what to think?

A few weeks ago, Jack and I started watching The United States of Tara on Showtime. Briefly, Tara is a woman who was abused in her childhood and developed multiple personalities, and the show is about how she and her family live with her illness. There are story lines about Tara, her numerous personalities, her husband, their two kids, and Tara's sister. When we started watching, Tara had apparently returned home from a hospital stay, and everyone seemed to think she had her illness under control as long as she stayed on her numerous medications. The stresses of life quickly built and one of Tara's personalities re-emerged. Tara realizes she is experiencing memory lapses again, which is a clear indication that her illness is not under control anymore, and she is nearly overwhelmed by the intensity of it all. She cannot believe it is happening again, she cannot bear that her family will have to live through it all again, she cannot bring herself to tell her husband that the medications are not enough. She realizes that she is lying to him and everyone, but it is all too much to deal with out loud, even with the people she loves the most. It isn't long before her lie is exposed to everyone in a very public, painful way, and her family reacts in a very normal way--they feel betrayed and hurt and angry.

I know it's only a show on TV. Probably sounds over-the-top dramatic. I also know that many mental health experts dismiss claims of multiple-personality disorder as misdiagnosed or even made up. But it's only a TV show. Not a TV show I'd recommend to just anybody, because there's some fairly crazy stuff going on, but it is so well done that I'd recommend it to anybody. Well, anybody who could enjoy a show like The Sopranos. Not for everybody, but very well done.

The moments during which Tara's lie was exposed were powerful. As I watched the events leading up to those moments, I could feel her anguish, realizing she was still so sick, feeling so powerless over her own mind, unable to bring herself to re-open the wound caused to her family by her own special form of crazy. I watched the reactions on the faces of her family, and listened closely as her husband said to her, "I've never been anything but nice to you," and then walked away from her, leaving her standing there, alone, to cope with the weight of her actions. I felt paralyzed as I experienced her pain and the pain of her husband.

Maybe if you've never told a big lie, you would have watched this show and not thought about it again. But it haunted me. It opened a somewhat healed wound in an incredibly personal way. I even talked to Carolyn about it several days later.

And while I think this show is very well made, I suppose there is only so much a TV show can portray. Amazingly, in the next episode, the family made a few wisecracks, the husband said he was mad because she lied, he admitted he had behaved badly because he had been so angry, and then life went on. Apparently they all really were just angry because she lied.

I still don't know what to make of it.