Quiet Room - Lori Schiller [82]
And on the way home Sally surprised me.
“Don't you think Lori should be a bridesmaid at our wedding?” she asked.
Sally's reaction surprised me. It wasn't that it was kind—I knew that Sally was a good-hearted person. No, it was that it was so matter-of-fact. Sally had simply seen Lori and taken her for what she was. I, on the other hand, had been devastated by what I had seen. For it was at that Thanksgiving dinner I really realized for the first time that Lori was terribly sick. And that realization was jolting.
My own experience with depression had made me less, not more, understanding of Lori's illness. When I learned Lori was seeing a psychiatrist my reaction was: Is that all? So? That wasn't anything to worry about.
My parents didn't know it, but when I was in high school I had been so unhappy that I had gone to see a psychiatrist myself once. I poured out to him all my woes, my fears about being unpopular, my thoughts of death, my need for attention. Nothing had come of it. Psychiatry had seemed like such a scam. I talked. He listened. And I paid to have him listen. Big deal. Anyway, now that I was older I wasn't so unhappy anymore.
When Lori tried to commit suicide and was hospitalized, I just thought it was a transparent plea for attention. And I felt the beginnings of a little tug of annoyance. Here she was, the main attraction once again.
Even when my parents told me Lori was hearing voices, I was skeptical. Hearing voices? Sure, I thought. Sure you're hearing voices. It just seemed too weird to be true, and just weird enough to be made up. It was something no one could see, no one could prove, and that would scare everyone. A perfect ploy for attention, I thought once again. I was actually angry that she was so smart that she could make up an illness that no one could disprove.
Lori was perfect. Lori was everything. Nothing could ever happen to Lori. I had had Lori on a pedestal for so long, it was nearly impossible to topple it and accept that something was seriously wrong with her.
When I had first seen her in the hospital several years ago, she had seemed sick, but she had still seemed more or less herself.
This time at Thanksgiving, however, she seemed like a different person. She was lethargic, and goal-less and aimless. Her weight was up, her skin was broken out, and her lips were all shriveled up. Her attitude toward me had changed too. Before, she had seemed depressed, but still accessible. I may not have liked what she was saying, but at least I could talk with her. Now she was refusing to talk, withdrawing completely, acting hostile.
But it was the realization that while she was in the hospital she had been mutilating herself that really got to me. Finally I understood. What she was going through and what I had gone through were not the same thing at all.
I had done a zillion things growing up to call attention to myself. Once I had even gone to school with Band-Aids all over me, hoping to be asked what was the matter. But underneath, nothing was the matter. Hurting myself had never been an option. For all my cavalier feelings about suicide the first time I heard she had tried, I always thought about it in the abstract. I couldn't really imagine people hurting themselves on purpose.
And then I got it: Lori was different, really different. There was something really wrong with her. In some ways the realization made everything much easier. I could take her illness seriously now. She wasn't just a kid like me going through some rough times. I could feel the sympathy and shock that my own disbelief had shielded me from before.
But in some ways it made everything much harder. It turned my world upside-down. The perfect Lori I had worshipped since I was a child was gone. In her place was someone I didn't know and didn't understand.
At that Thanksgiving dinner, my father did his usual thing, going around the table, asking each one of us what we had to be thankful for. When his