May, 2001 Monthly Feature : Each month I have been putting together some of my favourites to share with you. Archives
The Thief
[...wherefore hast thou gone, And left me in this dreary world alone? Thy form is here indeed - a lovely one - But thou are fled, gone down the dreary road, That leads to Sorrow's most obscure abode; Thou sittest on the hearth of pale despair, Where For thine own sake I cannot follow thee. |
Percy Bysshe Shelley]
Mental illness is a thief.
Once upon a time I had a son. A bright-eyed, blonde-haired, beautiful son - the most openly affectionate of all my children, he was creative, bright, always curious, and terrifically energetic. I look at a photograph taken of him, around age three, in a pale blue sailor suit - he stands half in shadow, with a topsy-turvy sea behind him, and I wonder if that photograph foretold more than I ever could have imagined.
He is eleven years old now, and recently diagnosed as bi-polar.
For more than a year he has suffered terribly from a deep dark depression.
Convinced, contrary to all evidence, that he has never really been happy, that his entire life has been "a maze of misery and suffering" (his description), he believed that the future promised no better but only worse for him. One of the most painful features of this kind of altered thinking is its ability to deprive the sufferer of hope itself. My son wrapped his depression around him like a blanket, and very nearly smothered in it. Spiralling away from our family, tossed by a storm of self-loathing and pain, the depression alternated with fits of rage so intense they left us both trembling. You see, the illness affects not just his mood and thoughts, but his entire body - my raging child would take on a feral look - that of a wild animal, cornered and furious, and frightened everyone around him.
The diagnosis, bi-polar, was both a relief and a sword in my heart. In the blink of an eye, all the brilliant, happy futures I had seen for him were shadowed with this life-long threat. At the same time, a proper diagnosis meant that there were guidelines (bright light treatment, mood stabilisers, special diet, counselling, tough love?) to follow, therapies, medications that could be tried - and hope for relief from his pain. All of these promises are coming to pass - the medications help tremendously, as does his therapist - perhaps he will be restored to the capacity for serenity and joy that most of us take for granted.
I still have a son, but he will never be the boy-teenager-man I had thought to shepherd through life. What he is, and what he is becoming, are still new to me, as they are to him. We are finding new paths, surprising ones at that, to forge. He finds relief from his topsy-turvy thought through drawing and writing, and I am finding that opening myself up to his view (as seen through his poetry and art) give me a deeper, richer relationship with my son than I might otherwise have had. Though I would give anything I have, or ever hope to have, to spare my son this trial, I cannot help but stand in awe of the forces that are shaping him into such a strong, courageous and creative soul.
K.M.G.
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"So she could only sit mourning for the Charlie that might have been while watching the Charlie that was, with an ache in her heart which found no relief till, putting her hands there as if to ease the pain, they touched the pansies, faded but still showing gold among the somber purple, and then two great tears dropped on them as she sighed: "Ah, me! I do need heart's-ease sooner than I thought!"
from Rose in Bloom, by Louisa May Alcott
From childhood's hour I have not been As others were - I have not seen As others saw - I could not bring My passions from a common spring. From the same source I have not taken My sorrow; I could not awaken My heart to joy at the same tone; And all I lov'd, I lov'd alone. Then - in my childhood - in the dawn Of a most stormy life - was drawn From ev'ry depth of good and ill The mystery which binds me still: From the torrent, or the fountain, From the red cliff of the mountain, From the sun that 'round me roll'd In its autumn tint of gold- From the lightning in the sky As is passed me flying by- From the thunder and the storm, And the cloud that took the form (When the rest of Heaven was blue) Of a demon in my view. Edgar Allan Poe |
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