The book I just finished reading...

Before I take it back to the library, I wanted to mention the book I just finished reading. It is simply called, Manic: A Memoir and was written by Terri Cheney. I found it totally engrossing and nowadays it takes a lot to keep my attention. The author writes well. She is brutally honest about what it is like for her to have bi-polar disorder and provides great detail about her experiences.

There was much of her experience which I could not relate to such as being a high powered lawyer and using lots of different medications and making multiple suicide attempts. Again, I am reminded that there is a continuum of mental health and while some aspects of one person to another may be similar...you just never can predict how things will manifest from one person to the next. Although I have not many of the author's experiences, I could definitely relate to many of her feelings.

I was appalled by how the system and particularly doctors and hospitals treated her. Having witnessed my mother's institutionalization many times, some of her stories brought back memories for me...not of being a patient myself, but of when I was a child and teenager waiting in a mental ward waiting room for my mother.

I applaud the author for her honesty. This book does not make her look like a saint but rather a very vulnerable human being who is constantly at battle with her moods. She must have had a guardian angel because each time she tried to kill herself, she was brought back to life. Some folk don't get the second chance.

Anyways...great book.

Here is a passage from it which illustrates her remarkable talent as a writer. She talks about her stay in a mental hospital and being forced to do puzzles as occupational therapy:

"Little things like a missing puzzle piece matter when you're no longer in control of your environment, when every decision is made for you, from what you eat to what you wear to when you sleep to whom you are allowed to associate with. I found myself jealously guarding my work in progress. It was my own little sphere of autonomy, however flawed and unfinished. In fact, despite all my efforts to be the perfect mental patient, I nearly lost my composure one day when I walked into the puzzle room and discovered one of the schizophrenics eating an ice cap off my Mt. McKinley. "What the hell do you think you are doing?" I demanded, forgetting that one should never confront a schizophrenic directly. It activated all his well-oiled alarms. "I was thirsty," he said, and I was so charmed by the Alice in Wonderland logic of that, I smiled and broke him off another piece.

Brilliant isn't it? Who needs to read fiction when true life gives you so much more.

More of this and that to come!