larger world was concerned, I tried to Act Normal. Being mad is, to put it bluntly, embarrassing. In manic depression, it is too easy to lose oneâs inhibitions, and the ordinary traffic of the world is weirdly dissonant: codes of behaviour and decorum seem peculiarly frivolous compared to the fury of emotions within.
Sometimes the incongruous disjunction of the private and public worlds is as ludicrous as it is heartbreaking. The poet William Cowperâs Memoir records his breakdown in 1763, triggered by undertaking a job of a very public nature, as Clerk of the Journals in the House of Lords, and finding his suitability for the job questioned. High-stress work in the public eye was the opposite of what he really needed, which was a vast and protected privacy. As he became more ill, the breakthroughs from the public world into his private soul seemed maddening interruptions. In particular, his laundress and her husband always seemed to be busy too near him in his chambers, and at one point, suicidal, he tried to hang himself in his bedroom while the laundress was in the dining room: she âmust have passed by the bedchamber door . . . while I was hanging upon itâ.
Depressed and vulnerable, I was frightened of clumsiness. Stupidity felt as brutal and painful as being punched. I felt as if I were walking in crystal forests with stained-glass skies and crassness was as violent as swinging concrete arms; words like dumb-bells; cranesfor eyes. At times, even good-natured bonhomie seemed a terrible cacophony of raw trumpets baying, with violins used as percussion for gross toasts, a piano lid a drinks table, clarinets stuck, reeds down, into the ground, used as flagpoles for Ingerland bunting, and flutes stolen as sticks to crack heads open.
Most of the time, like a sick cat, I wanted to hide unseen in a dark corner, trembling with the toxicity of madness streaming through my veins. I couldnât stand being mothered, but I sought consolation. I craved understanding, but I staggered inwardly at the ways in which manic depression could be grossly misunderstood. One friendâs brother, heavily into diet-related health, offered his opinion: âYou eat too much wheat.â I felt winded by the abyss between my experience and his comprehension, as if he really thought that toast and marmalade could convulse the mind to psychosis, as if too many cheese sandwiches could cause suicidal ideation.
From time to time, I sought out particular friends for particular reasons: one, because he was authoritative by nature, and he was willing and able to outshout the siren voices in my head; another, because she could join me wherever I was: if I was kite-high with a mile-long streamer of giggles bubbling behind me, she could find me there and laugh with me, but when I sank and my heart had plunged like a broken kite to the Earth, suddenly, she was there, too, right beside me, serious, kind and quiet.
My friends were all different, but the nature of their friendship was alike. They were constant, loyal and enduring. I am still appalled at the time-consuming nature of an illness like this, and I am beyond gratitude for their generosity; they gave and gave and gave without end and without knowing how long it would last. I could count on them, knowing that they would hold themselves strong. If they had not seemed strong, I couldnât have leant on them, and it wasnât thatthey didnât have their own difficulties and sadnesses in that long year but rather that they took immense care to hold firm in the hours they spent with me and to be weak, if they needed to be, elsewhere.
One gave me a birdâs nest, woven with the softest feathers and moss, with a note tucked inside saying âA nest for your spiritâ. One, on a horribly bleak morning in winter-spring, left a tray of gorgeous pansies on my doorstep. One, who lives too far away for me to see her easily, called me often on the phone. She could hear the
Sometimes the incongruous disjunction of the private and public worlds is as ludicrous as it is heartbreaking. The poet William Cowperâs Memoir records his breakdown in 1763, triggered by undertaking a job of a very public nature, as Clerk of the Journals in the House of Lords, and finding his suitability for the job questioned. High-stress work in the public eye was the opposite of what he really needed, which was a vast and protected privacy. As he became more ill, the breakthroughs from the public world into his private soul seemed maddening interruptions. In particular, his laundress and her husband always seemed to be busy too near him in his chambers, and at one point, suicidal, he tried to hang himself in his bedroom while the laundress was in the dining room: she âmust have passed by the bedchamber door . . . while I was hanging upon itâ.
Depressed and vulnerable, I was frightened of clumsiness. Stupidity felt as brutal and painful as being punched. I felt as if I were walking in crystal forests with stained-glass skies and crassness was as violent as swinging concrete arms; words like dumb-bells; cranesfor eyes. At times, even good-natured bonhomie seemed a terrible cacophony of raw trumpets baying, with violins used as percussion for gross toasts, a piano lid a drinks table, clarinets stuck, reeds down, into the ground, used as flagpoles for Ingerland bunting, and flutes stolen as sticks to crack heads open.
Most of the time, like a sick cat, I wanted to hide unseen in a dark corner, trembling with the toxicity of madness streaming through my veins. I couldnât stand being mothered, but I sought consolation. I craved understanding, but I staggered inwardly at the ways in which manic depression could be grossly misunderstood. One friendâs brother, heavily into diet-related health, offered his opinion: âYou eat too much wheat.â I felt winded by the abyss between my experience and his comprehension, as if he really thought that toast and marmalade could convulse the mind to psychosis, as if too many cheese sandwiches could cause suicidal ideation.
From time to time, I sought out particular friends for particular reasons: one, because he was authoritative by nature, and he was willing and able to outshout the siren voices in my head; another, because she could join me wherever I was: if I was kite-high with a mile-long streamer of giggles bubbling behind me, she could find me there and laugh with me, but when I sank and my heart had plunged like a broken kite to the Earth, suddenly, she was there, too, right beside me, serious, kind and quiet.
My friends were all different, but the nature of their friendship was alike. They were constant, loyal and enduring. I am still appalled at the time-consuming nature of an illness like this, and I am beyond gratitude for their generosity; they gave and gave and gave without end and without knowing how long it would last. I could count on them, knowing that they would hold themselves strong. If they had not seemed strong, I couldnât have leant on them, and it wasnât thatthey didnât have their own difficulties and sadnesses in that long year but rather that they took immense care to hold firm in the hours they spent with me and to be weak, if they needed to be, elsewhere.
One gave me a birdâs nest, woven with the softest feathers and moss, with a note tucked inside saying âA nest for your spiritâ. One, on a horribly bleak morning in winter-spring, left a tray of gorgeous pansies on my doorstep. One, who lives too far away for me to see her easily, called me often on the phone. She could hear the
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