THE PERFECT OTHER

In her first book, Leddy reflects on how she came to terms with her schizophrenic sister’s death.

The author grew up in awe of her older sister, Kait. Yet however much Kait loved her, Kyleigh knew that “I was born a shadow of my sister—paler, blonder, wispier, and more hesitant.” Smart, mischievous, and charming, Kait sometimes demonstrated erratic behaviors that emerged as suddenly as they disappeared. But no one thought anything of her antics until she reached adolescence. After the family moved from the small coastal town of Marblehead, Massachusetts, to Philadelphia, Kait’s volatility led to expulsion from her Quaker school. In high school, she quickly earned notoriety for her escapades, one of which involved suffering a head injury when she tried to sneak out of a window at her house. She turned violent not long afterward, forcing her parents to send her to a psychiatric hospital, which released her “undiagnosed.” Leddy watched in horror as the sister she idolized slipped away from her over the next few years while her parents stood by, feeling helpless. “You think you can get ahead of it, fix it,” writes the author. “She’s a little girl walking ahead of you, spilling paint from a bucket. You crawl behind her, trying to mop up every spot before it soaks into the fibers of the carpet.” More concussive incidents complicated an eventual diagnosis of schizophrenia. In and out of treatment centers, Kait went on personality-changing medication to stop her terrifying rages, but only after she disappeared while walking across a bridge did her broken family realize she had become suicidal. Threading commentary on traumatic brain injury and its relationship to psychiatric disorders throughout, Leddy seeks courageously to “break the stigma” and silence that still surround schizophrenia and similar disorders while paying tribute to the woman whose life so profoundly transformed her own.

A moving and deeply felt memoir about family and mental illness.