I have been very concerned, perhaps unduly so, with how knowing that I have manic-depressive illness will affect people’s perception of who I am and what I do. There is a thin line between what is considered zany and what is thought to be — a ghastly but damning word — “inappropriate,” and only a sliverish gap exists between being thought intense, or a bit volatile, and being dismissively labeled “unstable” (p. 202).
From my mid-teens on, although I’m hardly the world’s most self-aware person, I grew and remained aware that even some of my closest hard-partying friends regarded me as, well, a little nuts. In high school, it was “extreme,” in college it was “hard core” and during my first couple of jobs it was “intense,” but they all meant the same thing: This Prufrock guy is, well, at least a little bit crazy.
At a party thrown by a co-worker not long after I left college, a co-worker admitted, under the spell of many drinks, that she had considered not inviting me to the party because she thought I was, well, “a little intense.” She could barely stand up at the time, so I didn’t follow up with questions. That’s kind of a shame. I’d like to know how she would have answered such queries as, “Did you think I might pose a physical threat to you or your guests?” or “Did you think that the knowledge that I was coming might have dissuaded your closer friends from coming?” I wouldn’t have asked just to be mean or snarky; I was then, and am now, sincerely curious.
I’m still negotiating this particular minefield (I just typed “mindfield,” a Freudian slip about which I’ll write more later). The first person I told was Mrs. Prufrock, but after her, I started with the people who had to know. That experience made me a bit gunshy about telling anyone else, as you can see.
Since then, I’ve told my sibs and few long-term friends, people who were around and in my life when this stuff first started to manifest itself. As you might expect, they all expressed sympathy and, even more importantly, they all linked the disorder, without my help, to incidents from our shared pasts. One has some mental disorders herself; I recently had a lengthy phone discussion with her, about which you will be reading in a later post.
But beyond that circle of trust I have not gone. There’s no need to at work, where I have enough problems as it is. Outside of work there are not only risks but also strong disincentives.
I have been involved in a certain type of public issue. My position has been about the worst type to offer in these situations: honorable and strongly argued, but complicated. People don’t intuitively get the points I’m trying to make sometimes, which makes it easer for opponents to sway members of the public with appeals to emotion, false comparisons and ad hominem argument. Moreover, my tone often gets heated. This happens because I honestly do believe these folks are deliberately making false arguments. (Why is another issue; I assume, but cannot prove, that they know they can’t make their case on the merits as well as I know it.)
And when my tone gets heated, my three principal opponents are quick to accuse me of being crazy, of having issues, and so forth.
Of course, they’re right. I am crazy, I do have issues — just none relevant to this issue and the debate surrounding it. I hold the position I hold because it is correct and honorable; I make the arguments I make because I believe they are accurate and logical. I’m willing to use appeals to emotion to counter same, but I will not stoop to ad hominem argument.
And I’ve got to be the public face on my side of this issue because no one else around here is doing the job that I’m doing. (Some are as capable but just don’t have the time or energy.)
If my condition were to become public knowledge, I am confident that our opponents would use it against me. On the basis only of what I have said so far, they already have accused me publicly of having psychological “issues.” Giving them confirmation, even if the issues relate to bipolar disorder rather than what they have in mind — narcissism, or schizophrenia or what-have-you — probably would do significant damage to our side.
Mental-health advocates like to talk about removing the stigma from mental illness. And as we recently were reminded, we have come a long way from the days when Tom Eagleton could get kicked off a presidential ticket because he had once undergone a few electroshock treatments. But that stigma still remains.
I’d like to come right out and say there’s nothing wrong with my disorder, not least because I believe that’s so. But the hard truth is that I cannot do so at work, and if I do it outside of work, I risk severely damaging a movement that a lot of people have put a lot of time into, a movement whose outcome otherwise might be months or years away. I can waste my time if I want, and perhaps someday I will. But right now I cannot, and will not, waste theirs. Perhaps that’s just an excuse, but now it strikes me as a damned good one.
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Got a copy today of William Styron’s Darkness Visible. I’m not sure when I’ll get to it because I have a ton of work-related reading to do first. But it comes well-recommended. Perhaps I’ll give it the same treatment I’ve given the Apostle Jamison’s book.
