Girl, Interrupted: List 1

She was in a theater watching a movie when a tidal wave of blackness broke over her head. The entire world was obliterated—for a few minutes.

She looked around the theater to see if it had happened to everyone, but all the other people were engrossed in the movie.

But most people pass over incrementally, making a series of perforations in the membrane between here and there until an opening exists.

But most people pass over incrementally, making a series of perforations in the membrane between here and there until an opening exists.

Sometimes the world you came from looks huge and menacing, quivering like a vast pile of jelly; at other times it is miniaturized and alluring, a-spin and shining in its orbit.

He was a taut fat man, tight-bellied and dark.

"It'll be a rest. Just for a couple of weeks, okay?" He sounded conciliatory, or pleading, and I was afraid.

Etiology
This person is (pick one):
1. on a perilous journey from which we can learn much when he or she returns;
2. possessed by (pick one):
a) the gods,

b) God (that is, a prophet),

c) some bad spirits, demons, or devils,

d) the Devil

6. ill, and must be isolated and treated by (pick one):
a) purging and leeches,
b) removing the uterus if the person has one,
c) electric shock to the brain,
d) cold sheets wrapped tight around the body,
e) Thorazine or Stelazine

8. a victim of society's low tolerance for deviant behavior;
9. sane in an insane world

Scar tissue has no character. It's not like skin. It doesn't show age or illness or pallor or tan. It has no pores, no hair, no wrinkles. It's like a slipcover. It shields and disguises what's beneath.

She was faultless, in her impermeable tight pink-and-white casing.

Whatever had driven her, whispered "Die!" in her once-perfect, now-scarred ear, she had immolated it.

Polly was so quiet, so unobtrusive a presence, that we didn't notice she wasn't at breakfast.

Her mother and father wouldn't visit her because she was a sociopath, or so said Lisa.

Lisa had never watched TV. She'd had nothing but scorn for those who did.

But the TV audience was mostly catatonics and depressives, who were disinclined to move.

He was standing at a window in the living room, looking out: giraffe-tall, with slumpy academic shoulders, wrists sticking out of his jacket, and pale hair that shot out from his head in a corona.

"Okay." He didn't seem miffed.

In our parallel world, things happened that had not yet happened in the world we'd come from. When they finally happened outside, we found them familiar because versions of them had been performed in front of us. It was as if we were a provincial audience, New Haven to the real world's New York, where history could try out its next spectacle.

Shortly after this he lapsed into a violent phase that went on for several weeks.

I screamed and screamed, but Georgina didn't make a sound. The nurses ran in and produced ice and unguents and wrappings, and I kept screaming, and Georgina did nothing.

Whoever it was, we knew about it already: the Bay of Pigs, the seared skin, the bare-handed killers who'd do anything.

We'd seen the previews, Wade, Georgina, and I, along with an audience of nurses whose reviews ran something like this: "Patient lacked affect after accident"; "Patient continues fantasy that father is CIA operative with dangerous friends."

Even though she smelled and glowered and hissed and poked, she had a spark the rest of us lacked.

She wore shorts and tank tops to display her pale wiry limbs, and when she ambled down the hall in the morning to get her laxatives, she swung her ass in insouciant half-circles.

She wore shorts and tank tops to display her pale wiry limbs, and when she ambled down the hall in the morning to get her laxatives, she swung her ass in insouciant half-circles.

"This place is a fascist snake pit," said Lisa.

When the door shut behind Lisa, a strange sweet smell wafted briefly into the hall.

Daisy was pleased with herself and spent more time out of her room, hoping that someone would ask her about the apartment. Georgina obliged.
"How big is the apartment, Daisy?"

Daisy shut her eyes and paused, relishing her favorite part.

It's important to cultivate detachment.

The motive is paramount. Without a strong motive, you're sunk.

It was a good deterrent.

The meat was bruised, bleeding, and imprisoned in a tight wrapping. And, though I had a six-month respite from thinking about it, so was I.