Choice Blog-Kist

I work at Venture Data and every time I work I bring a book with me.  It keeps me entertained and helps my shift go by faster.  My best friend suggested I read Madness, the memoir of Marya Hornbacher, and I took her up on her offer.  After I read the first paragraph of the prologue I was hooked.  Her descriptions of her life and her surroundings are so vivid and clear, the reader feels like they are in the room with her.  She opens up stating, "I am numb.  I am in the bathroom of my apartment in Minneapolis, twenty years old, drunk, and out of my mind.  I am cutting patterns in my arm, a leaf and a snake." 
Marya is a bi-polar woman who suffers from extreme extreme manic-depression.  She lives in a whirlwind of a life and has experienced more in her lifetime than most people can even imagine.  She suffers from alcoholism, eating disorders, manic shopping sprees, unhealthy sexual relationships, and so much more. 
She has her highs and her lows, and she immediately reminded me of Ben's mother from Deadline.  I chose to read this book for the literature circles, and I believe having read Madness previously helped me relate to Ben.  Ben only describes his mother in two ways.  She is either hysterical and all over the place, or completely depressed and isolated in her room.  On one occasion he says, "Mom would wear out and I'd go to my room, believing I had saved her.  Within days the bedroom door would close and Cody and Doc Wagner would come over and get Mom on meds and she'd start to float back up."  This instantly reminded me of Marya's experiences and struggles with her depression.  When she introduces her years of hospitalization she states, "Madness strips you of memory and leaves you scrabbling around on the floor of your brain...traveling from my bed at home to a bed on a locked ward, the weird world of the ward becoming more familiar to me than the one outside."  Both of these women are strong women, but their disease eats away at them, and secludes them into their own world.  It is quite sad to read about, and it really broke my heart thinking about the effect Ben's decision would have on his mom. 
I always knew that depression was a horrible disease, but I never knew how severe it was.  Some people jump to the conclusion of all mentally ill people being crazy, and that is not the case.  I believe that this is a subject matter that could be very relevant in classroom's today, and people should be more educated about it.   Treatment Advocacy Center is a group dedicated in the correct treatment for those with mental illnesses.  This site has some great facts, and really encourages people to expand their state of mind, when thinking about those with different mental illnesses.