I Think Wanting To Write Is A

Anybody Who's Had To Contend With Mental Illness - Whether It's Depression, Bipolar Illness Or Severe Anxiety, Whatever - Actually Has A Fair Amount Of Resilience In The Sense That They've Had To Deal With Suffering Already, Personal Suffering.

Never Once, During Any Of My Bouts Of Depression, Had I Been Inclined Or Able To Pick Up A Telephone And Ask A Friend For Help. It Wasn't In Me.

It Was As If My Father Had Given Me, By Way Of Temperament, An Impossibly Wild, Dark, And Unbroken Horse. It Was A Horse Without A Name, And A Horse With No Experience Of A Bit Between Its Teeth. My Mother Taught Me To Gentle It; Gave Me The Discipline And Love To Break It; And- As Alexander Had Known So Intuitively With Bucephalus- She Understood, And Taught Me, That The Beast Was Best Handled By Turning It Toward The Sun.

Once A Restless Or Frayed Mood Has Turned To Anger, Or Violence, Or Psychosis, Richard, Like Most, Finds It Very Difficult To See It As Illness, Rather Than Being Willful, Angry, Irrational Or Simply Tiresome.

St. Andrews Provided A Gentle Forgetfulness Over The Preceding Painful Years Of My Life. It Remains A Haunting And Lovely Time To Me, A Marrow Experience. For One Who During Her Undergraduate Years Was Trying To Escape An Inexplicable Weariness And Despair, St. Andrews Was An Amulet Against All Manner Of Longing And Loss, A Year Of Gravely Held But Joyous Remembrances.