Neurotic

When I am in the Seventh Grade, Daddy goes back to college. He studies Psychology, which I soon find out is the most interesting subject in the world. Daddy brings home these big, interesting textbooks. There's a big black one called Introduction to Psychology. That one's okay, but there's another black one called Abnormal Psychology, and that one is fascinating.

Abnormal Psychology is the study of people who are insane. People who are insane fascinate me. There are all these rules normal people have to follow all the time, but insane people don't have any rules. Of course they have to be locked up in hospitals, because they're insane, so they're probably dangerous. How could somebody not be dangerous, living without rules like that? But isn't it kind of interesting? What must it be like to live like that, without any rules at all?

I read Daddy's Abnormal Psychology book very carefully to find out all the different ways there are of being insane. Some of them, it's really easy to see why they count as kinds of insanity. Schizophrenia, for instance, which is kind of like being on an LSD-trip that lasts forever, and makes you see things all weird and jump out of windows and stuff. Or manic-depression, which is like being really, really depressed, only there are other times when you are a maniac (I think). Some kinds of being insane though, don't really make much sense to me.

Like neurotic, for instance: It's a way of being insane, because it's in the Abnormal Psychology book, but no matter how many times I read over the symptom list, it still doesn't sound all that different from the way regular people act. I figure it's got to be a gateway, like how in the drug movies they always talk about marijuana being a gateway-drug that will lead you to being addicted to heroin: Being neurotic is a gateway to being insane. You start out neurotic, and you'll probably end up being manic-depressive or schizophrenic or something.

...So as well as Daddy taking college classes, Mama's taking them too. And in between the nights when she takes night-classes, there are other nights when she works to make the money to pay for them. I'm always in charge while she's gone. I'm supposed to fix what she left for supper, and I'm supposed to help watch my little sisters. I do my best to make sure we all follow the same rules we would if Mama were there.

This is a problem, because sometimes Daddy likes breaking Mama's rules. For instance if there's something good on TV on a Sunday afternoon, like a Marx Brothers movie or a Popeye marathon or something, he'll invite us to watch with him, even though it's not five o'clock yet. It's not until years and years later that I get really comfortable with doing that, because Mama's rules have always been: No TV until after 5:00 PM. Or sometimes if Daddy doesn't like what Mama left for supper he'll say we're have something else. I hate it when he does this, because Mama says he always picks junk food, or stuff that's a waste of money like canned tamales. She wants us to eat the food she leaves.

So one time it's Sunday: Mama has leftovers for our supper, which is what we always have on Sunday nights. I go into the kitchen to start fixing them, and Daddy's in there. He says he doesn't want leftovers, he wants canned tamales, and when he asks Linda and Karen what they want, they say they want tamales too. So of course I say no, we can't have tamales. We have to have leftovers, because that's what Mama left for us. Daddy says why am I always so neurotic about following rules? And I just stop.

I'm neurotic? I must be if Daddy says I am, because he's taking Psychology, so he knows these things, right? ...So I'm neurotic? Does that mean I'm going to go insane? Am I halfway insane already maybe? It's this horrible, sick feeling, being halfway-insane, because I don't feel any different from how I've always felt. But maybe insane people don't. Don't they always talk about how people who are really insane, are the ones who don't know they are? I go back and I re-read the symptom lists in Abnormal Psychology very carefully, but they still sound so vague they could be talking about anything. Anyone could be neurotic, or nobody could. It could be a gateway to becoming totally insane, or it could be just a way of describing how most people already are.

I look around for books about being neurotic, only since I'm not able to check out books in the Adult Section of the library yet, there aren't that many that I can find. There's this book in my school library that's got an insane person in it, called The Diamond in the Window, but he's really insane, not just neurotic. There's Daddy's new Psychology books, but most of them don't have anything to do with Abnormal Psychology, they're about Developmental Psychology and a lot of stuff like that. Then I find this book in the church library called Ministering to the Neurotic Person, and I check it out and read all of it. But that one just pretty much says that everyone is kind of neurotic, so it doesn't help me much (I also don't quite get why they wrote the book, since if everyone's kind of neurotic, why not just write a book about ministering to everybody?).

But after I read that everyone's kind of neurotic, I relax. So what if I'm neurotic, I think, how does that make me different from the rest of the world? I don't relax completely, because I saw how Daddy looked at me, like I'm some kind of disgusting, really messed-up person (and he knows; he studies Psychology), but I relax a little bit. I still like reading about Psychology though, and when I get to the Adult Section of the library, I find a bonanza there. There are all these novels about insane people, and case studies about insane people, and memoirs by people who used to be insane. I read them all, and I think they are really, really fascinating. And sometimes when the people in the books sound just like me, I get really creeped out, because it means maybe I am going to go insane. Maybe my Daddy was right about me.