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Authors: Elizabeth Wurtzel
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of those punk bands talking about toppling the system in the U.K., which had nothing to do with being so lonesome you could die in the U.S.A.
Maybe I could have picked up a guitar myself and written some rants of my own, but somehow the Upper West Side of Manhattan as a metaphor for lost and embittered youth was not nearly as resonant as Springsteenâs songs about hiding in the back streets or riding the Tilt-A-Whirl or the sound of a calliope on the Jersey Shore. Nothing about my life seemed worthy of art or literature or even of just plain life. It seemed too stupid, too girlish, too middle-class. All that was left for me to do was shut down and enter the world of Bruce Springsteen, of music about people from somewhere else, for people doing something else, that would just have to do, because for the moment, for me, there was nothing else.
I think to myself: I have finally gotten so impossible and unpleasant that they will really have to do something to make me better And then I realize, they think they are doing all they can and itâs not working. They have no idea what a bottomless pit of misery I am. They will have to do more and more and more. They think the psychiatrist ought to be enough, they think making the kind of cursory efforts any parents make when their kid is slipping away will be enough, but they donât know how enormous my need is. They donât know how much I will demand of them before I even
think
about getting better. They do not know that this is not some practice fire drill meant to prepare them for the real inferno, because the real thing is happening right now.
All the bells say: too late.
Itâs much too late and Iâm so sure that they are still not listening. They still donât know that they need to do more and more and more, they need to try to get through to me until they havenât slept or eaten or breathed fresh air for days, they need to try until theyâve died for me. They have to suffer as I have. And even after theyâve done that, there will still be more. They will have to rearrange the order of the cosmos, they will have to end the cold war, they will have to act like loving, kind adults who care about each other, they will have to cure hunger in Ethiopia and end the sex-slave trade in Thailand and stop torture in Argentina. They will have to do more than they ever thought they could if they want me to stay alive. They have no idea how much energy and exasperation I am willing to suck out of them until I feel better. I will drain them and drown them until they know how little of me there is left even after Iâve taken everything theyâve got to give me because I hate them for not knowing.
Â
While I am unraveling in the slow, tedious manner of a knotted, tangled ball of yarn thatâs been clawed and twisted and gnarled by a whole bunch of mean, feverish cats, my mom is pretty much refusing to acknowledge that any of this is happening. Sheâs sending me to therapy and all, but sheâs still taking me along with her to family events like baseball games on Fatherâs Day; sheâs still sending me to summer camp, drug overdose or no, sheâs still expecting me to behave myself at the dinner table; sheâs still treating me like her favorite prop or carry-on accessory. Anyone else can plainly see that it might be better if I were holed up in a hospital, somewhere where it wouldnât seem odd for me to walk out in the middle of
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
to slash up my legs, somewhere where no one would find it weird that every so often I would run out of the room and howl in a state of hysteria while all the normal people would pretend it wasnât happening.
In retrospect, maybe my mother did the right thing: By treating me like a normal kid, like her perfect baby, maybe she kept me from falling down further. After all, by forcing me to participate in real life, she might have prevented me from indulging and
Maybe I could have picked up a guitar myself and written some rants of my own, but somehow the Upper West Side of Manhattan as a metaphor for lost and embittered youth was not nearly as resonant as Springsteenâs songs about hiding in the back streets or riding the Tilt-A-Whirl or the sound of a calliope on the Jersey Shore. Nothing about my life seemed worthy of art or literature or even of just plain life. It seemed too stupid, too girlish, too middle-class. All that was left for me to do was shut down and enter the world of Bruce Springsteen, of music about people from somewhere else, for people doing something else, that would just have to do, because for the moment, for me, there was nothing else.
I think to myself: I have finally gotten so impossible and unpleasant that they will really have to do something to make me better And then I realize, they think they are doing all they can and itâs not working. They have no idea what a bottomless pit of misery I am. They will have to do more and more and more. They think the psychiatrist ought to be enough, they think making the kind of cursory efforts any parents make when their kid is slipping away will be enough, but they donât know how enormous my need is. They donât know how much I will demand of them before I even
think
about getting better. They do not know that this is not some practice fire drill meant to prepare them for the real inferno, because the real thing is happening right now.
All the bells say: too late.
Itâs much too late and Iâm so sure that they are still not listening. They still donât know that they need to do more and more and more, they need to try to get through to me until they havenât slept or eaten or breathed fresh air for days, they need to try until theyâve died for me. They have to suffer as I have. And even after theyâve done that, there will still be more. They will have to rearrange the order of the cosmos, they will have to end the cold war, they will have to act like loving, kind adults who care about each other, they will have to cure hunger in Ethiopia and end the sex-slave trade in Thailand and stop torture in Argentina. They will have to do more than they ever thought they could if they want me to stay alive. They have no idea how much energy and exasperation I am willing to suck out of them until I feel better. I will drain them and drown them until they know how little of me there is left even after Iâve taken everything theyâve got to give me because I hate them for not knowing.
Â
While I am unraveling in the slow, tedious manner of a knotted, tangled ball of yarn thatâs been clawed and twisted and gnarled by a whole bunch of mean, feverish cats, my mom is pretty much refusing to acknowledge that any of this is happening. Sheâs sending me to therapy and all, but sheâs still taking me along with her to family events like baseball games on Fatherâs Day; sheâs still sending me to summer camp, drug overdose or no, sheâs still expecting me to behave myself at the dinner table; sheâs still treating me like her favorite prop or carry-on accessory. Anyone else can plainly see that it might be better if I were holed up in a hospital, somewhere where it wouldnât seem odd for me to walk out in the middle of
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
to slash up my legs, somewhere where no one would find it weird that every so often I would run out of the room and howl in a state of hysteria while all the normal people would pretend it wasnât happening.
In retrospect, maybe my mother did the right thing: By treating me like a normal kid, like her perfect baby, maybe she kept me from falling down further. After all, by forcing me to participate in real life, she might have prevented me from indulging and
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