An Unquiet Mind - Kay Redfield Jamison [50]
But it was a tidal existence: When I was depressed, nothing came to me, and nothing came out of me. When manic, or mildly so, I would write a paper in a day, ideas would flow, I would design new studies, catch up on my patient charts and correspondence, and chip away at the mindless mounds of bureaucratic paperwork that defined the job of a clinic director. Like everything else in my life, the grim was usually set off by the grand; the grand, in turn, would yet again be canceled out by the grim. It was a loopy but intense life: marvelous, ghastly, dreadful, indescribably difficult, gloriously and unexpectedly easy, complicated, great fun, and a no-exit nightmare.
My friends, fortunately, were either a bit loopy themselves, or remarkably tolerant of the chaos that formed the basic core of my emotional existence. I spent a great deal of time with them during those assistant-professorship years. I also traveled frequently, for business and pleasure, and played squash with interns, friends, and colleagues. Sports were fun only up to a point, however, as lithium threw off my coordination. This was true not only for squash, but particularly for riding horses; I finally had to stop riding for several years, after falling off one too many times while jumping. I can look back now and think that perhaps all of that wasn’t so bad, but, in fact, each time I had to give up a sport I had to give up not only the fun of that sport, but also that part of myself that I had known as an athlete. Manic-depressive illness forces one to deal with many aspects of growing old—with its physical and mental infirmities—many decades in advance of age itself.
Life in the fast track, the dashing about and scrambling for tenure and for recognition from one’s peers, continued at a frenetic pace. When I was manic, the tempo seemed slow; when I was normal, frenetic seemed fine; when I was depressed, the pace was impossible. Other than my psychiatrist, there was no one I could talk to about the real extent of the difficulties I was having. Or perhaps there was, but it never really occurred to me to try. There were next to no other women in the adult psychiatry division; the women that did exist in the department all clumped together in child psychiatry. They were no protection against the weasels in the woodwork, and, besides, they had weasels enough in their own quarters. Although most of my male colleagues were fair, and many were exceptionally supportive, there were several men whose views of women had to be experienced to be believed.
The Oyster was one such man, one such experience. Named for his smooth and slithery essence, the Oyster was a senior professor: he was patronizing, smug, and had all of the intellectual and emotional complexity of, as one might expect, a small mollusk. He thought of women in terms of breasts, not minds, and it always seemed to irritate him that most women had both. He also thought women who strayed into academic medicine were fundamentally flawed, and, as I was particularly disinclined to be deferential, I seemed especially to annoy him. We served together on the Appointments and Promotions Committee for the department, where I was the only woman among the eighteen members. On the occasions when he would actually show up for meetings—the Oyster was notorious for earning a maximum amount of money for spending a minimum amount of time in the hospital—I would try to sit directly across the table from him and watch his failed attempts to be unfailingly polite.
I always had the sense that he thought I was a bit of a mutant but, because I was not absolutely hideous, that I might yet be saved by a good marriage. I, for my part, would randomly congratulate him on his efforts to recruit more women into the department. His lack of gray matter was ably matched by his lack of wit, and, as he of course had never made any attempts whatsoever in that direction, he would look suspiciously in