Memoirist Jeff Zuckerman answers my nosy and probably annoying questions
"[My wife] has suggested to people in her support group that they read it. No one who did so said her husband is a dipwad, so I take that as a positive."
Writing about anything is hard. Writing about your own mental health is hard. Writing about how someone else’s mental deterioration changed your own life must be even harder.
Earlier this week I reviewed the book Unglued: A Bipolar Love Story. I liked it, especially because it was written by a friend’s uncle and I’d have never come across it if he hadn’t made the recommendation.
But I also had some questions, so I went ahead and asked Jeff Zuckerman if he would oblige me with a few answers.
Happily, he did.
The one thing that really struck me was your decision to present a very one dimensional of your wife, she struck me as a menacing character who never quite makes it into a full scene as a rounded character. How deliberate was this - did you worry if you focused too much on her that your decision to write a book specifically about the spousal experience would be diminished?
Steve, if that was your read of Leah’s character, so be it. But I disagree with the premise.
I deliberately did not want to write a female monster story like, say, “Fatal Attraction” or “Play Misty for Me” or “Hansel and Gretel.” The sad truth, though, is that Leah’s severe mania was frightful.
In fact, I understated how bad things were. To ignore the destructiveness of severe mania on marriages and friendships would be dishonest and pointless. Still, even when Leah was in the hospital for mania, I described her “sweet side when her kindness and compassion percolated mercifully.”
But beyond all that, based on early readers’ reactions about both our characters, I added a lot about our decades together long before the onset of bipolar disorder. And the scene when Leah first attended her support group, among many others during her severe depression, are heartbreaking.
I still get weepy when I read those pages, and it was with profound joy and love I typed in the final chapter, “For the first time in four years I was getting my wife back.”
Did you write the book after things had settled into a sense of stability or did you chip away at it as you were experiencing her mania and depression?
During the first summer when Leah was manic, I was too fried from couch-surfing and sleeping in a tent to keep up a journal. I began journaling when she was hospitalized and continued it for the next few years.
Those entries, along with her countless emails and text messages, helped inform the book I began writing almost three years into her illness. I wrote three different endings because Leah’s mood and the accompanying events kept changing.
But more to the point of the book, my own perspective kept evolving as I learned more about mental illness and redefined my understanding of hope, faith, caregiving, self-care, and compassion for her and myself.
Incidentally, during the final editing phase, George Floyd was killed three blocks from our old apartment, which I had described earlier in the book. I added the epilogue because I felt a responsibility to address his death as emblematic of not only racial discrimination in Minnesota’s justice system but discrimination toward those with mental and behavioral health problems in general.
There’s something about the book that reminds me of Robert Pirsig. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance saw the protagonist build a case for a personal philosophy or way of looking at the world. What did you learn about yourself about the “proper” way of living when you think back on the journey you experienced?
I love this question, in part because I’m flattered to be compared at all with Robert Pirsig, who I last read 45 years ago.
In practical terms, I learned Al-Anon’s three C’s: We didn’t cause someone else’s mental illness, we can’t control it, and we can’t cure it. That’s a good thing to know about human behavior in general.
At a deeper level, Steve, I recently reread for the 8,000th time Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Even in the concentration camp, he wrote, “It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. . . . The truth is that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. The salvation of man is through love and in love.”
In my seventh decade, I learned to be a more compassionate and caring person. I’m kinder to myself as well. I practice gratitude for my family’s physical health and economic well-being coming out of the pandemic, for a warm house and enough to eat.
I have hope, and I have faith. With deference to Frankl, I am grateful to have learned how to be a more loving father, brother, and friend, and, after 36 years of marriage, a more loving husband.
You’ve said before your wife helped proofread the book and approved the publication. How does she feel about the way she comes off in the book? Do you worry she would use the entire book against you if she experiences another period of mania?
I didn’t want to speak for Leah, so here was her answer: “It was fine.” Although she’s been extraordinarily supportive, she said she doesn’t think it’s her role to discuss the book. I would have no control over her decision to “use the entire book against me.” If she were to become manic again, I want to believe I am wiser and have much thicker armor and boundaries than the last time.
Have you heard from other bipolar folks? What have they thought of the book?
Well, first of all, I never use bipolar as an adjective, for Leah or anyone else1. She’s a person trying to manage a difficult medical illness. I firmly believe that, and I try my best to advocate for those with as mental illness from that premise.
Leah has suggested to people in her support group that they read it. No one who did so said her husband is a dipwad, so I take that as a positive. The book has received a lot of praise from mental health practitioners and, most important to me, from so many readers who live with, struggle with, and love someone with a mood or personality disorder. It’s the book I wished I could have read when I was going through the worst of all this. That it’s helping others like myself is intensely rewarding.
-30-
Happy good Friday. Have a nice weekend.
For the record, I tend to use “bat shit crazy” as an adjective for myself, so don’t see much more harm in calling myself a bipolar person. But I’ve heard this argument before, and completely respect where people are coming from on this. I think the most important thing is letting everyone define their own experience - and just go from there.