An Unquiet Mind - Kay Redfield Jamison [36]
Recently, I pulled down my copy of The Wind in the Willows, which had remained on the bookshelf unopened once I had regained my ability to read, and tried to track down what it was that had created such a shattering reaction. After a brief search I found the passage I had been looking for. Mole, who had been away from his underground home for a very long time exploring the world of light and adventure with his friend Ratty, one winter evening is walking along and suddenly and powerfully, with “recollection in fullest flood,” smells his old home. Desperate to revisit it, he struggles to persuade the Rat to accompany him:
“Please stop, Ratty!” pleaded the poor Mole, in anguish of heart. “You don’t understand! It’s my home, my old home! I’ve just come across the smell of it, and it’s close by here, really quite close. And I must go to it, I must, I must! O, come back, Ratty! Please, please come back!”
The Rat, initially preoccupied and reluctant to take the time to do so, finally does visit Mole in his home. Later, after Christmas carols and a nightcap of mulled ale in front of the fire, Mole reflects on how much he has missed the warmth and security of what he once had known, all of those “friendly things which had long been unconsciously a part of him.” At this point in my rereading, I remembered exactly, and with visceral force, what I had felt reading it not long after I had started taking lithium: I missed my home, my mind, my life of books and “friendly things,” my world where most things were in their place, and where nothing awful could come in to wreck havoc. Now I had no choice but to live in the broken world that my mind had forced upon me. I longed for the days that I had known before madness and medication had insinuated their way into every aspect of my existence.
Rules for the Gracious Acceptance of Lithium into Your Life
Clear out the medicine cabinet before guests arrive for dinner or new lovers stay the night.
Remember to put the lithium back into the cabinet the next day.
Don’t be too embarrassed by your lack of coordination or your inability to do well the sports you once did with ease.
Learn to laugh about spilling coffee, having the palsied signature of an eighty-year-old, and being unable to put on cuff links in less than ten minutes.
Smile when people joke about how they think they “need to be on lithium.”
Nod intelligently, and with conviction, when your physician explains to you the many advantages of lithium in leveling out the chaos in your life.
Be patient when waiting for this leveling off. Very patient. Reread the Book of Job. Continue being patient. Contemplate the similarity between the phrases “being patient” and “being a patient.”
Try not to let the fact that you can’t read without effort annoy you. Be philosophical. Even if you could read, you probably wouldn’t remember most of it anyway.
Accommodate to a certain lack of enthusiasm and bounce that you once had. Try not to think about all the wild nights you once had. Probably best not to have had those nights anyway.
Always keep in perspective how much better you are. Everyone else certainly points it out often enough, and, annoyingly enough, it’s probably true.
Be appreciative. Don’t even consider stopping your lithium.
When you do stop, get manic, get depressed, expect to hear two basic themes from your family, friends, and healers:
But you were doing so much better, I just don’t understand it.
I told you this would happen.
Restock your medicine cabinet.
Psychological issues ultimately proved far more important