Nothing Was the Same by Kay Redfield Jamison Read Free Book Online

but, because mood disorders often hit those much younger, I have spoken as well to hundreds of children and young adolescents with depression or bipolar illness. They experience the same pain and have the same fears as those who are older, but, because the illness is usually more severe in the very young, and because they cannot understand as much about their illness as those who are older, they have a particularly hard time of it.
    One afternoon, I went to a high school in Northern Virginia to give the commencement address. The school, which specializes in teaching students with severe mental illness, had a graduating class of nine. The auditorium was ratty—a far cry from those in the elite private schools that hold such sway in the Washington area—and it was decorated with a decidedly non-traditional triumphal arc of black balloons. Each child had been to hell in his or her own way, and each had stayed in hell far longer than anyone should have to. Theirs was not a world of math tutors, lacrosse practice, and cello lessons. It was, instead, a world of pain, hospitals, psychosis, suicide attempts, and medication. It was also a world of grit, gallows humor, and little taken for granted. They were gutsy and admirable. The small band of graduating students marched to the stage to receive their diplomas, crosswise and out of step, to a scratchy tape recording of “Pomp and Circumstance.” I can count on one hand the number of times I have had to fight hard to keep from crying in a public setting. This was one of them. Mental illness is pernicious in the young. Courage in the face of it is remarkable.
    I was keenly aware of this when I talked with a group of children and adolescents in Colorado several years ago. They ranged in age from seven to seventeen and all suffered from bipolar illness. We talked about what it was like to struggle with depression and mania and to have to take medications with unpleasant side effects, how hard it was to concentrate and to study, and how it was nearly impossible to make friends and family understand. These were things they knew too well, too young. But we talked of hope, as well, and how one could live a good life with the illness. It was hard, but it could be done. I answered their questions as best I could. Then, as I was leaving, a young boy, perhaps seven or eight years old, came up to me and put his hand in mine. He looked up at me and asked, “Are you really okay?”
    I put my arms around him and felt him sobbing against me. “Yes, I am,” I said to him. “I really am. You will be, too.” He looked doubtful. I reached into my handbag, pulled out my key chain, and removed the plastic Bugs Bunny charm I had carried for years. I told him it was my extra-lucky charm because it had not just one rabbit’s foot, but four. A small smile appeared. I gave him the key fob and assured him that Bugs Bunny would bring him the same good luck he had brought me.
    I hoped that this would be true, but the world and his illness being the way they are, I was not sure that luck would carry him as far as would be fair.

    Six months after I first discussed my manic-depressive illness in public, Richard and I spent our wedding anniversary in Rome, where he was giving a medical talk and, as part of a bicentennial lecture series about John Keats, I was speaking at the American Academy in Rome. We had several days together of aimless wandering and evenings with friends and, on our anniversary, a romantic dinner on the rooftop of the Hotel Hassler, where we were staying. It was a sweet lull in the wheeling days that had become our lives. Late one afternoon, after a long walk by myself through the Borghese Gardens, I returned to our room, where Richard had been working on a paper. It was evident he had been up to something.
    “I got you some flowers,” he said.
    I looked around the room and saw nothing.
    “But first you have to find them.”
    His smile was broad, his mind afoot. I looked around the