The Noonday Demon

by Andrew Solomon

Dièry and I met through his wife, who is an old school friend of mine. We have been friends for about a decade and, in part because of our mutual experience of depression, have become extremely close. I am not good at exercising on my own, and for some time Dièry has also been my trainer—a position that breeds an intimacy in many ways as great as that, I experience with my psychiatrist. In addition to structuring an exercise program, he gets me up and keeps me going. Because he constantly tests my limits, he knows what those limits are. He knows when it makes sense to push me to my physical edge and when it is necessary to pull back short of my emotional one. He is one of the first people I call when I begin to dissolve—in part because I know that stepping up my exercise regimen will have a positive effect on my mood, and in part because he has a singular sweetness; in part because he knows whereof I speak, and in part because introspection has given him a capacity for genuine insight. I have had to trust him, and I do. He is the one who came to my house and helped me to shower and get dressed when I was at my lowest. He is among the heroes of my own depression story. And he is authentically generous, someone who chose his work because he believes he can make other people feel good, someone who can be gratified by his own kindness; he has turned the aggression of his self-torture into a productive discipline. This is a rare quality indeed in a world full of people who feel...