I did not study. I tried to read but the sentences meant nothing. I
needed them to mean nothing. I couldn’t bear to string sentences into
strands of thought, or to weave those strands into ideas. Ideas were too
similar to reflection, and my reflections were always of the expression
on my father’s stretched face the moment before he’d fled from me.
The thing about having a mental breakdown is that no matter how
obvious it is that you’re having one, it is somehow not obvious to you.
I’m fine, you think. So what if I watched TV for twenty-four straight
hours yesterday. I’m not falling apart. I’m just lazy. Why it’s better to
think yourself lazy than think yourself in distress, I’m not sure. But it
was better. More than better: it was vital.
By December I was so far behind in my work that, pausing one night
to begin a new episode of Breaking Bad, I realized that I might fail my
PhD. I laughed maniacally for ten minutes at this irony: that having
sacrificed my family to my education, I might lose that, also.
After a few more weeks of this, I stumbled from my bed one night
and decided that I’d made a mistake, that when my father had offered
me the blessing, I should have accepted it. But it wasn’t too late. I
could repair the damage, put it right.
I purchased a ticket to Idaho for Christmas. Two days before the
flight, I awoke in a cold sweat. I’d dreamed I was in a hospital, lying on
crisp white sheets. Dad was at the foot of the gurney, telling a
policeman I had stabbed myself. Mother echoed him, her eyes
panicked. I was surprised to hear Drew’s voice, shouting that I needed
to be moved to another hospital. “He’ll find her here,” he kept saying.
I wrote to Drew, who was living in the Middle East. I told him I was
going to Buck’s Peak. When he replied his tone was urgent and sharp,
as if he was trying to cut through whatever fog I was living in. My dear
Tara, he wrote. If Shawn stabs you, you won’t be taken to a hospital.
You’ll be put in the basement and given some lavender for the wound.
He begged me not to go, saying a hundred things I already knew and
didn’t care about, and when that didn’t work, he said: You told me
your story so I could stop you if you ever did something crazy. Well,
Tara, this is it. This is crazy.
I can still fix this, I chanted as the plane lifted off the tarmac.—