The Tears

Posted on June 15, 2005 in Bipolar Disorder

All is not completely lost at National Public Radio, though we must fight for its independence these days from the radical wRong. A friend handed me a page upon which Havard Psychiatry Professor Kay Redfield Jamison delivered an apologia for her very existence:

Like millions of Americans, I was dealt a hand of intense emotions and volatile moods. I have had manic-depressive illness, also known as bipolar disorder, since I was 18 years old. It is an illness that ensures that those who have it will experience a frightening, chaotic and emotional ride. It is not a gentle or easy disease. And, yet, from it I have come to see how important a certain restlessness and discontent can be in one’s life; how important the jagged edges and pain can be in determining the course and force of one’s life.

Jamison goes on to deliver an impassioned championing of those of us who live with the disease, not calling for stopping our medications, but for appreciating the challenges and the textures these moods create for our psyches, the sharp angles and fuzzy strings that follow the tears.