David's Inferno (4 page)

Many professionals would probably consider the phrase “controlled hypomania” a contradiction in terms. But, thanks to an academically-disciplined family and a lifelong obsession with being, or at least appearing to be, perfect, I've usually been able to harness it to my advantage—whether it was graduating with high honors from Amherst or running a successful ad agency with, typically, about a dozen employees, twenty clients, and 50 to 75 projects.

In fact, a little hypomania is virtually a job requirement for the latter.

In any event, by managing/juggling my periods of depression
and mild hypomania, I was able present myself to the world as someone intelligent, trustworthy, confident,
and stable
.

Even during periods when the job became all-consuming and I had to squint to see a flicker of light at the end of the tunnel, I resisted taking antidepressants. I took solace in the knowledge that I was part of a distinguished line of brooding, whiskey-drinking creatives. Maybe someday I'd even have my own table at a café on
Boulevard St. Germain
. In the meantime, I'd just take some B vitamins, work out really hard, drink a little more coffee, tea, or alcohol, and try to be clever and amusing enough so that, even on my worst days, my family and friends liked having me around.

When those days stretched into a week or more, I'd get a massage, have an acupuncture treatment, or go to a homeopath. All of which would at least help temporarily.

And during the periods when I was “wired”? It just made me more productive. Plus, I'd been meditating every morning since I was 18. So I experienced at least a little calm every day.

These mood swings did have their drawbacks. I hated deadlines because I had no idea if the creative guy would show up in time. (Even though I'd usually do the job right away because I'd obsess over it until I did.) I could be annoyingly ambivalent about going out to movies, having friends over, or even going for a walk. I tended to resist requests—whether it was coming up with a new headline or stopping by a store on my way home—even if I enjoyed doing whatever it was. Because my drive to please—not just other people but my own strict inner critic—could make the simplest of those requests a burden.

Owning the ad agency didn't make it any easier. It's a business that can careen from being really exciting and inspiring to oppressively worrying and frustrating—often in a matter of minutes. Especially when one of your employees is your unpredictable self.

I figured a lot of my emotional problems were due to what they call Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD—an acronym I've never
liked because if you've really got it, you're a lot worse than
sad
.

Long before I ever took an antidepressant, my version would appear with heartbreaking clarity every year in late September or early October. I'd be on my daily commute—a 20-mile, full-fall-foliage ride with few cars and no traffic lights. As I rounded the corner at the top of the highest hill shortly after sunrise, I'd be overwhelmed by illuminated color, a crystal-clear view of Mount Monadnock, the
thought
that all was all right in my world, and a sinking feeling that started in the back of my brain and flowed like a viscous dark ooze into the pit of my stomach. The experience of it being so unspeakably bright
out there
and so dark
in here
is one of the most humiliating aspects of depression. As if you've failed the universe itself.

Still, I figured that as long I could count on things getting better in the spring, I could “tough it out” with the help of my tried-and-usually-true forms of self-medication.

This delicate balance finally fell apart one day in January 1999 when I made a presentation to a very skeptical audience. I was fearless. Inviolable. I swayed them with hyper-articulate rants. People who asked challenging questions wished they hadn't. Back at the office, I heard one of my employees say to another, “I wish you'd been there. It was remarkable.” She later confessed it was also kind of scary.

That afternoon, I was in the conference room reviewing an interesting project with a client I really liked. Yet I spent the whole meeting trying not to bolt from the chair, rush back to my office, close the door, and start screaming.

That's when I accepted the obvious: I never knew who was going to wake up in the morning, walk into the office, show up for meetings, drive home, walk back in the house at the end of the day, or eat dinner that night. Would he be charming or sullen? Talkative or monosyllabic? Warm and gracious or irretrievably remote?

My wife Wendy had been encouraging me to have a psychiatric evaluation for years. But I had resisted. That night I came home and said I surrendered. I'd had enough. By then, the classic indicator of depression—
interferes with your normal functioning
—would
have been a walk in the park. Interferes? Interferes? We're talking a major blockade.

A few days later, I saw a psychiatrist and started taking antidepressants. It took a few months for me to really stabilize, but, for the next six years, they worked as advertised.

Fast Forward: 2005
. I sold my business in 2001, continuing as Creative Director until the end of 2004. I also regularly did some work for an import business I'd started many years before with a friend. But he pretty much ran it, so I had a lot of flexibility in terms of how involved I wanted to be.

In other words, after 20 all-consuming years in business, I was free.

The first eight months of 2005 were one continuous burst of creativity. Ever since college I'd been writing for
other
people, always saying that I'd do my own writing someday. Now there was no excuse.

I started by taking a six-week trip in a VW Camper down the East Coast, over to New Orleans, and back: a classic right-of-passage for any writer.

Adventures like that are never as romantic in the doing as in the dreaming. Much of the time you're just driving … driving … driving … not quite sure where you're going, and less sure where you'll stay when you get there. It's not so much lonely, as intensely solitary. Still, you get to meet people you've never met and will never meet again; stay in places no one you know has ever heard of; and have experiences that become legends in your own mind by the time you're five miles out of town:

There was the night in Appomattox when I was the only guest at a B&B owned by a very young, very sweet, and very Christian couple. That morning at breakfast, I was alone in their elegant antebellum dining room, eating a very large breakfast and reading a very large book about the Salem witches. Needing more coffee, and not wanting to bother them, I walked into the empty kitchen
where I saw a Bible lying on a table opened to that day's scripture. The witches and I beat a hasty retreat.

There was the three-day weekend I spent at a Best Western next to I-95 in South Carolina, waiting for the local repair shop to track down a new fuel pump for my old van. It was a town where the women were large and strong, the coffee was small and weak and, since the weather was raw and my bike was my only form of transportation, options for food and entertainment were pretty limited. (By the way, what's the deal with boiled peanuts?)

There was the BBQ place at a campground in Mississippi with fantastic food, great blues, and character that wouldn't quit. I can still feel the heat of the raging fire pit I stood in front of, eating ribs and drinking beer, a Northerner from another planet, surrounded by exuberant dancing—a synchronized conga line of blacks in one group; a separate but equally enthusiastic group of whites in another.

That was just the beginning of how I took advantage of my newfound freedom.

In April, Wendy and I went to the South of France with friends for one week and then up to Paris on our own for another week. A week of Rodin, Picasso, and Chopin. A week of trees in shameless bloom, churches in fading splendor, and architectural details that nobody's noticed since some anonymous stone cutter chiseled the final touches hundreds of years ago. A week of strolling along the most famous river in the world, wandering the most famous cemetery in the world, visiting the most famous bookstore in the world … and having tea with its legendary owner. A week of bread, cheese, coffee, and wine. Bread, cheese, coffee, and wine. But, most of all, for both of us, a week of reminders that creativity is its own reward.

In June, I took another solo trip, meandering out west to visit friends and
rendezvous
once again with myself. I stayed at a dank, dripping campsite in Woodward, Pennsylvania, next to one of the largest stalagmites in the United States. At Waunee Bay State Park in Ohio, next to some kids who drank bad beer and listened to worse rock & roll. At a Super 8 in Madison, Wisconsin where I
spent the evening at a bar near the state capitol, drinking gin with politicians and watched the NBA Playoffs. At the Municipal Campground in Adrian, Minnesota, where I biked to Iowa and back before dinner. At a long-forgotten motel in Pierre, South Dakota where I ate the most memorable dinner of the entire trip.

I gazed into the eyes of Thomas Jefferson and the soul of Crazy Horse. I watched the moon rise over the Mississippi in Bismarck, North Dakota, and morning light race before me across the plains of eastern Wyoming. I approached Big Timber, Montana, in the shadows of the Crazy Mountains.

One day I reached into the side pocket of my van, pulled out the receipt from a campground in Buffalo, Wyoming, and wrote on the back: “I cross borders. I traffic in ideas.”

Through it all, I wrote with a vengeance. Day after day. Hundreds of pages.

When I wasn't writing, researching, or traveling, I was working around the house, going on long bike rides, doing a little bit of freelance work, and hanging out with Wendy and friends.

To say that all was right in my world would be an understatement. After all those high-stress years, I was pretty much doing whatever I wanted whenever I wanted to do it. I was an extremely happy camper.

My calendar from late summer 2005 doesn't seem the least bit ominous: I went to a few meetings in New York. Wendy and I spent a long weekend with friends on a lake in Maine for our anniversary. I went to the horse races in Saratoga, won a few bucks, and knew when to quit. A large group of us went on our traditional Labor Day ±60 mile bike ride. I completed the first draft of a novel.

On reflection, I want to shake myself by the shoulders and yell, “Look out!” If nothing else, it would have shown solidarity with those in the process of being devastated by Hurricane Katrina. During August, I did notice some familiar suspicious shadows building up the area behind my eyes and cheekbones—although,
like floaters, you can't see them unless you really look close, and even then they stay just on the edge of your field of vision.

Two appointments, however, catch my eye: August 17
^th
and September 12
^th
. They were with a bodyworker who combines a Zen master's unrelenting insistence on being in the “now”—a place I've always enjoyed visiting, but don't necessarily want to live—with the equally relentless work of an experienced Rolfer: 1½ hours of deep massage that can be so intense you see flashes of light.