Sunday 24 August 2008

Misdiagnosis continued

ortunately I had had the advantage of being taught French by a French lady; and as I had always made a point of conversing with Madame Pierrot as often as I could, and had besides, during the last seven years, learnt a portion of French by heart daily--applying myself to take pains with my accent, and imitating as closely as possible the pronunciation of my teacher, I had acquired a certain degree of readiness and correctness in the language, and was not likely to be much at a loss with Mademoiselle Adela.  She came and shook hand with me when she heard that I was her governess; and as I led her in to breakfast, I addressed some phrases to her in her own tongue: she replied briefly at first, but after we were seated at the table, and she had examined me some ten minutes with her large hazel eyes, she suddenly commenced chattering fluently.  "Ah!" cried she, in French, "you speak my language as well as Mr. Rochester does: I can talk to you as I can to him, and so can Sophie.  She will be glad: nobody here understands her: Madame Fairfax is all English. Sophie is my nurse; she came with me over the sea in a great ship with a chimney that smoked--how it did smoke!--and I was sick, and so was Sophie, and so was Mr. Rochester.  Mr. Rochester lay down on a sofa in a pretty room called the salon, and Sophie and I had little beds in another place.  I nearly fell out of mine; it was like a shelf.  And Mademoiselle--what is your name?"  "Eyre--Jane Eyre."  "Aire?  Bah!  I cannot say it.  Well, our ship stopped in the morning, before it was quite daylight, at a great city--a huge city, with very dark houses and all smoky; not at all like the pretty clean town I came from; and Mr. Rochester carried me in his arms over a plank to the land, and Sophie came after, and we all got into a coach, which took us to a beautiful large house, larger than this and finer, called an hotel.  We stayed there nearly a week: I and Sophie used to walk every day in a great green place full of trees, called the Park; and there were many children there besides me, and a pond with beautiful birds in it, that I fed with crumbs."  "Can you understand her when she runs on so fast?" asked Mrs. Fairfax.  I understood her very well, for I had been accustomed to the fluent tongue of Madame Pierrot.  "I wish," continued the good lady, "you would ask her a question or two about her parents: I wonder if she remembers them?"  "Adele," I inquired, "with whom did you live when you were in that pretty clean town you spoke of?"  "I lived long ago with mama; but she is gone to the Holy Virgin.  Mama used to teach me to dance and sing, and to say verses.  A great many gentlemen and ladies came to see mama, and I used to dance before them, or to sit on their knees and sing to them: I liked it.  Shall I let you hear me sing now?"

5 comments:

  1. Don't hate me for this but swings of mood that rapid and psychosis sounds more BPD moods than bipolar ones. BPD swings are much more rapid than bipolar and are reactive, with reactive-stress psychosis. Might be worth checking out?

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  2. Shit, that sounds like I'm being flip. I'm not, it's that BPD mood swings are really rapid, like you're describing, with stuff lasting intensely for a few hours.

    Man, I am hamstrung by the DSM-IV. Ignore me. I hope you feel better. I'm with you in the feeling-like-shit-warmed-up. Love. xxx

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  3. It didn't sound flip so don't worry. I'm currently open to any suggestions about what could be going on in my little messed up head. Plus I don't know anything about BPD so it would never have entered my head to think about it as a possibility. I will definitely check it out.

    And thanks for this, I know you've a lot to deal with with everything going on with you. Hopefully some day we'll all feel better. xx

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  4. I'm sorry to hear things are such a muddle. I'm not sure what to say that will help soothe you, but I can tell you something that helps me (sometimes marginally, sometimes quite a bit): I always have a pen and a pad at hand, when things begin to get overwhelming, I try to jot down what I'm going through.

    It makes me focus on something other than the intense emotions running through me, and it assists me in articulating what I went through when I try to explain it later. Sometimes, it helps in later differentiating between a real memory and a hallucination (scary). Also, being able to write in these phases tends to reassure me (a bit) that my brain hasn't failed. This is something I reaaallly worry about when everything's spinning out of control.

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  5. Thanks pundit, yeah it always seems to help when I get to here to post so having a pen and paper handy would probably be a good step too.
    And yes when everything is spinning out of control for me, I need something, anything to anchor, to prove to myself that I'm not going completely and forever crazy.
    These days the crazier days seem to be happening a lot more frequesntly than the maybe I can get through this times. Sucks a bit.

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