On
the 5th of July, 1996, Sally was kidnapped, by delirium. Michael
Greenberg, the famous American author of many acclaimed books, wrote his
true experience in a book 'Towards Dawn' about his own daughter Sally. A
somewhat cold and detached description that burns like acid. Probably
that's the only way he could talk about the experience of hell that's
the story of Sally.
The
book begins with the phrase: 'The 5th of July in 1996, my daughter
suddenly became crazy.' From there begins the horrific journey of the
heart through darkness and desperation. Sally was then 15. During the
first couple of months, while the daughter disappeared totally into the
outer space called madness, the most remote place a human being can go,
Greenberg tried not to lose her altogether by his dogged effort to
comprehend the incomprehensible.
Sally
was diagnosed as suffering bipolar disorder. That etiquette in reality
is irrelevant. What was crucial was that on that very day of 5th of
July, a severe psychotic crisis occurred and she disappeared into a
state of oblivion, taking her place was a complete and incommunicative
stranger. Like the old superstition that one is possessed by a demon.
"If not, how does one explain such grotesque transformation?" he wrote.
The
calamity hit all of a sudden, like the wave of a Tsunami. She seemed to
have acquired a sudden vision, with a new weird sense of the world,
bright and brilliant for her but impenetrable for the rest. She acted
the prophet, the truth and could stop cars with her mind. Although what
she says has subject, verb and adjectives, but made no sense whatsoever
like an alien.
Her face is pink and beautiful, illuminated and distant. The maniac state became so fulminating she had to be eventually put into a psychiatric ward. But that kind of measure inevitably creates immense guilt for the families who had to do so to their beloved ones. As if somehow they themselves had failed the affected in some way.
Her face is pink and beautiful, illuminated and distant. The maniac state became so fulminating she had to be eventually put into a psychiatric ward. But that kind of measure inevitably creates immense guilt for the families who had to do so to their beloved ones. As if somehow they themselves had failed the affected in some way.
I
had always thought that madness occurred to someone by stages,
progressively. Not normal and sane one day and raving mad the next.
The thought that this could have happened to anyone at any time is really unsettling, frightening and alarming.
Tags:madness,solitude
Current Mood: 
Anxious
Anxious
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