Lying + Girl, Interrupted

Part # 1--A reflection on Lying as related to the long list of memoirs I've read on young women's depression/ennui...

Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen was published in 1993. After having been made into a feature film, I'd like to note that the book itself is much different than the movie. The film script uses characters Kaysen has described in her memoir, but the book doesn't contain the action/narrative that is included in the movie--the book is not a cliffhanger.

The structure of the book is interesting. It begins with a photocopy of Kaysen's medical records from the time during which she was committed. (She was committed for two years, from ages 18-20 at the same psychiatric hospital that treated Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor and Ray Charles). Copies of her records are interspersed throughout the book and the chapters themselves are rarely more than six pages long. It's been awhile since I've read this book, but having looked through it briefly today each of the chapters/essays could be freestanding essays. The book is a sort of patchwork quilt of bits and pieces (mainly scenes and medical records)that by the end become an accurate picture of Kaysen's life during this period.

The book is full of scene, less reflection. It reminds me a bit of my own writing. Her writing is not ripe with reflection, but she picks the right scenes and in the end her scant reflection is sufficient. Her style/structure echoes her state of mind. She's distant as a narrator, reporting less than reflecting, which is clearly the way in which she was thinking/feeling at the time.

Her diagnosis was borderline personality disorder, but she argues that her diagnosis was wrong. Overall, she reminds me of me. She is simultaneously emotional and numb. She takes a bottle of aspirin with a bottle of vodka and wanders into the street; she's so out of touch with herself that she's not sure why she's done it. She doesn't want to die; it's as though her life is worth so little to her that she doesn't particularly care if she lives or dies. I don't think that she does have borderline personality disorder, but she did see herself primarily from the outside, and this is what I identify with. That obsession with wanting to know what others think of you because you have little idea of who you are. You suspect you are an actor, which makes it difficult to believe that anyone loves you, or to accept any praise at all. More on this later. I'm terrified I have borderline personality disorder, though my therapist assures me that I most certainly do not.