Out Of Balance

Do you ever wonder about that narrow line that divides charming eccentricity and more hazardous, even self-destructive behavior? Where does one end and the other begin?

I knew someone like this, once. She was bewildering to me, a mystery, but I adored the way her mind worked. Like no one else I had ever met, she was susceptible to impulse, to fun. (Once, we snuck into the abandoned house next door, for no better reason than to see what was there. She took an old spool of copper colored thread. I'll bet she still has it, somewhere.) She was passionate and creative, even silly. When she wasn't hiding herself completely away from the world at large, she often imagined it for herself with the eyes of a child.

But all that changed, almost in an instant. She took a step too far, and as if in an instant what once might have seemed charming and eccentric became anxious and disturbing.

I almost never lose my temper, but what she had done was so awful, so unforgivable that I felt foolishly compelled to confront her with the truth. She listened patiently to my anger and bitterness, and quietly slipped away from reality, out of consciousness. One moment I was speaking to her, at the kitchen table, the next, she was — somewhere else? Staring off into nothing.

This was terrifying. I can remember trying to bring her out of it, holding her hand, speaking to her softly, gently, trying desperately to apologize for the spiteful, hurtful things I had said. The warmth of my hand against her cheek brought no response. Minutes passed as hours before a tear began to fall, and she slowly, hesitantly, returned to life.

She referred to this incident as "dissociation." Her conscious mind, overwhelmed with emotions and sensations that had become too difficult to process, sought means of escape, somewhere to hide. It was familiar to her, but I had never seen her like this. This was unlike anything I had ever seen before.

I was aware that she had been prescribed medication and received therapy, ages ago, even been briefly institutionalized. (She had spoken in an evasive way of disturbing incidents from her childhood.) But with distance, the pieces of the puzzle, the reason for all that I knew and loved and hated and never understood about her, they all fit together. I came to understand that "reality," for her, was often a relative term, and that her mind was never entirely in balance — too much of the time, precarious harmony was maintained by many of those same medications (but without the least medical guidance). This is who she is, and for all the brilliant light she could radiate, there was this part of her that was darker than night. She was afraid to know and to let this part of herself be known, out of fear that the truth would frighten away anyone close enough to discover it. In that, I suppose, she was right.

Everything she had meant to me was left behind that night, wherever it was that she went.

It was difficult for me to reconcile these different aspects of her personality, to try to make some sense of the idea that the reasons for the behavior that drove me away might be the very key to the aspects of her I loved best. I gave up trying. (For some questions, there may never be an answer.) I feel ashamed to have been so judgmental when perhaps I might have been more understanding, We were very much alike, driven by many of the same needs and hopes and fears that had once brought us together, and (occasionally) I can't help but wonder about my own state of mind.