An Unquiet Mind

by Kay Redfield Jamison

Each day I awoke deeply tired, a feeling as foreign to my natural self as being bored or indifferent to life.

appear at times merry and in good heart, talk, too, before others quite reasonably, and it looks as if I felt, too, God knows how well within my skin.

took endless hot baths in the vain hope that I might somehow escape from the deadness and dreariness.

I then would have it cut to a bob. The moods, the hair, the clothes all changed from week to week, month to month. My

“It is only temporary, it will pass, you will get over it,” but of course they had no idea how I felt, although they were certain that they did.

“Patient reluctant to be with people when depressed because she feels her depression is such an intolerable burden on others”;

Profound melancholia is a day-in, day-out, night-in, night-out, almost arterial level of agony.

as one would move a sick shark around its tank in order to keep the water circulating through its gills.

Manic-depression is a disease that both kills and gives life. Fire, by its nature, both creates and destroys.