An Unquiet Mind - Kay Redfield Jamison [53]
David worked at the hospital during the days so I reinvolved myself in the London I had once cared so much about. I went for long walks in the parks, visited and revisited the Tate, wandered aimlessly around the Victoria and Albert, as well as the Natural History and Science Museums. One day, on David’s suggestion, I took the boat from Westminster Pier to Greenwich and back; another day I took the train to Canterbury. I hadn’t been to Canterbury in years and had seen it only, but unforgettably, through rather manic eyes. I had long-lasting, mystical memories of the dark gorgeous stained glass, the chilled sounds, the simple, grim place of Becket’s murder, and the intense, transient light patterns on the cathedral floor. This time, however, I kneeled without ecstasy, prayed without belief, and felt as a stranger. It was, all the same, a quieter and gentler sense of Canterbury that I got.
In the midst of this godless kneeling, I suddenly remembered that I had forgotten to take my lithium the night before. I reached into my purse for my medication, opened the bottle, and immediately dropped all of the pills onto the cathedral floor. The floor was filthy, there were people all around, and I was too embarrassed to bend over and pick up the pills. It was a moment not only of embarrassment, but of reckoning as well; it meant I would have to ask David to write a prescription for me, and that meant, of course, that I would have to tell him about my illness. I couldn’t help thinking, with more than a trace of bitterness, that God seldom opens one door that he doesn’t close another. However, I couldn’t afford not to obtain new medication: the last time I had stopped my lithium I had gotten manic almost immediately. I could not survive another year like the one I had just been through.
That night, before we went to bed, I told David about my manic-depressive illness. I dreaded what his reaction would be and was furious with myself for not having told him earlier. He was silent for a very long time, and I could see that he was sorting through all of the implications, medical and personal, of what I had just said. I had no doubt he loved me, but he knew as well as I did how uncertain the course of the illness could be. He was an army officer, his family was extremely conservative, he desperately wanted children, and manic-depressive illness was hereditary. It also was not talked about. It was unpredictable, and not uncommonly fatal. I wished I had never told him; I wished I was normal, wished I was anywhere but where I was. I felt like an idiot for hoping that anyone could accept what I had just said and resigned myself to a subtle round of polite farewells. We were not married, after all, nor had we been seriously involved for any extended time.
Finally, after eternity had ticked to a close, David turned to me, put his arms around me, and said softly, “I say. Rotten luck.” I was overcome with relief; I also was struck by the absolute truth of what he just had said. It was rotten luck, and somebody finally understood. All the while, in the midst of my relief, the small, shredded island of humor that remained in my mind, recorded, on a totally different brain track, that David’s phrasing sounded like something straight out of a P. G. Wodehouse novel. I told him this and reminded him of the Wodehouse character who complained that while it was true that he wasn’t disgruntled, he wasn’t altogether gruntled either. We both laughed for a long time, somewhat nervously to be sure, but some of the awful ice was broken.
David could not have been kinder or more accepting; he asked me question after question about what I had been