Lizzie Simon

I don’t know.

Most of it, I didn’t really have a strong opinion; some of it, I hated it…. I guess it was okay.

I guess if you like mental health memoirs, (I really think people can over-specialize with ‘memoirs about illness X’, you know; really I do— mental health memoirs, and then of which decade), you might like it, especially if you like to read about people who were young at the time of writing. I mean, I guess she’s GenX; it’s like twenty years ago now that this book was written. In that sense, youth culture is constantly turning over in that it’s not GenX Youth anymore, but I don’t think it matters, because what really changes in youth culture, especially since the late 70s or 80s, right, historically? It’s just different people. So if you like people who were young at the time books, you’ll probably like it. I kinda ground my teeth at certain points because of irritating youth stereotypes which you can probably imagine so I won’t go into them. “Whatever we find irritating about others can teach us something about ourselves.” —Carly, (as I call him).

I guess I didn’t really relate that much because although I am bipolar-y, even now—moods can be a terrible thing, even now—and I’m schizoaffective technically, delusions plus bipolar when I’m symptomatic, although now I’m kinda stable, just not very…. I don’t know, I’m kinda unremarkable and low-functioning and whatever, and weird, the delusions have kinda faded into weirdness, you know…. And sometimes moods, I’ll get angry and a day later I’ll get afraid or something….

But for better or worse, I’ve never really identified very strongly with my diagnosis. I think Lizzie kinda over-identifies. I mean, I realize that Judaism isn’t kewl because it’s 3,000 years old (ie pre-dates GenX lol), and we’ve all gotta be real chill with Hitler and the Normals and keep up the War on Hanukkah, haha, “Seven aisles of Christmas crap! One tiny little table for Hanukkah!”, so that even the Jews kinda present themselves as being essentially goyish, (as indeed Siggy did in his day), but I think maybe—I mean, not for the whole book, right—but she’s so concerned about her bipolar tribe, her “herd”, maybe she could have spent one part out of seven or whatever, “making Jewish choices”, as one Jewish chick termed it, you know.

I mean, I accept that I’m too weird to be a successful jackass who buys billion dollar websites and grinds them into the ground morally, and especially with the mood disorder element meds are good, because once every couple of months or whatever I forget to take my mood med, and that’s usually kinda a bad day…. But I don’t over-identify with my illness. That’s been pretty constant with me, from the depths of dysfunction to the heights of…. whatever. (Lizzie has such a Big I’m Going To Be the Successful Young American for most of the book, you know. 😄).

But I mean, when I was really, really crazy, to use the colloquial term, one of my problems was that I was really racist. I was also very clingy. (Codependent.) These are not for the most part real technical and exclusively psychiatric things, you know. “Oh, yes, we scanned your brain, and this blob here is your idealization of young white people. Yes, it’s in your ‘Greek walnut’ area of the brain. I’m going to have to send you to a specialist, because racism is something we’ve never experienced in the general American population, so we’re not sure what to do….”

I guess I’ve never been like Lizzie in that sense, like a fucking journalist, you know. Journalists are so…. Normal. They frighten me. 😂

…. After-note: It’s negative. It’s not poorly written.… (más)

This book is almost shockingly bad. It began with Simon’s story. Everyone who has been diagnosed with a serious mental disorder has a “story”. That moment when they first realized something was wrong, the moment when the doctor told them, “This is what’s happening,” and the subsequent relief, judgment, and struggles that come after. My own came when I was in college, only a few years older than Simon herself was when her story unfolded. Simon’s story, however, began to irk me. She runs through a brief history of her family life, including the almost universal adoration she enjoyed as a child, and then proclaims that she was tired of the snobbish people at her prep school and scampers off to France to finish her last year of high school, apparently unaware of the blatant ignorance of her own privilege. I nearly choked. France? For the last year of high school? I was lucky to be able to go into town to the movie theatres during a weekend. Unfortunately, this ignorance of her own privilege would be a recurring theme in the book.

Mildly annoyed, I figured if I could just soldier through what comes across as a self-absorbed, privileged girl whining about other people being snobbish, I could get to the interviews, which I was looking forward to.

First, however, we have to wade through more of Simon’s atrocious writing (she includes what I think is a poem - and I use that word loosely - that she wrote which is absolutely cringe-worthy), and her subsequent whirlwind love affair with a multimillionaire mogul who refuses to take his medications, has frequent breakdowns and violent outbursts, and is clearly an alcoholic. Bafflingly, Simon falls in love with him – I think. Her writing makes it hard to determine, but it appears that they’re exchanging soppy “I love you’s” in the space of less than a week. She makes constant excuses for his behavior (“He’s just drunk”, because that’s much better) while encouraging him to seek help. There’s an element of glory to it. The man is clearly cycling through depression and mania and is so unlikeable in the dialogue Simon allows him that I was honestly confounded why on earth she wanted to be with him. It becomes clearer, however, as the book continues.

The purpose of her road trip is ostensibly to find successful young people who have been diagnosed with bipolar in order to fight the stigma of mental illness and give hope to those who suffer from the disorder. Sounds marvelous, doesn’t it? Except Simon’s definition of success seems to be remarkably narrow; those who hold regular 9-5 jobs, who raise kids and families, who are friendly neighbors and good sons and daughters, are not successful to Simon. They’re failures, as far as she’s concerned. Far from taking away from stigma, she manages to add to it. “To you teenagers and twentysomethings, standing on the cusp of a new life and experience, who are newly diagnosed, scared, alone, let it be known that it’s not enough that you do okay. You need to do amazing things like me,” is her apparent sermon. More importantly, stigma is often attached to the less advantaged. While it’s admirable when a celebrity comes out as suffering from a mental illness, it does a lot more to find out that your best friend has one. And there’s where her whirlwind, multimillionaire boyfriend comes in. She manages to glorify mania and bipolar disorder in general.

While Kay Redfield Jamison’s Touched by Fire points out that there are several highly successful composers, poets, and artists who probably or definitely did suffer from bipolar disorder out there, she never claims that bipolar is something to be glorified. It’s a disorder, one that makes people suicidal, or causes them to alienate their friends, lose their money, and destroy their families. Simon happens to have met one person who somehow gets away with his behavior – the rest of us, I would like to interject, would be fired and homeless if we did half the things he does – and so therefore he’s a “success”. And again, we have the problem of her unacknowledged privilege coming into play. Her boyfriend, she states, clearly came from money in the first place. She herself apparently came from a wealthy, supportive family. She seems completely ignorant of those who were born into families that couldn’t afford therapists, or psychiatrists, or medication. Into families that think mental illness is “made up” and think a manic episode is just a person “acting out” or “faking it”. She seems woefully ignorant that she started out on the top, and so looks down on all the people who are just managing to crawl their way out of the pit.

Additionally, she must realize that she’s an exception – not because she’s somehow a magical snowflake, but because of a fluke of genetics that allow her to be diagnosed almost immediately and respond well to the second medication she tries. One would hope she did research into this, which should have enlightened her to the fact that most people with bipolar disorder go years without being properly diagnosed and doctors often have to take a shotgun approach to medication until they find something that works. Other people find that no medication will ever work. Rather than finding this moving, to know of others’ struggles, she seems dismissive, as if her “herd” has failed her in some sort because they were born resistant to modern medications or because they cannot afford to try expensive medication after expensive medication and be constantly frustrated by their lack of effectiveness. But to ask her to find compassion for these people who are fine with living the lives that make them happy, instead of destroying themselves trying to meet her expectations of “success”, presumes too much on Simon’s capacity for empathy.

Finally, there’s the writing, which is abrupt, amateurish, and gimmicky. It feels more like a teenager’s effort than the twenty-three year old successful adult that she claims to be. There are parts that are muddled and confused not for effect, but because her writing lacks clarity, and others that she clearly wants to be muddled and confused because that’s “edgy” and thematic. While there are some authors who are talented enough to get away with this, other authors feel that having a “gimmick” makes up for the lack of talent; Simon is among the latter. Kay Redfield Jamison’s other book, her personal memoir, An Unquiet Mind, provides a startling contrast. Jamison’s book is fluid, elegant, and shows that you don’t need a gimmick if you’re a talented author. Simon’s just highlights her own deficiencies as an author.

The last few pages provided some sort of saving grace; after interviewing about five or six people, realizing that her boyfriend is dangerous, she has an epiphany wherein she realizes that the real purpose was to find out that her diagnosis didn’t set her apart from people as she had imagined. Her “herd” was not those who struggle with mental illness, but her family, and she needed to make the steps to rectify that.

Which is all well and good and very touching, but rather disingenuous. I picked up a book wanting to hear people’s stories, as the book bills itself to be, not one self-absorbed girl’s attempts to finally wade through her own ego to find the truth. In the end, her realization of the truth is too little, too late.
… (más)

As a person with Bipolar Disorder who has been going through more than you can think of in the last 6 mos.and through many, many more changes to fix my situation, I can say out of all the books I have ever read, something in part five of the discussion with her dad was the most touching to me. And it just got better after that. It was like someone had written down everything I try to explain to those close to me and in hersit made sense, seemed clearer.

The book will definately find a greater understanding and acceptance from one working with mental patients or a patient themselves than would a "normal" person of the street. It does seem to jump around or something for the first 2/3's of the book, but for me it was worth 3 days of casual reading.… (más)