A book of light to end the brain fog!

I have discovered something about writing. It has whims and fancies of its own. When you are in the practice of writing most days, the words flow easily, your thinking does not falter and sentences form fast,fluent and effortless. But when you have stopped for a while, for reasons beyond your control, it acts like a spoilt tantrum throwing brat. You have to really scratch your brain about that particular flash of inspiration which occurred yesterday, right in the middle of a busy opd, which evaporated miraculously like the whiff of an agarbatti smoke. It is as if your writing has gone into a huff, for not giving it enough time!

This is the state I found myself in last month. A month of busy, busy work days, the responsibilities that go with being an exam mother (by which I mean revising with your kid, subjects which you tried hard to avoid studying into adulthood), trying to teach my younger one to read by herself and the general business of keeping house – all of which allowed absolutely no vigour or brain space to open my laptop.

At the end of the day, the only energy I had was enough to flip the pages on my kindle, and so, that’s what I did. I read some amazing books- those that made me happy, sad, upset and in awe of things they spoke about.

The oneswhichhad adirect impact were Em and the Big Hoom by Jerry Pinto and the Book of Light.

On a day to day basis, I see a range of emotions (from anger to over protectiveness) shown by the relatives of my patients. Some are shocked to realize that their relatives are mentally ill, some refuse to acknowledge it and some firmly believe that their son or daughter is showing symptoms to cop out of some responsibility. When I am talking to the family about the actual nature of the illness which their closest of kin are suffering from, I usually discuss it with the adults, and the children are generally playing around in my consulting room. I surprisingly realized that I have never ever discussed the illness from the child’s point of view. A vibrant impressionable mind, which is in confusion about why their favorite adult is behaving somewhat differently and unpredictably from the rest.

Which is why I found Em and the Big Hoom a very interesting read. How would a child feel, when a parent is mentally ill? When the caretaking becomes a child’s responsibility instead of the other way round. When it is difficult to expect your parent to attend your school functions or pta meetings for the fear that he/she may do something embarrassing.

The story revolves around the author’s family whose the mother suffers from bipolar disorder.  The book is written from a child’s point of view, and tries to address the concerns which are unique to such families. Have they inherited the illness? Will they become mentally ill like their parent? Or will it skip a generation and affect their children? Or are they, at the other end of the spectrum,  accepting the adults as they are and ignoring the quirks?

Going through the book, gave me insight about a huge chunk of responsibility I was ignoring! As for many other mental health professionals, though time is tight, I promised myself that I would spend some time for these children henceforth.

Going on, I read another book, written on the same lines. The Book of Light, which is a collection of stories written by the relatives of the mentally ill about their experiences in life. There are very few books written about mental illness in the Indian context, and hence this book gives an idea as to how the people from different sections of society deal with the illness and the adjustments that go along with it.

If anything, I felt the need to do more, work harder. Not only to help those who are overtly ill, but also those who are silently suffering on the side.Or confused. Or slowly slipping into an illness themselves.

Only if there were more than twenty four hours in a day! (and no math exams!)