Prozac Nation (40 page)

I even imagine the perfect soundtrack for this event: not the obvious thing, strains of Janis Joplin and Billie Holiday wafting through the steamy air in the bathroom. That would be too much of a cliché, dying to the sounds of miserable women who wanted to die themselves, who
did
die themselves. Oh no, I'd be more original than that. I wouldn't even play my usual dolorous favorites, like the Velvet Underground or Joni Mitchell. Nor would I go for the demented-youth approach and put on some heavy metal, like those kids in Reno, Nevada, who blew their brains out with sawed-off shotguns while Judas Priest's
Stained Class
was playing. (When one of them survived—albeit with a bunch of silicone where his face used to be—he sued the band, claiming the lyrics made him do it.) I'd never do anything like that, and I would never taint my all-purpose favorites like Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen by playing them through my death, though one last listen to
Blood on the Tracks,
one last spin of
Darkness on the Edge of Town,
might be worth it before I actually began the cutting. Maybe better to stick to the Rolling Stones or the Beatles, a band I never liked, except for that one point in the beginning of “Strawberry Fields” when John Lennon sings, “Let me take you down . . .” Those are the words I want to leave the world with.
Let me take you down.
Down as low as I am. Yes, that's it, that's the plan, to die with John Lennon's voice seems just right.

As I discuss this scheme, I become downright rhapsodic, like a reformed coke addict going gaga over the thought of doing some blow, and Dr. Sterling looks at me like I'm giving her the creeps. “Look, Elizabeth, if you can detail these plans for me, I'm not letting you go home,” she says. “I can't let you kill yourself. I'm going to take you to the hospital.”

“I didn't say I would definitely do it.”

“I know. But you're always complaining that no one takes your cries for help seriously. You've always said that you'd like to attempt suicide so that people would finally believe you need help.” She sighs. “Well, I believe you. And you don't have to do something messy and dangerous to get the help you need. We can take you to the hospital now. I happen to know, because one of my other patients is suicidal, that there are no beds available in Westwood Lodge right now.” She is referring to a hospital affiliated with McLean. “There might be room in Mt. Auburn, which is right nearby so I could work pretty closely with you. We can hop in the car and be there in two minutes.”

Dr. Sterling matter-of-factly presents me with my options, and they all sound unbearable. She's not even mentioning Stillman anymore, she's talking about a real lock-up. And I can't have that. I feel panicky, scared of this confinement, even though I know perfectly well that whether I'm in a hospital or out roaming around, I am always so far from free because I am always enslaved to the caprices of my own mind or the whims of what the world has to offer. Even so, I really don't want to be put away. I can't let her check me in, so I must check myself out. There is no logic to the suicide imperative, it is just something that I must do, and something I must do right now. I think of those lines in the Anne Sexton poem “Wanting to Die,” in which she says that the urge to kill herself is with her always, even when she has nothing against life, because after a certain point, it's not about having a reason: “Suicides have a special language,” she writes. “Like carpenters they want to know
which tools.
They never ask
why build.
” So what tools do I have at my disposal? Nothing much, nothing terribly lethal, just a full bottle of Mellaril that I carry around in my knapsack at all times, just in case. In case what? Oh, I don't know, in case a moment like this occurs.

I ask Dr. Sterling if I can run to the bathroom, as if I were in preschool. She nods in assent and gathers her car keys. I grab my bag and run up the flight of stairs from her basement office and I feel suddenly liberated. I keep telling myself over and over again that I am going to be fine, and of course, I really am fine, as fine as I can be knowing that this is the end. I open the bathroom door, lock myself in, find the bottle of Mellaril and pour all the pills into my hand, open my mouth, and swallow them.

I have become pretty proficient at taking pills without water, without anything to wash them down, but I stand at the sink and cup my hands under the tap and swallow what I can, knowing the Mellaril will metabolize more easily with some liquid. There really aren't that many pills, a whole bunch, a handful big enough that a couple slip onto the floor, but I have to admit it's probably not a lethal dose, that I am probably doing exactly the thing I don't want to do, committing the act I believed I was above: making a wimpy attempt that is bound to fail. I don't know what kind of damage these will do me, maybe I'll sleep for a few days as I did at summer camp, maybe the pills will turn my head to blotto for a little while. My thoughts wander, almost soothingly, and I curl up, bend my knees, and pull my thighs to my chest, bunching myself up under the bathroom sink. I decide I will never leave this position or this place for as long as I have the choice.

But then I hear noises, Dr. Sterling banging on the bathroom door, pounding, pounding, pounding, saying, Come out, Elizabeth, come out! And finally I reach up my hand and unlock the door, and she finds me with the empty bottle beside me, and says, “Come on, we're going to the emergency room.”

Once in the car, I start nodding off and feeling nauseous. I don't want to throw up but I have a feeling that's what I'm going to do. “I've never lost a patient before,” Dr. Sterling says. “I'm not going to start now.”

“Well, I hope you're not doing this for the sake of your statistics.” And then I realize what a horrible thing that is to say to her. She has visited me in the infirmary, she's taken my phone calls at 3:00
A.M.
, and now she's driving me to the emergency room, and the only reason she's done any of this is that she cares. The Mellaril is definitely kicking in big time, but I don't want to be rude, I don't want the last thing I say to her before slipping into some kind of coma to be something snide. “I'm sorry. That was a terrible thing to say.” And then my head falls against the window in a deep daze.

As soon as I walk through the automatic glass doors in the entrance to the emergency room, falling on Dr. Sterling's shoulder, barely able to stand straight, I feel myself choking. Some small remnant of vanity takes over, and I make my way into the bathroom, fall into a stall, and vomit, watch a mess of orange drip out of my mouth. Lots of pills, some of them have maintained the integrity of their round, tablet shape, but most of them are spewing, melting, disintegrating, falling apart, a surrealistic vision in shades of tan and salmon as they flush down the toilet. All I can think to say when I walk out and see Dr. Sterling talking to one of the doctors is, “I guess I won't be getting my stomach pumped. This experience just won't be complete.” I start to laugh and laugh as if this were the funniest thing I've ever said. I feel absolutely euphoric—wasted and spent, but still euphoric.
I have survived an attempt on my life.
What a strange nervous thing that is. So I laugh some more as the doctor leads me into one of the examining rooms, orange spittle beginning to cake on my chin.

Dr. Sterling gets on the phone with the head psychiatrist at Harvard and starts explaining my condition, explaining that she knows there are no beds at Westwood Lodge because another one of her other charges wanted to go there. I have no idea what he said in response, but suddenly she laughs. “Well, you know how it is, me and all my suicidal patients.”

I am stunned to hear Dr. Sterling speaking of me as if she were a grocer discussing a shipment of rotten apples. Shoptalk, I guess. But Jesus.
Hah hah hah, me and all my suicidal patients are partying at Westwood Lodge.
I guess even psychiatrists are entitled to gallows humor.

In the course of the phone conversation, the two doctors determine that it's all right for me to stay at Stillman for the night, but after that they have to send me to a real hospital. The infirmary is not equipped to deal with suicidal patients. In the meantime, the doctor at Stillman will have to arrange for a police officer to guard my room and make sure I don't try to kill myself. Suicide is, apparently, an illegal act.

“
A policeman?!
” I gasp at Dr. Sterling as she explains this to me. By this time I am lying on a table in a small room, a place that looks familiar. Is this where they took me when I miscarried? “What am I? A criminal? I'm not armed and dangerous or anything. I'm just unhappy.”

“I know that,” she says. “And I trust that if you tell me you won't hurt yourself, you won't. I believe in nonsuicide pacts. But if you're going to stay here, they have to do what they think is necessary to protect you and protect themselves.”

“I see.” For a moment I am amused that with all the crime and assorted disaster there is in Cambridge, the police department is going to waste an officer on me, but I try not to think about it. I feel pretty good suddenly, as if I am having some kind of postoverdose rush. Of course, I also feel pretty bad. I feel all over the map, strange and wandering in some emotional diaspora that no previous experience has ever prepared me for. To deliberately hurt yourself is too counterintuitive. It's not as if I've never been self-destructive before, but it was always in the context of trying to make life more bearable, to make living through some sad moment more tolerable. But a deliberate overdose is not part of a night out or a party: It is self-destruction for its own sake, and it is consequently the purest and most deliberate act of hatred I have ever committed. It doesn't matter if I never really figured on dying: I still feel that I've crossed a line, and that in doing so I now can actually return from the other side of that border. A sudden and nearly manic lust for life overcomes me. I lie there and feel this strange urge to go home and jump on my bed, to yell at no one in particular that hah hah hah I'm still alive.

 

While I'm lying in bed at Stillman watching
60 Minutes,
Dr. Sterling calls to check on me. I tell her that I want this to be the last night I ever spend in Stillman, that the place has become positively hateful to me, that it reeks of a person I don't want to be. I am so tired of the girl in the infirmary, I am so sick of the girl who cries wolf all the time—even though not one of those cries was ever a false alarm. Not one of my pleas for help was ever less than truly urgent because when it's all in your mind, there always
is
a wolf. That's what it feels like, I try to explain: This wolf has been stalking me for ten years, and now it's time he went away. Time for me to get better.

“So you believe in the possibility now?” she asks.

“Well, yes. Maybe.” No. “A definite maybe. It's just that I took this fairly serious suicidal action today, and I guess I realize that I don't want to die. I don't want to live either, but—” There really isn't anything in-between. Depression is about as close as you get to somewhere between dead and alive, and it's the worst. “But since the tendency toward inertia means that it's easier for me to stay alive than die, I guess that's how it's going to be, so I guess I should try to be happy.”

“That sounds right.”

“Look, I don't have a lot of faith in this life business.” Always making disclaimers. “But, you know, I think I'm stuck.”

“Listen, Elizabeth,” Dr. Sterling says. “I just spoke to your mother.”

“You didn't!”

“I didn't tell her about what happened, but I told her you were particularly down right now and having a very hard time. And she asked me what she should do.” Pregnant pause. “She doesn't know what to do. She'd really like to help you, but she's afraid. She doesn't really understand, but I know she's trying.”

“Oh.”

“Maybe you should call her. She was going to try to reach you at Stillman, but maybe you should get in touch with her first. I don't really know what to say about her.” Very pregnant pause. “I know that she really loves you and she wants you to be all right. It's just hard for her. Hard for everybody.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I know. Look, you're not under any legal obligation to report this to her, are you?”

“No.”

“Well, good. Don't.” I can't imagine what my mother would do if she'd heard I'd taken an overdose. She might take one too. She might kill me. “Listen, Dr. Sterling?”

“Uh-huh?”

“You're not going to lock me away, are you? Because I don't want that.”

“I've never wanted that for you, Elizabeth.” She sighs. “I always believed you could get better some other way. I still think the fluoxetine will work soon.”

“It's working already.”

“Well, then why did you do what you did earlier?”

It's such a hard question. It seems like such a trifling, frivolous act to have committed only so that I could lie here watching
60
Minutes
an hour later. “I think I wanted to know,” I try. “I wanted to know what it felt like to go that far. I wanted to brush with death to see if I'd like it better. But you know, there was a moment when I was sitting in your car, and the Mellaril was hitting, and I thought to myself that maybe this will work after all, maybe I really will die, and I didn't like that idea at all. I started thinking about all these things I had to do. You know, I thought to myself that I'm supposed to go back to Dallas this summer, I'm supposed to hand in my junior essay, I'm supposed to have this future ahead of me that's so—” I had to stop myself because I was about to say
full of promise,
those unbearable words, those lying, cheating words that no one can ever live up to. But of course, they described exactly what was supposed to happen, what was supposed to be happening all along.