Last June, I turned twenty-one in the psychiatric ward of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Last July, Lizzie Simon put the finishing touches on her book Detour: My Bipolar Road Trip in 4-D. At twenty-three, Simon drove across the country in search of other young bipolars like us. Three weeks ago, I turned twenty-two in Madrid, Spain. Even while I was having a blast in Europe, I had to take 675 milligrams of Lithium every night. And I still do. Lizzie Simon takes the same drug with a different dosage just before she goes to bed, too. We pop those pills like one takes Advil for headaches. Once on medication, however, being bipolar is no different from being anyone else.
In her memoir, Lizzie Simon is quite candid about her full blown manic episodes that began at the age of seventeen. They included hallucinations, delusions and theories of conspiracy. Once they even caused her to publicly urinate on a plane. These hallucinations and delusions, however, rarely follow a set path. Road signs, newspaper headlines, snatches of conversation and random faces all contribute to a singular revelation about the universe. Interestingly enough, Detour follows the same non-linear pattern. Simon relates her account in fragments, causing the reader to remember that period of her life in the same fits and spurts she assumedly does. The experiences of Simon's profiled bipolars also help to trigger memories in the author. Simon thus flips between accounts of her gradually worsening mental health, her college experience and her short time as a theatre producer.
It is refreshing to find that Lizzie Simon does not come to an earth-shattering conclusion. She just needed to find out something about herself -- the same thing I had to learn when I almost gave up my last semester at Penn. Lizzie Simon had to accept herself with the label of BIPOLAR stamped on her forehead. From there, she knew she was going to be fine.
- Jenny Lee
