Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So_ A Memoir - Mark Vonnegut [63]
We talk more now, and what broke the dam was my asking him if he deliberately leaves a lock of hair just to the right of my part that becomes unmanageable four or five weeks after a haircut so I know when I’m supposed to come back.
He was a little surprised.
“Not really. We don’t leave an indicator strip or anything like that,” he said after a pause, during which he just stood there with scissors and comb in his hand. I thought that that would be the end of it, but then he started talking. “This is really a Dorchester haircut I’m giving you, not a Hyde Park haircut at all. Your hair is thinning on top. Not bad. But it’s less noticeable if I leave a little more on the sides and shape it down. When you have a lot of hair it doesn’t really matter how you cut it.” He has a toupee.
We both agree that being in good health and looking good for guys in our sixties is better than the alternative, but that what we really want is to look good and be nineteen.
There was something wrong with me besides hearing voices and jumping through windows, besides schizophrenia or manic depression or schizoaffective disorder. What was wrong with me was that I couldn’t love or accept love.
Besides that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
It seemed unfair that someone who worked as hard as I did to be right about so many things should be unloved. There were people who liked me or seemed to like me, but what if I wasn’t a doctor, hadn’t published a book, wasn’t Kurt Vonnegut’s son? The truth is, I was terrified and wouldn’t have trusted or accepted love if it came and sat in my lap—especially if it came and sat in my lap. I didn’t have the faintest idea who I was. Publishing a book, getting into medical school, and getting to be a pretty good doctor saved my life and kept me barely alive, but by the time I went crazy for the fourth and, I hope, last time, my soul was on life support.
I had a prayer that went, “God, whatever I am, let it be for good.” By my mid-thirties it had morphed into “God, what the f—— am I?”
Now I’m sixty-two. My first child is thirty-two. His son is walking and talking. If you don’t want to miss life, don’t blink. Somehow having my awesome willpower come up short against alcohol got rid of the three-inch-thick Plexiglas separating me from the rest of the world. I can now love and accept love.
I get to see people at their best. No one wants to be a lousy parent. I’ve seen hopeless narcissists become good parents and stop being narcissists. I didn’t think that was possible.
The best parents are poor people who have a little bit of money and rich people who have had a little bit of poverty.
By the time he is twelve years old the average child has heard about drugs, alcohol, and unsafe sex so often that the messages are blocked before reaching consciousness. He has also been told over and over that if he works hard and gets good grades things will go well for him, which is a lie. Drugs are a way to be dead but just for a little while.
I find I can sometimes break through the glaze of boredom by saying things like “If you’re having trouble making decisions, maybe you should smoke a lot of marijuana.” Or “The great thing about not having a drinking problem is that you can drink yourself into a blackout whenever you like.” Or “Safe sex is better than no sex at all.” These can lead to useful conversations.
All you have to know about the power of will and choice is that most drug addicts can’t stop, even when they want to.
Not infrequently, a boy will hand me a cup of pee that couldn’t have come from him because there are vaginal cells in it or signs of a period or a urinary tract infection. The first sign of something wrong is often that the temperature of the pee is closer to room temperature than to 98.6. Another clue is when the person being tested tells his parent that he’ll go wait for them in the car.
“Go get John. I have to