Dealing with demons.

• Author: Hebald, Carol
• Position: Mental illness memoir - Psychology

MY MEMOIR, The Heart Too Long Suppressed: A Chronicle of Mental Illness, relays the circumstances under which I tossed overboard from the deck of a ship the following medications: the tranquilizers Haldol and Thorazine and the antidepressants Imipramine Daytime and Tofranil-PM. A diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic in and out of hospitals for 30 years, I had been on medication for 20.

The previous fall, I had been hired as assistant professor of English at the University of Kansas. It was 1978; I was 44. I have not seen a therapist or taken a psychotropic pill since. So, how am I feeling? Perhaps I should answer what my feelings have permitted me to accomplish, or fail to accomplish, professionally and socially.

Continuing to teach in Kansas until 1984, I resigned my tenure as associate professor of English to write full time. I left immediately for New York--my hometown--and, under the auspices of the Writers' Voice program, moved into a room at the 63rd Street YMCA. There I began work on a novel, based on my experience as a U.S. exchange professor at Warsaw University during the advent of martial law (198182). This recently accepted novel, A Warsaw Chronicle, is forthcoming this fall, along with my poetry chapbook, Colloquy, and, in April 2016, my book-length poem Delusion of Grandeur.

How do I feel about all this? Fine, proud--but why I insist on repeating the question that annoyed me most in therapy, I do not know. I had not intended to put myself on the couch. However, since I asked it: like others, I am happy when I am busy, but (I am reluctant to add) only when I am busy. Why is that?--because I have failed to secure the long-term relationship I hoped would follow.

Why in my professional life I am moving forward and in my personal life standing still probably is because all my efforts have gone into the former. To pursue the latter was too difficult. Why? Didn't I think I deserved it? Evidently not. Why I ran--and continue to ran--from the possibility of a lasting relationship has everything to do with my past. For a long time I have wondered, if the past was so appalling what kept me so long in its grip? Kept or keeps?

In the summer of 1964, following an 11-month hospitalization at New York's Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic, I took a summer course at Columbia University where, in the late afternoon, students on campus met for tea in Philosophy Hall. Because it was an opportunity to socialize, I never went. I was too ashamed--of what...