Scenes From a Misbegotten Life by Victoria Maiden
It’s a hard subject to talk about, especially for someone suffering from it. “Many of us have been labeled or even seen ourselves as freaks, weirdos, oddballs, eccentrics and outcasts. So it’s no surprise that many of us attempt to keep our illness hidden to the extent we can.”
That’s what makes Victoria Maiden’s intimate, heartfelt and eye-opening memoir Scenes From a Misbegotten Life so unique … and riveting … and downright important.
She is single, in her fifties, unemployed, living with her father and drug-addicted brother, surviving off social security checks, and suffering from mental illness. And, by the way, she is an incredibly gifted and insightful writer.
She uses her experience and her talent to paint a vivid description of mental illness in all its shapes and forms: an oddly dressed man muttering something and then suddenly attacking someone; a woman sitting on the sidewalk next to a bag of junk; the shy student who one day takes aim at his classmates; teenagers with eating disorders; an elderly lady unaware of a hygiene issue.
Those are some of the stereotypes that society has cast on the mentally ill. But Maiden focuses primarily on her own condition and wants us to understand that the signs don’t always manifest themselves outwardly. And while many with mental illness are confronting demons internally and more subtly, one might never know, from all appearances, that anything is wrong.
Vivid Portrait of Mental Illness
Maiden’s symptoms by no means have all been internal. She talks of her tendencies to “stare down the sun,” rock back and forth to combat anxiety and stay in the shower for three hours. She says she has been hospitalized on numerous occasions for “major depression” and has had dozens of electric shock treatments. “I’ve been expelled from school, evicted from apartments, thrown out of college dorms, fired numerous times, arrested, handcuffed and even straightjacketed.”
She herself describes her story as “disturbing and traumatic, bizarre and unbelievable.” No argument there.
Maiden can remember back to when life seemed on a normal track growing up in New York City, with vivid childhood memories of playing in the neighborhood, befriending boys and girls, going to school, and summer vacations. But a family relocation to Florida suburbia threw her life into disarray and she never quite recovered.
She attended college and hoped for a rewarding professional career. But things didn’t work out as planned.
Scenes from a Misbegotten Life has it all – the tantrums, the doctors, nurses, the psychiatric institutions, campuses, the meds, memories, relatives, the struggles, the search for sexual identity, the pleasures, and all the razor-sharp insights that go with them. Maiden takes readers on an inner journey of her mind and soul like none other they likely have experienced before.
Informative Work of Self-Expression
While Maiden’s book is educative and informative, it also is a work of self-expression and self-reflection for a person stuck on the idea that she has made nothing of her life – if judged by superficial societal standards. Yet this book, on its own, is evidence to the contrary, a major literary and medical contribution.
If baring her soul was a therapeutic exercise, let’s hope it accomplished that for the author. (In fact, she suggests an ugly alternative if that objective fails.) If the book was designed to enlighten, touch our emotions and provide us with a magnificent story, chock full of anecdotes and incredible use of the language, well, you can check off all those boxes.
“If you’ve ever wondered what life must be like for someone with suffers from mental illness, you will certainly get a close-up view in this book. Maybe too close for comfort.”
She describes her current life as “coping and going through the motions,” and living in constant fear of who she is – or at least how she sees herself.
But she is determined to take her place, in whatever way she can, in the ongoing discussion about understanding that massive topic we know as mental illness.
“Today there are so many voices out there clamoring for attention, demanding recognition, rights, a place at the table. Consider mine another voice from the garret, willing to share a ‘day in the life,’ with anyone who cares to listen.”
I suggest you care.
About Victoria Maiden:
Victoria Maiden never intended to write a book. She has never entertained fantasies of writing the great American novel, a Hollywood screenplay, or anything else. She is merely an individual whose life has been tainted by an often-invisible plague that affects millions: mental illness. For decades she bore the burden as best she could, sought help when and where it was available, and tried to hide her illness from others. She simply lived a life of what Henry David Thoreau called “quiet desperation.” But what if she could paint a vivid, brutally honest picture of what it is actually like to live with mental illness on a day-to-day basis? Maybe somebody who has a loved one who suffers from the same affliction would be curious enough to take a peek. The result is Scenes from A Misbegotten Life — raw, unfiltered, just the way it happened.
