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I was unhappy in high school, but nobody suspected mental illness. When I was hospitalized at eighteen, my mother says she was the last to know.
No one was there for support; I think I frightened people away. When with a sympathetic adult, I talked more than I wanted to but never about what was really bothering me. My older brothers were molesting me, my parents were not aware of it, I was too ashamed to tell them, and no one helped.
Surviving incest made me shy and afraid of seeming "fucked up" and hassled-looking. I hoped this would change and I'd be more in charge when grown up.
Second year of college, I transferred to an elite school in the Midwest away from my family in Massachusetts. My mother was angry at the expense and the snobbery. Rutgers was good enough for my brothers. She yelled at me in the kitchen, "You'll be back home within a year!"
My mother's curse proved true. She came to get me on a mental ward. All drugged up on haldol, I flew back to Massachusetts with her. She put me in a private hospital. Clearly, she did not know what to do.
Wild with mania but frightened, I spoke very little there. Dressed oddly in scarves and belts, I changed my clothes six or seven times a day. There was little oversight of the patients; po (Continued on page 20)
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