Author’s Note: This is the conclusion to a memoir about my year battling severe mental illness, a devastating combination of anxiety and depression. I offer it here as a testament to the power of kindness, that to myself and that from others.
Christmas Eve was the date that the miracle began to unfold. I was scheduled to spend Christmas Day with my sons at their mother’s house. (We had been able to maintain a cordial relationship and work together bringing up our boys.) I went to bed and felt a tiny bit of something I thought I might never experience again: excitement. I slept reasonably well and woke up on Christmas morning and felt stirrings of something I’d almost forgotten was possible…happiness.
I made the trek to my ex’s home and drank a great deal of coffee, making up for lost time. After opening presents, my younger son and I took a long walk around the neighborhood where I confided in him that I thought I might be truly out of the emotional abyss. (This walk provided the germ of a plan that he and I continue to this day that each of us occasionally checks in with the other regarding our emotional well-being. The suggestion came from him, which demonstrates his remarkable ability to manage his own turbulent emotions.) We returned in time for dinner, which I ate voraciously, finally able to savor the taste and texture of food again.
I was at first hesitant to divulge to anyone else that I had come out of the darkness: I had some fear that it was a brief, temporary remission; and that I’d soon slip backwards. But a couple of days passed and I still felt good, listening to music, eating things I liked, and reading, especially poetry.
When my partner and I had checked into our motel in Cambridge, Maryland, for our mini-vacation, I spilled it to her. We spent the next several days exploring Cambridge and the surrounding area, including birding at Blackwater NWR, one of my favorite birding hotspots, and visiting the nearby newly-opened Harriet Tubman Museum. On my own, I discovered several fine coffee shops and partook as I had not in many months.
In one of these establishments I drafted a poem entitled “A Lesson.” It was inspired by these lines from the poem by Ada Limón, then Poet Laureate and one of my absolute favorite poets:
“The great black scavenger flies parallel now, each of us speeding,
intently and driven, toward what we’ve been taught to do with death.”
I had brought her book The Carrying, another sign of recovery. That night I shared it with my partner who made some suggestions for revisions and thus I completed my first poem in over a year:
“Death faded painfully slow,
left traces. And left me
wondering if that was the lesson.
**********
“There is much to be learned and wrung from terror, anxiety, fear: there are still forms which the imagination can seize from these dark seas of the mind and spirit.”—Theodore Roethke
It’s been almost six years since my resurrection and I have not had any further episodes. I wish I could say that anxiety had completely vanished, but in fact, it’s a constant presence along the periphery of my awareness, a kind of aura. I don’t let it guide my actions and I no longer allow myself to believe that any difficult emotions of the moment are permanent. Sometimes it can be dispelled by a song or a poem, sometimes by a walk or bike ride; sometimes I just have to be patient and go on with whatever I’m doing until it dissolves.
My experience and my extensive reading in the literature of madness have led me to believe that there is no cure because mental illness—the emotional disorders at least—is not an illness. The biomedical model of treatment has largely failed and has yet to discover any internal cause for depression and its related conditions. Psychiatric meds, properly prescribed and monitored, can certainly mitigate symptoms sufficiently for the patient to take on the hard work of symptom management, therapy and coping strategies.
In my case, a deliberate and conscious return to the activities like reading, music, birdwatching, biking and walks that have always been sources of sustenance and joy has been a major coping mechanism. Making the effort to interact with fellow humans beyond the simple exchange of money for goods or requests for information is equally important. I now enjoy chatting up baristas, clerks, museum docents and fellow attendees of cultural events. I have gotten to know many of my neighbors in the building in which I reside, including young children who I have known since their birth. My regular check-ins with my son are also mutually beneficial.
My most important tool and one that both derives from and makes use of all of the above is my writing. While it’s highly unlikely that creativity leads to madness or vice versa, there is no doubt that the correlation is strong. Carl Jung asserts, “There are hardly any exceptions to the rule that a person must pay dearly for the divine gift of the creative fire.” My (admittedly sketchy) hypothesis is that madness and creativity exist in a circular relationship. The symptoms of emotional disturbance often spark the creative impulse, possibly through some instinctive awareness on the part of the artist that creating art is a powerful tool for managing difficult emotions. These turbulent feelings themselves can provide powerful material with which to make art.
At the same time, the naked openness to experience and the need to go deeply inside oneself to tap the wellsprings of creative energy carry a great risk to many of us “blessed” with the divine gift, especially if we are also touched with madness. As poet Frank O’Hara says, “You go on your nerve.” Emily Dickinson, the most important poet for me, writes: “If your Nerve, deny you—Go above your Nerve.” So the wheel turns. If we are fortunate enough, if we persist, we can ride rather than be crushed under it.
In any case, the efficacy of writing is reinforced every time I write, including my work on this piece. Each poem, each creative non-fiction piece in which I engage with my deepest emotions, including joy as much as those more challenging, provides that needed “momentary stay against confusion” that Robert Frost describes.
I am far from alone. As Suzanne Scanlon points out, a disordered mental life “wouldn’t ever be held by a medical-pharmaceutical model of illness, but it would be held by a life dedicated to reading, writing, to art.” (1)
I had some serious apprehension about undertaking this memoir, about engaging again with the deep emotions my episodes of madness had brought on. Did I really want to disinter those very memories of suffering, to relive so many frightening and humiliating experiences, to account honestly for my own mistakes and unfortunate behaviors? But as I worked, slowly and hesitantly at first, then with growing enthusiasm, I began to experience the joy of the creative act even when the subject is painful or difficult. The quiet thrill of putting words together, the satisfaction of extracting another memory and fully relating it, performing the required introspection, all came together in a satisfying—even fulfilling—way.
I write something almost every day now. I have returned with great zeal to music, reading, birdwatching and especially biking. The fact that writing this essay and riding my bike involves balancing and steady motion is not lost on me. Balance and motion: These keep me active and sane enough to live with madness and even sometimes to draw from it. Every day has something to offer and I’m generally glad to get out of bed and discover it.
Note
(1) Committed, Suzanne Scanlon, Vintage Books, 2024. I have used several quotes from this book that inspired me to write my own memoir. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
