Breakdown: Cornell Law School 1987

It was the sensory aberations that nailed it. Convinced me I had indeed lost my mind. This was before the internet, but I had my resources and I argued with the psychiatrist provided for students gone off the beam like myself.

"I have symptoms of schizophrenia!"

He agreed. He was a mild man, smart--he'd have to be, to deal with ivy league loonies, I'd imagine.  Too smart to argue about my list of symptoms. He did quibble with my diagnosis. That's why he had an MD I suppose. In my mid-20's, well-read and smart enough to get into Cornell Law School but not quite arrogant enough to argue with an MD/PhD psychiatrist, I had to defer to his wisdom.

"So why am I not schizophrenic?"

"Reality testing."

It was hardly a relief. I barely passed "reality"--considering one question was "who's the dean of Cornell University?" I had no idea. I was in the Law School, a separate, elite entity from the University. Hell, I didn't even know the football team was called

The Big Red. (A back home friend sent me a pack of "Big Red gum, which puzzled me for months). I was vaguely aware Carl Sagan lived there, but it meant nothing to me until years later when I wrote a play set in Cornell and made him a cameo character.

And when I told him the dean of the law school was "Dean Martin" (true) I got a fishy sort of look.

I was not, am not, an ivy league sort of person. When guys told me they were from Exeter, I was amazed how many came from a small town just down the Susquehanna River from Pittston Area where I was born and raised. It took me a year to realize their Exeter was not a small town  but an elite school. Duh. It took about as long to figure out I was to pass both the salt AND the pepper when someone asked for the salt. Deduct points. Many many points deducted. I was way way out of my league. I used to tear the ivy off the walls. A coalcracker in ivy territory? With no training? No mentor? No warning?

No wonder I went mad.

But not schizophrenic. Depressive with psychotic features. Hello Stelazine, great nice of Thorazine. It worked, actually. Which should have scared me but didn't because I was so relieved that orange socks weren't pulsating out at me, that I could write on the lines of my notebook again, that I could comprehend what people said when they spoke to me in my native tongue.

It was a stopgap. It wasn't the solution. That would take years to get to the bottom of. This is not a simple story. Sorry. It's messy and probably bizarre and you probably can't relate to a lot and what you can relate to might make you want to take an eight mile walk off the Seven Mile Bridge. (Now that I'm cured and happy and live in Paradise, ooops spoiler alert--I can joke about my favorite euphemism for suicide.)

Yes. If I were cured, I wouldn't still be joking of suicide. Of course I'm not cured. This is mental illness. This is chemical dependency. This is PTSD. This is a whole bunch of crap that has no simple answers. That's why we write these stupid memoirs. What else can we do?  We can laugh or we can crawl into our heads and beat ourselves for being who we are till we become

Edvard Munch models.