With my bipolar swings, would I ever land on middle ground?

Chapter 1

T

he summer after seventh grade, I went to camp for the first time. I remember grassy hills, playing softball on the worn campgrounds, the swirling summer breeze. Standing there at bat, hitting the ball, watching it sail away before dashing to first base, I, Yael, was the happiest girl alive.

But I have a second name, Shprintza. I hate the name,  especially  because my father calls me “Yael Shprintza” when he’s being strict with me. I keep my second name quiet — it’s not even on my siddur! — and I don’t want anyone to find out what it is, but my mother signed me up for camp with my full name: Yael Shprintza. That meant that all of the name tags, bunk lists, and anything in the office system had me down by this name I despised.

“I’m called Yael,” I kept telling people, and I always crossed out my second name on anything I could get my hands on.

No one said a word about it, until one Friday night, when we were eating the seudah in the dining room, and one of my bunkmates said loudly, “Yael Shprintza, can you please pass the Coke?”

Everyone heard. I blushed profusely.

“I don’t like to be called that,” I said quietly.

“Why not, Yael Shprintza?” she replied.

Her friend, who was sitting next to her, laughed.

“Let’s just call her Shprintzy!”

“Hi, Shprintzy,” her friend said, joining in.

I fled the dining room and walked slowly back to my bunkhouse, kicking the dirt path, keeping my head low. It was empty, and I lay on my bed, waiting for the tears to come. But they wouldn’t. I felt drained, dazed. It was uncanny, eerie, little to do with the girls and their taunts. It was something worse than sadness — a devastation, the bottom falling out of my world. Hours later, the fog still wouldn’t lift. I felt like something had happened to my brain, like it was a tremendous effort just to think.

In the following days, I had no interest in camp activities anymore. I walked by the softball field listlessly. There was a girl up at bat, hair flying, eyes glinting. That would’ve been me a few days ago. But as she started running, my thoughts drifted. Why would I even want to do that?

More often than not, I found myself in bed. I lay there on the top bunk, under the cobwebby ceiling, watching a spider do its thing, and feeling nothing. Not interest, not disgust. It wasn’t normal. The only thing I could feel was nausea, butterflies in my stomach, like I was nervous for a high school interview all the time.

I followed girls around camp, trying to stay connected to my bunkmates, mimicking what they were doing. But I wasn’t interacting, I wasn’t there. My friends were baffled by my seeming indifference, bemused, and then they just gave up on me.

I felt like I wasn’t normal anymore: Something had taken over my brain and my emotions. I felt like there was no me, like I had no self-esteem, no sense of worth. I’d become a shell of a girl. Who was I?

One Shabbos afternoon, at Shalosh Seudos time, I was huddled under my blanket, dimly registering the chatter of girls getting ready to go to the dining room.

“Where’s my headband?”

“Can I borrow your siddur?”

“You’re changing Shabbos outfits again?”

I shrugged into myself, scrunched up so tightly, until I couldn’t hear anything anymore. I felt like I’d ceased to exist.

Somebody tapped my blanket.

“Yael, you coming?”

I didn’t want to get out of bed, not then, not ever, but when she called to me, she showed me I existed. I walked torpidly along with her to the dining room, timid, withdrawn, and, though I didn’t know it then, deeply depressed.