An unquiet mind ...

No - not mine ... book review time!

Was spending a bit of time in one of the used bookstores before Pilates the other day and picked up "An Unquiet Mind" - A memoir of moods and madness by Kay Redfield Jamison.

For whatever reason - I really enjoy memoirs or any book written in first person.  If you have not read Kay Graham's Personal History ... pass go - collect $200 and get up on it.

Instead of "reviewing the book" (and it's well worth the read) .. here are some select favorite passages:

"I have had many concerns about writing a book that so explicitly describes my own attacks of mania, depression, and pyschosis, as well as my problems acknowledging the need for ongoing medication.  Clinicians have been, for obvious reasons of licensing and hospital privileges, reluctant to make their psychaitraic problems known to others.  These concerns are often well warranted.  I have no idea what the long-term effects of discussing such issues so openly will be on my personal and professional life, but, whatever the consequences, they are bound to be better than continuing to be silent.  I am tired of hiding, tired of misspent and knotted energies, tired of the hypocrisy, and tired of acting as though I have something to hide.  One is what one is, and the dishonesty of hiding behind a degree, or a title, or any manner and collection of words, is still exactly that:  dishonest.  Necessary, perhaps, but dishonest.  I continue to have concerns about my decision to be public about my illness, but one of the advantages of having had manic-depressive illness for more than thirty years is that very little seems insurmountably difficult."

""It is history of our kindness that alone makes this world tolerable," wrote Rober Louis Stevenson.  "If it were not for that, for the effect of kind words, kind looks, kind letters... I should be inclined to think our life a practical jest in the worst possible spirit."

"There were a thousand things I remembered once David had died.  And there were many, many regrets:  for lost opportunties, unnecessary and damaging arguments, and a deepening realization that there was absolutely nothing that could be done to change that which was true.  There were so many dreams lost:  all of seemingly everything was lost.  But grief, fortunately, is very different from depression:  it is sad, it is awful, but it is not without hope."