Words came easy before medication. Back then, emotions were exquisitely rich, startlingly diffuse sensations that ate up my head. Their faithful descriptors tagged along not far behind, floating easy to the surface, waiting to be plucked from the air. To write, all I had to do was close my eyes and hum. The range and the depth were within me.
Now, my waters run still. Pink capsules and yellow tablets leach life of its once dazzling intensity. The emotions, they come, they go, but they no longer leave footprints. Like drawing cards from an unshuffled deck, writing has become a rote and unforgivably dry affair. Nothing feels right anymore. All the rhythm is gone.
But I’m a stubborn woman. I have been chasing down the story of my mental illness for the fifteen months since it first surfaced. I thought if I worked hard enough, smart enough, I could write myself out of it. I was methodical. I traced out a neat timeline with straight edges and even borders. I stapled each event in its place. I crammed the margins with insignificant details, left behind tiresome footnotes, excised the questions I couldn’t answer. But my efforts never amounted to anything. No matter what I did, I couldn’t make the words sing.
To have thought I could write something that would save me – wasn’t that dabbling in grandiosity? They tell me I have this problem of aiming too high, that the depression comes when I fall down low. I needed then something small and concrete, something I could reach.
Give up the explanation; write the confession.
This is a story of insanity.
Rolling my torn-up suitcase along the uneven bricks and cobblestones that led to campus, I kept my eyes on the ground, praying I’d cross paths with a paper clip. I was desperate. Two weeks ago, I had taken the bus from my apartment in Palms to UCLA. Sitting on a sheltered bench near Haines Hall, the building that houses the Department of Sociology, I frantically wrote the same note on two pieces of paper.
My name is Anjana Gigi Radhakrishnan. I am being stalked by a man named Kannan Venkatachalam from McLean, VA. I believe he has somehow hacked all my technology. My phone, my laptop, all my modes of communication are being re-routed to him. If you are reading this, please call my father, Sreenivas Radhakrishnan. Let him know that I am okay and am looking for a safe place. I will contact him as soon as I can.
I left one copy on the table in the graduate student lounge. The other copy I slid under the locked door of the department’s main office. It was three weeks into the first Coronavirus lockdown. I was hoping in the next day or two, someone would come back to the building to print a form or pick up something they forgot, but even if it was weeks before the notes were found, I took solace in leaving behind a paper trail. In case something happened to me.
The next step was to disappear.
When I returned to my apartment, I packed my backpack and a suitcase. I had to get somewhere Kannan would never imagine, somewhere he couldn’t track me, somewhere with a land line. Did I dare fly home and find a hotel in driving distance or did I flee to somewhere obscure and keep my family safe from harm? Finding it impossible to choose, I decided to figure it out at the airport.
But I never made it there. In trying to escape, it seems I’d rattled my cage too hard. Walking towards my Lyft to the airport, the world began to close in on me at a frightening frequency. Convinced I was in mortal danger, I began screaming for help. Concerned friends who saw me called 911. In less than an hour, I was shipped off to a psychiatric facility for the second time in seven months.
Now, grey skies above, the ward behind me, all I could think about was Occam’s razor. The simplest explanation is the correct one. Biting my thumbnail, I mused. How likely was it that a man I barely knew had stalked me, hacked all my technology, and managed to cut off my communication with the outside world? How much time and effort would such an endeavor take? Was it even possible? No, I had to admit with chagrin that my stories were too convoluted to be true. No one was stalking me. No one had hacked my technology. No one was trying to trap me. The only real danger in my life was in my head. That, and the notes I’d left behind in Haines Hall.
A few hundred feet from the doors of the psychiatric facility, a twisted piece of metal gleamed up at me from between the beige pebbles of the sidewalk. I stopped. I stared. Bending down to pick up the little thing, I wondered, from what packet of papers had you sprung? And what were the chances of finding a paper clip right here on this very day? But it hurt too much to think of destiny just then, so I slipped that good luck charm into my back pocket instead.
Now that I had the crucial instrument, I picked up the pace. My back, trapped by my heavy backpack, was slick by the time I reached Haines Hall. The fluorescent lights buzzed above as I walked down the empty basement corridor. Holding my breath, I unlocked the graduate student lounge. My note was on the table. I couldn’t tell if it had been moved. I imagined someone walking in, finding it, reading it, and leaving, recognizing the instability behind my words. My stomach clenched. Why had I done this to myself? But I had no time to sit with that question. I grabbed the note and folded it, tucking it in my backpack.
Like always, the building’s shaky elevator took forever to reach the second floor. My right leg was a nervous jitter. I knew it was much more likely for an administrator or faculty to need something from the building, much more likely for someone to stumble across the note I’d left in the main office. I knew too that an employee of the university would be obligated to act. If someone had found it, there would be consequences. I didn’t want another mess to clean.
I stepped out of the elevator. The main office door was closed, lights out. Sharp relief. I checked to see I was the only one in the hall before crouching down low on the ground. I pressed my face against the cold and dusty marble floor. The slim outline of folded paper on the other side of the door. A soft cry fell out of my mouth. It was waiting for me, just where I’d left it two weeks ago.
My eyes smarting from blind gratitude, I scooped out the paper clip from my back pocket, twisted it into a straight line, and hooked my note. It slid out easy. I pressed it to my heart, the paper rustling against the thin fabric of my shirt. Thank you, I whispered to the fickle powers that first forsook me then saved me, thank you.
By the time I got to the bus stand, I was exhausted. I fell onto the empty metal bench. Pulling my suitcase close, I put my arm around my backpack and laid my head down to rest on it. While I waited for the bus driver to come back from her break, I watched my distorted reflection glint off the glossy side of the bus. Silly little girl who kept getting herself in all sorts of trouble. Silly little girl who had run out of places to hide. Silly little girl who had to face one more cut from Occam’s razor before she could be set free.
My name is Anjana Gigi Radhakrishnan, I whispered to my reflection, and I have bipolar disorder.
Originally posted on a now defunct personal blogging website.
