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DSM-IV^TM

Alix Ohlin

Personality change due to You're not a patient but you feel you could be, as if it's waiting for you like a trapdoor, dropping you instantaneously down to where you suspect you should have been all along, which is somewhere within the pages of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the DSM-IV^TM, and you know you're thinking about it too much--your mother always says this, on the phone, with a sigh, "you think too much, Lisa, that's why you're so unhappy," and you sigh back and say "oh, is that why"--but you can't stop either, it's a pleasure-pain thing, a scab-picking thing, which is no doubt the sign of someone with a serious mental disorder, possibly Mood Disorder Due to Brain Tumor, With Depressive Features or Dementia Due to Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease (a.k.a. Mad Cow), which can only be confirmed by the autopsy they will perform on you, demonstrating spongiform neuropathological changes.
 
Childishly then, even stereotypically, you picture your funeral (and somehow in the coffin you are looking your best, even after the autopsy which demonstrated spongiform neuropathological changes) and your mother is there sobbing which is sad and Victor is there too, remorseful Victor, and both of them are saying how they should have known, especially Victor, since he was the one who owned the DSM-IV^TM and presumably should have consulted it instead of leaving it behind in the apartment for you to look up Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder which defines obsessions as persistent ideas, thoughts, impulses, or images that are experienced as intrusive and inappropriate and that cause marked anxiety or distress. This definition seems broad. By this definition you are obsessed with Victor, horrible Victor, who said "you're crazy, you know" and which casual yet cruel statement you can't stop thinking about at odd, inappropriate, and anxiety-causing moments throughout the day and you wonder "am I really crazy? Victor was studying psychiatry," you think, "so he ought to know"
 
and in some sick way you want to be crazy, you wish you were crazy, as if crazy were a state of freedom, you feel that being crazy would mean you could let go of the terrible struggle, the hard and dreary work that is survival, yes, you think, you are sick enough to want that but still you are aware of how utterly sick that is so maybe you are not sick enough to count as really crazy although who defines what's really crazy
 
well, the DSM-IV^TM does! And so you have taken to carrying it around in your purse the way some people carry a Bible, at difficult moments you reach into your purse and touch the cover of it with the tips of your fingers, sweatily rubbing it, in some obscure way, for comfort which may be a behavior aimed at preventing or reducing distress or preventing some dreaded event or situation; however, these behaviors or mental acts either are not connected in a realistic way with what they are designed to neutralize or prevent or are clearly excessive
 
Is this true? Is this really true? If you think about it enough, apply the diagnostic criteria carefully enough, anybody would seem crazy, Victor, for example, clearly meets the criteria for Passive-aggressive Personality Disorder especially 1) passively resists fulfilling social and occupational tasks and 7) alternates between hostile defiance and contrition and this describes him to a T, with his sulks in front of his books and his snapping at you and then the sweetness, it would be all right if you could forget about his sweetness, but it was there, it was really there, up until the day he left
 
and you were left alone in the apartment experiencing clinically significant distress
 
and you called your mother and said "it's over" and she said "it's for the best in the long run" and you hated the words, the very concept of "the long run" and the first long night alone in the bed it was quiet, so quiet, and you picked up the DSM-IV^TM and carried it into the bed, right there on the pillow you opened its wide pages and clutching it in your arms you read it until you fell, finally, asleep.

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