Welcome! My name is not important ... okay, it's Keith Adams (that was a little quote.) I've been writing this blog since 2006, the year my life (briefly) fell apart. I survived to write a book about it: "Broken Whole: a California tale of Craziness, Creativity and Chaos", and it is available at Amazon (in paperback, and on Kindle), a memoir, published in Jan, 2010, by Chipmunka.
The original title of this blog was "Broken Whole", hence the name of my book, but, contrary to the usual fashion of naming your blog after your book, it was quite the other way round. Broken Whole was a poem I wrote on the night of my first day in a locked psychiatric ward, after a one nighter in LAPD lockup prefaced with hours of confrontation, adventure, and the unbearable heaviness of being. (To cut the story short, I was in the midst of a fit of mania, and would, in a few weeks, be diagnosed with bipolar disorder.)
The original title of this blog was "Broken Whole", hence the name of my book, but, contrary to the usual fashion of naming your blog after your book, it was quite the other way round. Broken Whole was a poem I wrote on the night of my first day in a locked psychiatric ward, after a one nighter in LAPD lockup prefaced with hours of confrontation, adventure, and the unbearable heaviness of being. (To cut the story short, I was in the midst of a fit of mania, and would, in a few weeks, be diagnosed with bipolar disorder.)
I was talking about "Broken Whole." At the time, the phrase was pulled out of me as a cry for help: I had just been brutalized by the system; my eight hours in jail had been a period of acute agony for me. My mind was running out of control, and, instead of trying to help me, the cops treated me like a dog. It added fuel to a theory I'd been building (one of the fruits of manic creativity), that the world we lived in was becoming so complex, that it was broken. In other words, complexity was the enemy of wholeness.
But, through the process of writing the book, other meanings of broken/whole came to me (and some of them admittedly were due to a search for a good ending!) The meaning that finally had resonance for me was the concept that you could technically describe a man with a serious mental illness as being "broken". Yet, the process of going through the hell that was my summer of 2006 had strangely burned out of me most of the neuroses that had, in previous years, fueled depression. My partner Ben and I emerged from the crisis with an unbreakable bond. In a way, I'd never felt more whole.
But, through the process of writing the book, other meanings of broken/whole came to me (and some of them admittedly were due to a search for a good ending!) The meaning that finally had resonance for me was the concept that you could technically describe a man with a serious mental illness as being "broken". Yet, the process of going through the hell that was my summer of 2006 had strangely burned out of me most of the neuroses that had, in previous years, fueled depression. My partner Ben and I emerged from the crisis with an unbreakable bond. In a way, I'd never felt more whole.
I've been writing ever since the beginning of the manic period, through the ensuing years of bipolar cycling from depression to ... well, actually, just to feeling normal. There's been no more mania, thankfully. (I take my medication as a sacred bond.) Until March 2011 (the time of writing), since the publication date of my book in early 2010, this website was geared towards publicizing my book, and I'm writing this now to finally step back from that, and get on with my life.
The postscript to it all is not bright and shining, I'm sorry to say. Bipolar disorder is an incurable syndrome, and is physically driven. Depression dominates, and, unlike "unipolar" depression, it's relatively immune to treatment. I've now been in my longest ever depression: two years and counting. I've been through periods where I couldn't write; periods where I really couldn't bring myself to care about anything. But there are enough days dotted here and there where the clouds lift, and it's probably safe to assume that if a new blog entry appears, I'm in one of those brief periods.
It's a strange reality for me: in so many ways, I'm blessed. I have a wonderful boyfriend, who's also my best friend, and my soulmate. My job is creative, and constantly challenging; I couldn't ask for a better circle of friends; we love in a beautiful house full of books and dog-hair; we're having the best summer here in LA in memory; I could go on and on. In truth, the only thing I have to be depressed about is depression itself. It has no basis from which to spring out of my daily life: yet, there it is.
But I rarely write now about depression. I think it's vitally important to be open and public about mental illness, and I've written more on that subject than on anything else. I'll no doubt write again on that subject, if I have something new to say. But in those breaks where the sun comes out, I want to take advantage of the boost in emotional energy to write about my other interests, in, hopefully, a stimulating way.
Thanks for stopping by, Keith.
Hollywood, California, August, 2011.
|
