Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So: A Memoir

by Mark Vonnegut Md

None of us are entirely well, and none of us are irrecoverably sick. At my best I have islands of being sick. At my worst I had islands of being well.

Most adults have forgotten what they had to do to survive childhood.

Humans will money themselves to death the same way some dogs and fish will eat themselves to death. If the rich were truly so productive and useful, they wouldn’t have so many hired-gun talking heads with talking points, foundations, and institutes. Eventually most kings come to believe in the divine right of kings.

My father was not average. He was a better writer than Hemingway or Fitzgerald, but no one knew it yet, which was why we didn’t have any money.

If you take good care of any disease by eating well, sleeping well, being aware of your health, consciously wanting to be well, not smoking, et cetera, you are doing all the same things you should be doing anyway, but somehow having a disease makes them easier to do. A human without a disease is like a ship without a rudder.

Vinny quit Harvard midway through his second semester when he was accused of plagiarism. Everyone I’ve talked to was quite sure he hadn’t plagiarized, but honor was involved and Vinny preferred quitting school, full scholarship and all, to defending himself.

At any given point there are several million people in this country who are psychotic. As a matter of law they are exempt from being judged responsible for their actions while crazy. They are also 99 percent invisible. Most won’t get better enough to be as well as they were before.

Maybe I just had to learn to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, with being scared out of my mind, and to let it go past like it wasn’t about me.

If you need a drink, have one before the ceremony. We won’t have any alcohol at the house. We took all the money and blew it on soft-shelled crabs, oysters, and barbeque. —our wedding invitation

He appreciated that I was honest and available and worked hard at being a good doctor to his kids. I didn’t give him a hard time about not wanting to immunize his children. I believe very much in immunization but don’t see it as a deal breaker. The less arguing I do about it, the more likely the kids will end up immunized. “The children of irrational parents need good doctors too, Nikolai,” I said. He liked that.

Kurt was more like an unpredictable younger brother who refused to grow up than a father. He was a wonderful writer and capable of great warmth and kindness, but he fiercely defended and exercised his right to be a pain in the ass on a regular basis.

Jill continued calling Kurt irresponsible. Kurt fled upstairs, holding his head and wearing the facial expression of someone in hell in a Hieronymus Bosch painting. Jill complained about Kurt fleeing. Kurt came back downstairs and talked about how Bush should be impeached. I counted it as a good visit and took a cab back to my family in Times Square.