The isolating experience of potentially being schizophrenic, and Mad Men's Michael ginsberg
Upon re-reading this, this is like 98% vent 2% media analysis. Sorry. I often see the sentiment shared that Ginsberg's bout of psychosis was unfair and/or didn't make sense with the rest of his arc.
Here's why I think that's wrong.
My Grandmother was diagnosed with schizophrenia and admitted to a mental institution in the early 60's. I was not privy to this information until both her and my grandfather were dead, it wasn't something that was talked about, only known and understood. it was something that lingered in her relationships with her daughters, and influenced the memory she left behind. I find it funny how often media analysis feels similar to real life, how I look back on things she said or did when I was a young child with a fine tooth comb, looking for something I must've missed. I don't know if my mom ever intended on telling me organically, or if she just saw something in me and knew she should say something.
I'm not a schizophrenic ___
The blank space after that statement is left for the unsaid, what might never be said.
yet.
When I was 15 I saw mold that didn't exist for a week. My moms hands tightened on the steering wheel when I told her this, tan skin, thin with age, whitened around her knuckles. The heat emanating from the car vents felt oppressive. I explained that I couldn't eat my lunch, it was covered in spores and slime, I told her I threw up instead, certain I had already eaten some of it.
She looked at me from her peripherals, explained that I need to stop leaning into such nonsense. Later, she told me that I sound like my grandmother when I talk. That I say odd things at inopportune times. She says I need to stop. I say this is who I am. We talk in circles. I make art that reminds her of the woman I never truly met.
We don't talk about it again technically. The thought passes between us. I'll be fine for weeks, and then I call the suicide hotline for losing a parking pass. I will breeze through my university midterms, and then claim that I need to drop out because of the students using chatgpt around me. I explain this to my mom over the phone. The silence before she speaks says volumes. We don't talk about it. There's a chance we're overthinking it. Maybe I'm just artistic and eccentric. Signs wouldn't manifest this early. Over break they want to re-watch mad men with me (a first time viewer).
I like the show. Around season five I express that Ginsberg is my favorite. He ats like me. His face is cute. Whatever. Sometimes my dad says we sound alike. My mom looks at the screen like she's sucking on a lemon. I don't get what the issue is. I roll my eyes and keep watching.
Watching season 7 felt like watching a horror movie. This thing that seemed to only exist in the woman who's now long gone playing out before me. The word schizophrenia had lost its meaning to me, in a way. I had begun to see it as this entirely separate thing from my own life. Schizophrenia became the thing used to describe weird but slightly corny art, tweakers on the side of the road wandering for your sympathy, an adjective for crime podcasts to describe serial killers. Its not like anxiety or autism or ADHD. There's no fun TikTok's listing symptoms, comment section brimming with schizophrenic hopefuls. Nobody wants that.
Schizophrenia isn't something you can just KNOW you have. people can go their whole life being normal, not a care in the world, and then suddenly they're in a psych ward, taking six tablets a day to fight off the voices. I'm probably not schizophrenic. The larger issue is that's also what Michael Ginsberg thought. He thought he was just eccentric. A weird kid, an oddball creative. and then he cut his nipple off.
Sure he felt isolated from the world, sure he never felt understood, but doesn't everyone? Aren't half the songs on the radio about something like that? And maybe Ginsberg knew deep down something was not right. Hell, he acknowledges it with open arms, calls himself a Martian, in the first episode we meet him, he even says he's not like everyone else, talks back to the radio, tells Peggy she's the only one who would even care about him getting the job. Its neither parties fault for not knowing. That's the worst part. That's the lonely part.
Sometimes, most of the time, people like that (like us) just get to live on this weird fringe of society. We have close friends and wonder why there seems to be a disconnect, struggle to gel with life as a whole. We can get away with it. We're often good at what we do, charming, creating, timing our eccentricities so the audience will laugh. And maybe we go our whole lives without snapping. Without cutting off our nipples and gifting it to our bosses.
and at the end of the day,
we're not schizophrenic ___