in the dining room just to do something. Nothing’s different here. I sit for a while blocking and then I move into the living room. Blocking. Blocking. I have to piss, and that’s something to do like eating and drinking and I go to the bathroom and piss while looking at the sink, and there is my razor. It all comes up like vomit in my head. This is intolerable and if this is intolerable then why go on with it? I finish pissing and feel the gates shut tight in my head. I climb into bed and snuggle with the blanket pretending that I can’t move to protect myself from going back into the bathroom, I feel the pins in my hands but I push through them fighting my way back to sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. I beg my way back. When I wake it’s lighter outside and so I go into the bathroom to get ready for work not looking at the razor. A shower is too difficult and so I put some water and soap under my arms, put on a clean shirt, and go back to bed thinking I don’t want to go to work. I don’t want to go to work, but let it be Monday.
sorry that was such a long passage—i know most of you probably just skimmed that, if you are reading this at all. but that part makes me feel frantic to read. because yes—that is definitely intolerable. even having to read a hundred-odd pages of it had me climbing the walls and checking myself for symptoms. i would not be able to live like that. no way no how.
not actually knowing anyone with manic depression, this book taught me that whatever impressions i had of the disorder were incomplete. i thought it was more like an energy imbalance where “oh here i am and everything is awesome and i have been up for three days straight and i wrote this symphony and baked six cakes and painted this giant mural on my wall, but ohhh now everything is awful and i am going to stay in bed for six days.” and that’s bad enough, right, without the angelic delusions and hallucinations and suicidal allure.
it’s pretty powerful stuff.
the second chapter, where everything is lurking, and all of the symptoms are there but have not yet become full-blown, is terrifying when you read it again after reading the whole book. the pull in both directions: the antisocial behavior coupled with the need to be around people, and the not knowing how to be around people, the loss of coherence, the dissolving of the “real” world; it is all done really well.
also done really well is the suicide-urge. he does not want to kill himself, but he has these compulsions towards it. he both wants to and needs to and doesn’t want to. as much as he does not want to die, he keeps finding himself on the rooftop, on the edge of the subway platform, putting the cord around his neck…and these dueling impulses, while you are in his head…it is claustrophobic and jarring and it really kicked my ass.
way to shatter me, small book!
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