Pondering Mad Genius: The Beyonds of Life

Since I heard the news of David Foster Wallace's death, I've been thinking a lot about the connection between creativity and mental illness or the "mad genius" by which it is so often referred. It makes me wonder about the "beyonds of my life."

Most days I am fine. Well, that’s probably an exaggeration. Most days I am okay. I function well as a professional, as a mother and as a wife. Those are the good days, the days I don’t have to actually think about propelling myself forward.

But other days are harder. Those are the days when I wake up dreading the day, not certain how I am going to slog my way through the sludgy tiredness of my own mind. Those are the days I resort to living I hours, minutes, even seconds sometimes.

If I can make it to lunch I will be halfway there, I tell myself. Or, if the mind-numbing, limb-deadening, inexplicable sadness is just unbearable: just the shower, just stand up and take a shower, I promise myself. Of course, somewhere in my foggy mind I know there will always be something I have to face beyond the shower, beyond lunch, beyond…the beyonds of my life never seem to end.

One such day sticks in my mind and knifes in my heart. Well, maybe not so much a day as an episode. A paralyzing episode of sadness and despair so deep and mysterious that I find myself propped on the floor of my daughter’s bedroom, my back to her bed, tears leaking from my eyes.

Mama, are you sad? She asks me.

Yes. Sad. I can barely form the words on my weary lips.

Why?

I don’t know. No reason really. It’s not you or your brother. It’s nothing, my body, my brain…Faltering, not sure how to explain further.

Mama, did you take your medicine today? asks my wise, then not-yet-nine-years old daughter.

Medicine. A lifetime of daily doses of antidepressants, mood stabilizers and anti-anxiety pills that work fine most of the time. Medicine that I explain to my daughter and later on, perhaps, to my son, as providing my body with chemicals which my brain does not do on its own. A simplistic and perhaps inaccurate explanation. It is the best I can do.

Medicine that, unlike generations before me, I do not have to hide in shame, do not have to, in fact, should not, explain away as nothing to my children. Because, although I hope against hope that my children escape this legacy, it is very possible that they, too, may need to take such medicine for this disease. Bipolar disease, my genetic legacy.

If I cannot avoid passing this disease on to them I have vowed that I can at least be vigilant in recognizing its earliest tentacles taking hold. I watch my daughter, holding my breath with every mood swing, my ears perking up at the smallest suggestion that she finds her body image unacceptable. Is she okay? I wonder, Is this normal? Should I worry?