Scenes From a Misbegotten Life

My Struggle with Mental Illness

Victoria Maiden

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Paperback

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English

Gatekeeper Press
19 August 2024

Abnormal psychology; Coping with anxiety & phobias

What if your whole life was like a badly written play? Asinine plot, tedious dialogue, poorly paced performance, dreadful costumes. Would you walk out of the theater, or stay until the final curtain call, hoping it would get better?

This is the kind of decision our protagonist must make as she grapples with and chronicles her messy and lopsided life, from preadolescence to senior citizen, in a captivating memoir that often reads like a novel. Scenes From a Misbegotten Life features fascinating characters, bizarre events, impossible situations, even a bit of suspense. It takes the reader from the crooked streets of Greenwich Village to the Greek Isles, from the garish colors of Hollywood Boulevard to the ancient ruins of Rome. But this book is far from fiction. Rather it is a ruthlessly candid case history of a woman whose life has been marred by mental illness in various and surprising ways, not only as a sufferer herself but as witness to the struggles of similarly afflicted family members and friends. This is the kind of sickness that can be as plain as day, but just as often is subtle, insidious, and invisible to outsiders. Yet it plagues millions of our friends and neighbors. Perhaps it is time to take it out of the closet. Scenes From a Misbegotten Life pulls back the curtain and offers a vivid glimpse of what it looks like and feels like to wrestle with this condition on a daily basis.
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*The thrill of getting her first transistor radio, flipping baseball cards with the boys on the block, chalking up the sidewalk to play hopscotch with the girls, watching I Love Lucy and Leave It to Beaver on a black and whiteTV. Just some of the fond recollections prized by a child of 1950s-era New York City. Victoria Maiden was raised in a solid working-class neighborhood in the Bronx, at a time when America's future looked so innocent, so full of possibilities. The first member of her family to attend college, she looked forward to a career in publishing, law, or academia. But Fate had other plans, as painstakingly revealed in the pages of this unusual memoir. Today she lives by herself less than fifteen minutes from where she grew up, surrounded by books, music, and memories.

By: Victoria Maiden
Imprint: Gatekeeper Press
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 26mm
Weight: 671g
ISBN: 9781662943485
ISBN 10: 1662943482
Pages: 462
Publication Date: 19 August 2024
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

"THIS BOOK IS AN ACCIDENT. IT WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE. 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 not a professional in any area who over time has acquired a store of expertise and knowledge that could be imparted to others in the form of a book. Nor has she undergone some unique, amazing, once-in-a-lifetime experience that cries out to be shared with the world.She is merely an individual whose entire life has been warped and tainted by an often invisible plague that affects millions of us - 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.""So how did this book happen? Victoria grew up with a younger brother who suffered a more severe form of mental illness. The two were close and turned to one another for comfort and support. But Victoria always knew that her brother's life would not have a happy ending. And when, one fateful morning, she got a phone call from Dakar, Senegal informing her that her brother was dead, she was heart-broken but not surprised.And she decided she needed to do something. Tell a story. 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 at that picture.So she consulted her memories, as well as her collection of diaries and journals kept over the years and attempted, for the very first time, to pen a memoir. Just pouring out all the weirdness on paper - raw, unfiltered, just the way it happened. The book you are holding in your hand is the result."