It was with a sense of terror that I first sat down to pen Hurry Down Sunlight . Its about a dramatic event that took place in the time-span of a single summer, when my girl Sally, at the age of 15, had a manic breakdown. Have loads more news about
performance anxiety. After writing about 60 pages, I made a decision not to go on. It appeared gauche, and probably bent, to reveal myself and the folks closest to me in such a public demeanour.
I put the pages away, but the occurrences of that summer had a haunting result on us, and after about a year I removed the half finished manuscript from its drawer and began writing again. One of the explanations I forged ahead was that I felt this book was missing from the literature of stupidity. And a brilliant literature it is : one that starts with Richard Burtons Anatomy of Melancholy back in the early 17 th century, runs forward to William James Beliefs of Psychology, which is way more of a private confession of James own mood disorder than the title advises, moves on to Robert Lowells extraordinary poems from the psych ward during his manic attacks, Sylvia Plaths autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, William Styronss Darkness Obvious , Kay Redfield Jamisons An Unquiet Mind.
To the family and to the sufferer, psychosis brings an incredible sense of solitude in its wake, and occasionally a sense of shame. My hope was to draft a book that would offer some friendship to folk who have been thru a like experience -- with a kid, a parent, a partner, a close pal, a sibling. With just a few weeks to go before publication, I sent a copy of Hurry Down Sunlight to Sally, twenty-seven now and living in Vermont.
Sally had asked me to use her actual name in the memoir, but that was without her knowing its contents. And in all chance a lot of the restlessness will stop. Tossing in bed is so regularly a futile search for a cushty, relaxed way of sleeping. It isn't straightforward to balance body masses--the legs and thighs, trunk, arms, head-one above the other. So great is the coordination between all parts of the body that when one is out of kilter all parts suffer. Though this is often due to other issues, in 9 cases out of 10, it can be traced to poor distribution of weight. We suffer from the effort of walking and sitting erect, which after all of the eons we've been at it, we do imperfectly. Bad posture is the curse of modern life, the best thief of good health. This often meant that she was scared too. I felt I was reading about somebody else, a fifteen-year-old girl named Sally who had been to hell and was the sole one who didnt know it. He resides in Big Apple with his better half and nine-year-old son.