I've just finished reading Manic: A Memoir by Terri Cheney. I read a lot of books about Bipolar Disorder, some specifically about Childhood Bipolar Disorder, some just about Bipolar Disorder in general. This is the first memoir I've read written by someone who has suffered from the disorder for many years.
Ms. Cheney made a very important decision when writing her memoir, a decision that perfected it, in my opinion. She chose to write the book episodically rather than chronologically, preferring to give readers a realistic sense of the disconnectedness one feels when swinging from Mania to Depression and back again. Each chapter covers a different episode in her life, some manic, some hypomanic, some depressed.
The book is filled with gorgeous writing that transports me into Cheney's experience. She writes so viscerally, and with a sense of humor that belies her devastating experiences. Here is a woman who has learned to laugh rather than to cry. A couple of the many passages that I have marked:
"Terribly, terribly happy was quickly dissolving into not so terribly comfortable. How absolutely marvelous. How thrilling. Probably nobody but a manic-depressive can understand that putting on the brakes is sometimes far more exhilarating than winning the race."
...
"I was probably manic, I realized. It added up: None of the other people on safari had started bawling at the sight of two cheetahs humping. Nobody else kept standing up in the jeep and making sweeping pronouncements like, "Surely this is how God meant the world to be." And nobody else was spending all night camped out in a deck chair, expecting the stars to speak to them. But recognition of mania is one thing. Doing something about it is something else altogether."
Reading Cheney's memoir was greatly agitating for me, forcing me to move forward in time twenty years, when Youngest will be well into adulthood. It gave me a glimpse of what an adult suffering from bipolar thinks and feels and how they function (or don't function, in some cases). It didn't go so far as to give me great hope, since there were at least three suicide attempts in the 242 pages, but it makes me feel more prepared, anyway. It performed well under my personal opinion of this loathsome disease: "Have no expectations, and prepare for anything."
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