Easy Crafts for the Insane

 Easy Crafts for the Insane: The Mostly Funny Memoir of Mental Illness and Making Things by Kelly Williams Brown
2021
Weight: 1.6 lbs
Method of Disposal: Giving Away on with a Buy Nothing Group

This book left me with an uneasy feeling for days and was, ultimately, "the straw that broke the camel's back" for me.  I have been battling depression unsuccessfully for quite some time now.  I do not want to ruin the book for you if you have not read it.  So, stop reading here now if you want--how odd to think about "ruining the story" when you are talking about someone's life.

In this book, the author talks about her own struggle with depression and the impacts it had on her relationships with her friends, self, boyfriend, and family.  She also describes her near death experience with suicide.  The way she described it haunted me in that she did not think of herself as someone who would die that way and then found herself just minutes away from death.  Her boyfriend could not recover from it and was deeply wounded.  They ultimately broke up.  I did not think I would go that far either, but there were many times I scared myself with how deeply I was sinking anyway.  Especially right before, during, and after my period.  I could not live like that--feeling like I could not control my own actions for half the month each month.  The author wrote about her brain being unhealthy in the same way other parts of her body could become unhealthy.  She would not think twice about taking medication to help other parts of her body.  She described how it felt after she took medication for her mental health.  

I wanted to be a better wife and partner.  I started looking into psychiatrists and finally decided to talk to one and started to take Prozac.  It was not easy.  Over a decade ago, I had a negative experience with a psychiatrist and therapist that left me unwilling to seek help for my mental health since.   I got desperate enough.  That is where I am at.  The edge has been taken off, and I am trying to figure it all out with a little less drama.  I am grateful to the author for the insight.

Girl, Interrupted

Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
1994
Weight: 6.4 oz
Method of Disposal: Donating or giving away

Here is a look into what life was like in McLean in the late 60’s. If you read the blog post about the book Gracefully Insane , you will recognize that this book is about the same hospital. Susanna Kaysen spent almost two years of her life there with other teenage girls. This memoir inspired the major motion picture starring Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie. I would say that the book is better than the movie, as it almost always is. I found both the book and the movie to be okay but not incredible, though this is the best book I have read by Kaysen.

The history of mental institutions is frightening, and it is impossible not become absorbed in some of the stories that come out of them. The doctors and nurses often being described in a way that makes them seem far more “insane” than their patients, though not always. I am currently reading The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein, and that book opens with quite the horror story. She speaks of a young woman who went into the hospital for anxiety in the 60’s and after being tortured in the name of treatment is later labeled schizophrenic.

I am sure it will surprise no one that I bought this book sometime around the age of 16 when I was buying all sorts of Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath books. There is something about this type of memoir that attracts teenage girls. It is not totally fair because these adult women do have a story to tell that is not juvenile and that is important. It just seems to be a common theme involved in teenage angst, despite how talented, how traumatic, how brilliant, how whatever the writing may be. I guess teenage girls can relate to feeling like they do not have control of their bodies or their minds. They are empathetic to disorientation, confusion, and despair. They are growing up in a world with conflicting messages and enormous pressure.

Who knows who this book will find next. What they will be like. I hope they get something out of it.