MY KIND OF CRAZY

A trip through the author’s mental illness told in a heartwarming, self-deprecating style.

It’s hard not to immediately fall in love with a narrator who begins her tale of annual hospitalizations and a suicide attempt with this description of her bipolar disorder: “To me, the word implies savant-like capabilities. The label crazy is equivalent to the GED of mental disorders, whereas bipolar sounds more like holding a PhD in the field. ‘Congratulations, you are bipolar!’ ” It just gets better from there. From a tongue-in-cheek portrait of the psych ward’s command post, which reads, “It’s this glass-enclosed circular structure where the staff is stationed and on display for the patients to poke fun at. Needless to say, it’s a noisy location. There’s always some patient banging on the glass, declaring his seventy-two-hour notice of release. No matter how delusional patients may be, they always seem to be cognizant enough to know their legal rights”; to a gorgeous deep analysis of a fellow patient, “I pull back the curtain, allowing the setting sun to cast a soft amber light on her face. I hesitate for a moment as I study the weathered lines on her face. Why do we feel the need to erase our wrinkles? They define who we are and tell our stories. On second thought, maybe that’s why we feel so compelled.” Haynes jumps back and forth in time, mirroring her own manic thought processes, and devotes chapters to her son and husband so that they may have their say, all in the blink of an eye and with the humblest of hearts. Her eloquence is strikingly clear-headed for a self-proclaimed “crazy” person. Indeed, a chapter where she compares psychosis to divine revelation is simple and powerful, ending with, “Call me crazy, but I happen to believe in things unseen, unheard, unspoken, and intangible. I have no other choice.” Eat your heart out, James Frey.

Eminently readable and worthy of attention.