What happens when someone you love suddenly cliff-dives into mental illness? And then you discover that there may be no return? This experimental memoir reflects on the author's intimate and complicated relationship with a woman diagnosed with suicidal depression, and the startling and chaotic new world of locked wards, heavy medications, and electroconvulsive therapy that follows. Interweaving personal essays, fragmented prose, poetry, stream-of-consciousness, and text exchanges, this collage-style book invites the reader into the mysterious world of a treatment-resistant condition and illuminates the urgency and intimacy of caring for someone with an ultimately fatal mental illness. Running through the center of the narrative is the relationship between two people whose fierce love for each other is both the tie that binds and the anchor that drowns. “Lifeline” is a testament to the importance of hard conversations, humor, and dignity in the face of a courageous battle for sanity; an interrogation of the flaws in the medical system; a debate on when life stops being worth living; and a conversation and reflection on what it means to love someone enough to go on without them. An experimental memoir covering a very specific relationship that ultimately comes to a tragic ending. It interweaves narrative sections with poetry, text message exchanges, and stream-of-consciousness.
