When I worked for a time at a veterinary hospital, I became acquainted with a strange habit the mind has of determining that some events are too unpleasant to react to; it’s not a deliberative choice: you just witness or participate in something so unfortunate that your reactive self and memorial apparatus refuse to behave normally.
The result: a kind of surprised indifference to something which would ordinarily upset you grievously (a tortured dog, a kitten dead from maltreatment, etc.).
Today, at the office, I had to discipline, then terminate, someone with bipolar disorder. Not only do I have bipolar disorder, but from my position of stability and success (after nearly a decade of work) I’ve attempted to help this individual in the brutal early phases of her treatment.
If you know anything about the disorder (not as it’s overdiagnosed, but as it is), you know that without medication and therapy it is catastrophic; those with it are insane, with all that entails. Beyond the mania, with its paranoia and wrath and saccharine euphoria and irresponsibility, and beyond the depression, with its suicidal ideation and physical dysfunction and misery, there are the delusions, the instability, the hyper-reactivity.
Working with her to choose a doctor, discuss medicines, enact self-analysis, read up on the disorder, and so on, was not always easy; she was at times resistant to the diagnosis and to the facts of treatment, the sacrifices required. Worse, her family was unsupportive, she had a son who required a lot of attention, and she had limited resources.
In recent weeks, she got off of her medicine and began the predictable oscillations, today finally becoming too hostile, unstable, and dangerous; the parting wasn’t particularly smooth, and although in the end it was her decision to leave I know that I rather forced it to happen; that is, I knew she’d react a certain way and I allowed her to.
I suppose it might have been worse, but it was far from a good day.