A Difference of Opinion

I was very much enjoying a book called Bad Mother by Ayelet Waldman. It is a collection of essays, mainly about parenting her four children. Midway through the book, the author reveals she is bipolar. Now, I am NOT a therapist/ professional and I have never met this woman. But I would hazard a guess that she is Bipolar 2 and not Bipolar 1 because she does not go into full blown mania. She does not sleep around behind her husbands back. She doesn’t hallucinate. She does not hurt herself. She specifically says she is ‘hypomanic’ which is not the same thing as being manic (she later says “I have never been manic”).

None of this bothers me because why would it? No two people’s experiences with bipolar (or any illness) are the same. What did bother me is the sentence: “Moreover, the dirty little secret of bipolar disease is that it’s not all bad. It is often correlated with creativity” (pg. 163). First of all, it’s easy to say it's ‘not all bad’ when you aren’t fully affected by something. That’s like me saying Hurricane Sandy was not ‘all bad’ because our house was fine and we only lost power for several weeks. So many people lost their homes, even their lives. Sounds like it might be ‘all bad’ for them. I almost lost my life to bipolar disorder. So whatever your experience is, mine is pretty bad.

Second, no one knows for sure the link between creativity and bipolar disorder. I will be the first to admit I am much more productive when I’m manic. I even have better ideas. But I’m also creative when I’m not manic. I do not believe my creativity lies at the altar of my bipolar disorder. Sometimes I do wonder if I would be who I am without it. But I can’t really eliminate either my creativity or my bipolar disorder so it’s kind of a pointless question.

I’m not mad at the author. I just think maybe she is lacking the perspective of someone who suffers from the same disease only in a different way (and by the way Bipolar 2 is very different than Bipolar 1 but that will be in another blog post).