Have you ever passed by someone on the street who looked disheveled and confused as they walked along muttering to themselves or someone curled up on the ground trying to sleep with their only home a city sidewalk? Living near a big city like San Francisco, I have seen my fair share of people who seem to be living out on the streets with no home to call their own. I often wonder who these people were before they came to live on the streets. I always tell my son to imagine that these people were all babies once with a fresh start in life. So what happened to bring them to this place? Sometimes it is drug or alcohol abuse but many times it is mental illness. After reading The Center Cannot Hold by Elyn Saks I am convinced more than ever that many of these people's life stories would be altered if they had better treatment options for their mental illness. And I have to wonder how many are just a few pills away from leaving the street and having the opportunity to live a life, safe from the hazards of a life lived on the streets.
In the book The Center Cannot Hold, Elyn Saks recounts her life (so far) as a person living with schizophrenia. Trust me, if you read this book you will never walk by one of these street people and not at least wonder what their true potential might be to live a more mainstream life with clear thoughts and a clear purpose. And while I think that Ms. Saks is the rare exception her story was still inspirational.
After a fairly "normal" and non-eventful childhood Ms. Saks begins to notice things that aren't quite right as she enters her early teen years. She thinks she hears houses in her neighborhood whispering to her and begins to have strange thoughts about killing people. She tries drugs and alcohol as many teenagers do but suffers some after effects that are reminiscent of a near psychotic breakdown. Realizing that something is terribly wrong she confides in her parents who promptly enroll her in a rigid and militaristic after school rehab program for troubled teens. They never suspect there might be something else going on and Elyn is happy enough to convince herself that this is the case also even though her logical brain is screaming something else.
In spite of all of the challenges of being plagued by inner voices, suffering from depression and social anxiety and just generally being a bit "off", she manages to get through high school and get accepted to university. When she arrives at school and leaves the comfort of her childhood home, she really starts to fall apart. Her recounting of her experiences with forced hospitalizations and restraint during her college years are more chilling than a horror movie. I can't imagine the helplessness she felt being tied down to a bed when she was still very much aware of what was going on. She recounts numerous attempts at getting a proper diagnoses and then after finally receiving one, trying to find a place where she can be stable with the right medication. Somehow despite frequent hospitalizations (one for as long as 5 months), intense therapy sessions, and handfuls of medications, she manages an undergraduate degree, attendance at Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar and graduation from Yale Law School. Today she is an Associate Professor of Law at University of Southern California. She also frequently volunteers to causes related to the mentally ill and has managed to get married and have a settled home life.
The first half of the book recounts her descent into full blown schizophrenia. Her descriptions of how it feels to be mentally ill and what she is thinking when she is separated from reality, were my favorite sections of the book.
"Schizophrenia rolls in like a slow fog, becoming imperceptibly thicker as time goes on. At first, the day is bright enough, the sky is clear, the sunlight warms your shoulders. But soon, you notice a haze beginning to gather around you, and the air feels not quite so warm. After a while, the sun is a dim lightbulb behind a heavy cloth. The horizon has vanished into a gray mist, and you feel a thick dampness in your lungs as you stand, cold and wet, in the afternoon dark."
The book kept me riveted in the first half but less so in the second half. It might sound insensitive but I did get a bit sick of hearing her tell the same story over and over again (psychotic break, medication, stabilization, going off her medications, another psychotic break and ad nauseum). I found myself getting frustrated with her for not consistently taking her medication when she knew that it was what was helping her. I'm not sure if resisting the medication is part of the disease but it does seem to be a trend amongst the mentally ill from what I have read. I loved that books and learning are what often helped ground her and keep her hanging (in some cases by a thread) to reality.
I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in mental illness or just needs an inspirational memoir to get them motivated to overcome their own limitations. And I am grateful to have read her story and to have developed a much greater empathy for those folks that I have so cavalierly stepped around when I was walking briskly down the streets of San Francisco.
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