Output 11--Bright and Dark

I took a break from Rebel Girl to devour (in 2 days) AGAIN my absolute favorite YA novel, "Lisa, Bright and Dark" by John Neufield. It was as delicious as I remembered.

Not coincidentally, it's about a high school girl who is losing her mind, and the friends who resolve to help her because the adults are too busy or too embarrassed to do anything. I read all the YA "Girl, Interrupted"-type novelas as a tween--"Go Ask Alice," "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden," "Lilith"... but Lisa was the interrupted girl on whom I fixated. I must have read this book 20 times. And I wasn't alone. I imagine most women between the ages of 50 and 60 recall the glass-patio-door scene. Total legend.

When you're a young girl compulsively re-reading the story of a young girl who tries to prove she needs help by walking through plate glass, your mother, if she's paying any sort of attention at all, might get worried. Mine did. I'm pretty sure Lisa is at least partially responsible for Mom deciding I needed a therapist. And for this, I thank her. Or, I thank John Neufield. I did need a therapist. At this time, I was repeating the mantra "You will live through this" to myself every day in order to cope with the anxiety over having to go to school. Helen Herring LCSW probably quite literally saved my life. I have never had suicidal ideations but tween hormones are a beast. If not for early professional intervention, I can't say for sure I wouldn't have pulled a "fuck it."

"Lisa, Bright and Dark" holds up. Lisa wasn't Bipolar, despite clues in the title... her unnamed illness involved hearing voices. When I read the book as a kid, I also felt like I was falling apart, but the adults around me were too busy with their own problems to notice. How does a kid explain to the Mom who is crying every day over her tragedy of a marriage, that she is so scared to go to school she can't sleep or eat? I wanted someone to step in and save me. I really wanted to go somewhere for a long time and "rest." I didn't care where, as long as it had a porch and wasn't school.

It felt a little self-indulgent, reading this. Now that I have better perspective on wtf my actual problem might be, I also feel shell-shocked as I am doing my psych-doc-assigned research on Bipolar II and whether I think it fits. Reading this felt like a bit of fun nostalgia in what is otherwise a fairly dire limbo state while I wait for test results, official diagnoses, and meds.

Clutching this book like a Bible was my original "cry for help," I reckon. Qué drama, kid. Qué drama.