Mental Health Awareness Month: An Unquiet Mind

An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness by Kay Redfield Jamison is a fearlessly, brutally honest 1995 memoir examining the exhilarating highs and soul-crushing lows of bipolar disorder (which was clinically called manic-depressive illness during the events of this book) from the perspective of a psychiatrist trapped in the disease. Her frank and intimately personal insights bring bipolar disorder’s cycles of terror, elation and crushing, abject despair into stark and sometimes heartbreaking clarity.

The book was recommended to me soon after I was diagnosed as bipolar in 2008, and it grabbed me on every level—from its smart writing to the recognizable, relatable, almost comforting details of its narrative—and I all but literally didn’t put the book down until I’d finished it.

I have an indelible memory of reading it on the Red Line EL train home from work one night in Chicago, and a man who’d clearly seen me reading it made sure we made eye contact as he stood up to leave and then he patted me reassuringly on the shoulder as he got off at the Sheridan stop. That encounter—a direct extension of this book—made me literally weep the rest of the way home as I was coming to grips with the label “mentally ill” and discovering the signs I’d never thought to notice until then that I wasn’t alone … and realizing that everywhere I go I’d never be alone.

If you are or love someone who is bipolar—or struggling with any mental illness—this book will make you weep, give you hope and quite possibly change your life.

An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

This fearlessly, brutally honest 1995 memoir examines the exhilarating highs and soul-crushing lows of manic-depressive illness (now more commonly called bipolar disorder) from the perspective of a psychiatrist trapped in the disease. Her frank and intimately personal insights bring the disease's cycles of terror, elation and crushing, abject despair into stark and sometimes heartbreaking clarity. It was recommended to me soon after I was diagnosed as bipolar in 2008, and it grabbed me on every level—from its smart writing to the recognizable, relatable, almost comforting details of its narrative—and I all but literally didn’t put the book down until I’d finished it. 

I have an indelible memory of reading it on the Red Line EL train home from work one night in Chicago, and a man who’d clearly seen me reading it made sure we made eye contact as he stood up and then he patted me reassuringly on the shoulder as he got off at the Sheridan stop. That encounter—a direct extension of this book—made me literally weep as I was coming to grips with label mentally ill and discovering the signs I’d never thought to notice until then that I wasn’t alone. 

If you are or love someone who is bipolar—or struggling with any mental illness—this book will make you weep, give you hope and quite possibly change your life.

Despite what your lying eyes might tell you ...

I am not an internationally famous pout model. I'm a PERSON. And I deserve to be treated as such. Except for apparently a few more weeks while what remains of my stand-up-and-black-out-and-crack-the-floor-tile-with-my-face scars continue to dig in their little scar heels and slow the healing process to a glacial pace. Fortunately after three weeks they continue to itch and sting an creep creepily and all spidery into my visual periphery. But now they're also—and I swear I'm selecting my words judiciously so I don't get all graphic and horrifying here—more stickey-outey on my face and tiny sections of them are clearly starting to follow gravity but with a stated mission to never let go—how am I doing so far?—but I still can't be a big boy and bravely pull them off like a band-aid because—and I'm sorry but there's really no delicate way to put this—my absorbable stitches haven't finished (or even started?) absorbing and the damn things are still stitched to my face. 

And you can open your eyes now; I'm done writing about gross things. I think.

So I'm trying not to be all-bipolar-all-the-time because despite my long and verbose and thoroughly documented history of being all bipolar all the time I'm actually fucking sick of it: the free-falls to despondency, the impermanent triumvirates of normalcy and clarity and energy, the endless and clearly more and more arbitrary attempts at changing meds that eventually and predictably fail one after another after another, the new wrinkle that I'm apparently apt to stand up too fast and black out and crack the tile floor with my face, and the endless worry and frustration and exacerbation I cause my family and friends as I cycle through all of the above and ultimately end up sleeping through life. So I'm actively trying not to think about it. But while we're here ... speaking of all of the above, I'm (I hope) finally emerging from a rough four days of hairpin ups and downs and canceled plans and missed uncling and a weekend where I've barely left my bed and never left the house all as a prelude to point out my soaring bedhead. Honest! I just broke my promise to myself to drastically minimize my bipolar talk with the honest intention of providing a few words of context beyond "I haven't showered all weekend" to help you laugh at my lofty locks with a more informed sense of derision. You're welcome.

And you can open your eyes now; I'm done wallowing in emotional and tonsorial self-pity. I think.

Actually, no. In the last few months, four—four!—guys I've had long-ago, too-shy-to-ever-tell-them, clearly unrequited crushes on have announced their happy gay marriages on here. I haven't seen or even thought about some of these guys in over a decade. I didn't even realize we were Facebook friends. And I'm not sure what to do with all these weird, long dormant emotions these four rapid-fire revelations have awakened. And I'm not sure why I'm being all Duckie and weighing down this already ponderous post with this information except to get it out of my head. Which I guess I've done.

And you can open your eyes now; I'm done brain-dumping all the vaguely whiny, I-don't-know-what-to-do-with-all-of-this emotional noise in my head. For realz.

So it's a relatively quiet night here at the Stigers Home for Bitchy Cats. Mom is reading, sometimes aloud to my mostly blind dad; Sibelius' watery, disciplined, asymmetrical, shamelessly triumphant Second Symphony is on repeat in the background; Dad just accidentally stepped on the cat, an incident I will be neither amused nor disquieted by; I downloaded a Gaither Vocal Band southern gospel song for my folks and now iTunes is trying to sell me all the desperate tatters of the inauguration entertainment lineup; we're all waiting for the dire-warninged but now rudely late snowpocalypse that has kept everyone pre-emptively hiding in our houses all day; and one of us is obsessively typing a seven-mile Facebook post on his shattered iPhone screen. But I won't say who.

And you can open your eyes now. Or close them with me; I'm going to bed now so I can get up at six for a much-needed ass-whupping by my trainer. And I'm not taming my hair for her.