Hyper by Timothy Denevi

Author:Timothy Denevi [Denevi, Timothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

5

Dead and in Jail for Life

The summer before I started high school, my parents and I sat down with Dr. Epstein to talk about discontinuing my antidepressant medication.

My mother claimed she was concerned about the upcoming transition to Bellarmine. I argued that I was old enough to make my own decisions on the subject. My father didn’t take sides. At the end of the session Dr. Epstein suggested a compromise: I could taper down the nortriptyline and then spend a month off of it. “Think of it as a trial run,” he said.

Over the next few weeks I tried to observe everything from a point of remove. My mouth wasn’t so dry, and I didn’t feel drowsy in the evening. But was I moody, or depressed, or more impulsive and less focused? As I spent the weeks in the usual manner—playing Nintendo, listening to music, and hitting Wiffle Balls with a friend—the only thing I really noticed was that I felt pretty much the same.

My mother was watching, too. At night she’d stop by my room and demand then and there that I fold the laundry or empty the dishwasher. If I argued it was a mark against me, but I couldn’t stand the fact that she expected an argument, so I called her on it—“You’re doing this on purpose”—and then we’d be fighting for real, each claiming that the other was wrong, until out of nowhere she’d say, “That’s it! Not another word!” Which would just make me all the more sullen.

After a month we returned to Dr. Epstein’s office. It was August, the heat sinking across the valley for a few heavy hours each afternoon. I’d recently turned fifteen. My mother and I went together; my sister and brother stayed home with my father. As we traveled through off-ramps and overpasses toward downtown San Jose, neither of us spoke.

The session started and Dr. Epstein asked my mother to go first. She mentioned the fights I was sure she’d instigated. But then she told him I wasn’t eating as much; my body language appeared more languid; and most of all, I was less active—sitting in my room all day listening to my CD player. “He’s just not himself,” she finally said. Such claims were easy enough to refute, and when it was my turn to speak I did, but I was beginning to understand that the question wasn’t as simple as who was right and who was wrong.

My psychiatrist was quiet as he heard us out. I knew my mother trusted him. I did too. He held the type of power over us that you earn after years of listening carefully. “I do think that the situation has continued to improve,” he eventually said. He pointed out my recent acceptance to a prestigious school. In his opinion, I understood the stakes; now the consequences for fighting would be much more dire. But more importantly, in only three years I’d legally become an adult, and a conversation like this would be irrelevant.

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