White Nightgowns Covered in Blood

On Kier-la Janisse’s House of Psychotic Women

Jesse Fabert

This essay is forthcoming from Hedva's essay collection How To Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom, out September 3, 2024.

A favorite recent meme: “I’m only friends with people who would have been lobotomized in the 1950s.” I’d be one of those poor lobotomized bitches too.

For I, like them, have been given clinical diagnosis of mental illness, and I, like them, have laughed and cried too loudly, danced unhingedly, screamed in desperation and ecstasy, not been able to sleep, slept too much, taken the name of God in vain, been a nuisance, inconvenience, and danger to myself and others. I have tried to destroy myself, I have been desperate. Also, like them, I earn my own money, got a divorce, have sex, am gay, cavort with other gays, can read, enjoy singing to myself, dress how I want (sometimes like a man), drink, smoke, curse, stay out late, am childless, like being alone, am ambitious and want a career, insist that my work is important, and don’t want to clean the house nor cook.