Rx: Quick Fix

When it comes to broken bones, seems like we get our xrays, submit to the casts and splints and painkillers, and wait them out. We don't expect fractures to heal overnight or magically knit themselves back together. When it comes to broken minds though, we search for the quick fix as if it were an enchanted answer - a little fairy dust sprinkled in the right direction and we'll be good as new, chaos will be calmed, reason restored, and emotions rebalanced and realigned, like tires that drift left or right when you take your hands off the wheel. "Better living through chemistry" to paraphrase DuPont.

It's difficult to watch much less understand a frail mind fighting against itself. There are celestial highs and subterranean lows while the middle ground is rocky and uncertain. Nothing is impossible on a high and nothing can be endured on a low - the space the rest of us occupy on a more or less full time basis is strange terrain - mood swings can mow a mind down or shoot it off like a firecracker. It takes a stunning amount of effort to maintain these mental and emotional acrobatics, let loose your grip and you risk freefall without knowing what direction you might go or at what speed you might travel.

Del and I had been friends since the 4th grade - we walked to and from school each day, shared classes, helped each other with homework, and spent Saturday afternoons at the movies. In high school we double dated and kept each other's secrets, spent hours on the telephone, took our very first solo shopping trip downtown, swore loyalty and friendship for life. Then unaccountably, in our junior year, she turned from friend to stranger right before my eyes - no explanation, no life altering trauma, not even a mild disagreement - she withdrew, became dark and silent, and eventually would not see me. Her new friends were thugs and dropouts and in her senior year she was caught dealing drugs, arrested and sent away. She came back the following summer and I would sometimes see her walking along Route Two, head down and hands jammed into her pockets, a cigarette clamped in the corner of her mouth and collar turned against the wind, always alone. The one time I tried to talk to her, she looked at me with dark, dead eyes and shuffled away - there'd been no recognition in those eyes, I realized, no emotion one way or another. I had no idea what had taken her or where but I did know it was too far away to reach and I was even beginning to suspect that it wasn't anything I'd done.

I never did learn what happened - there was speculation about drugs and the consequences of keeping bad company, there were rumors of mental illness - but it was all over my head. All I knew was that I'd lost a dear friend and didn't know why - there was no fix for it, quick or otherwise.