Maggie Wasn't Just On the Raggie
posted by The Chair
Margaret Trudeau has finally come forward in public to discuss her problems dealing with mental illness. Good for her in addressing her issues and getting the help she needed.
Maggie was always a celebrity around the household I grew up in. After she split up with PET, she moved to one of the tonier little streets in New Edinburgh. When friends and family were visiting from out of town, my mother would always want me to take them to see Maggie's little house as part of any tour of the sites around Bytown.
"She keeps a nice kitchen," I remember my Great-Aunt Hazel once saying as she peered through lace-covered windows.
So if you're reading this Ms. Trudeau, maybe it wasn't all in your head. It might have been one of my relatives you thought you saw that time.
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2 comments:
On the Raggie, Chair?
Are you having issues?
But onto Maggie, I don't imagine her public declaration is a surprise to any who have followed the news about her over the years. My reaction was "Bipolar? That makes sense."
I'm struck by how the news story you linked to describes her condition as "Bipolar Depression" and "Bipolar Disorder", focussing on the depression and avoiding "mania", even to the point that they refer to the manic phase of the disorder only as "inappropriate euphoria".
Are they going with Maggie's characterization? or are they choosing to downplay it?
It's great for others with Bipolar Disorder that Maggie has come out, but she might still be hiding just how crazy she can get. She has a right to do that and it may be she has already shared more than is good for her.
Just like the bloggers we follow have a right to hold back details and some of them make us worry when they share more than we think is good for them.
Um, yeah. Tasteful title, Chair.
And I may only be experiencing a bad case of doggie deja vu, (we coyotes do that sometimes) but -- someone please help me here -- have there not been past public announcements about Ms. Sinclair's mental state -- at least the depression part? I'd so taken this for granted, that I was wondering what all the media fuss was about. I'd thought her bipolar announcement was a long-ago fait accompli.
But you're right, Dwarf, I think, to key onto the media's lack of comprehension of the um, 'upside' of the bipolar thing. In severe cases of depression, one so afflicted often can't even get out of bed. It's hard -- although not impossible -- to act up in that condition. On the other hand, that 'inappropriate euphoria' can impel someone to cut a helluva swath -- both because they rarely sleep, so have twice the time that the rest of us do to get into all sortsa interesting trouble, and because there's a powerful delusion of being able to run the world:
"Hey, it's 2 a.m. but I should talk to the prime minister about that world peace/world domination idea I just had. I'll just call him and give him a piece of my mind."
Poor girl. Imagine how much more wierd things would've been, than for some garden-variety anonymous person with bipolar disorder, since she'd actually had ready access to a nearby P.M....
However, as she herself pointed out, (and even if some media types' comprehension of the niceties still lags), bipolarity treatments now are better than they were in the 70s, and more effectively moderate the extremes of those wild mental sine waves. There's somewhat less 'way down', far less 'way up', and much more 'manageable middle'. For that, Mag -- and everyone who cares about her -- must be truly thankful
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