What Goes Up is the
emotionally wrenching story of a woman, author Judy Eron, who becomes ensnared
inextricably in the insufferable web of her husband (Jim’s) manic-depressive
travail.  Eron is a licensed clinical social worker living in Texas.  Wielding
a deeply cutting writing sabre, Eron unflinchingly flays the flesh otherwise
shielding her emotions and feelings, and viscerally lays bare her perceived
failings, and certainly immense difficulties, making lucid, clear headed
decisions detached emotionally from her husband’s mentally dysfunctional state
of being.  The painful exposing of her vulnerabilities and burdensome sense of
guilt powerfully fortify the narrative with great strength.

   Eron’s anecdotal recounting of
her husband’s meteoric ascent into the mentally disturbed stratosphere of
mania, followed by his precipitous plunge into the deadly depths of depression
driven suicide, adroitly interlaces strong threads of endearing tenderness and
love with knotty strands of fearfulness, anxiousness, and crushing despair.  It
is the fervent aspiration of Eron that her sobering story of loving a man in
the unyielding grip of manic-depression may prove helpful to persons who
likewise love someone suffering from manic-depressive illness.  And indeed,
Eron succeeds admirably in wrenching open the casement of manic-depression so
as to provide readers with a highly revealing, if dispiriting, glimpse of life
as actually lived by a man wracked by mania and depression, and by the woman
who loved him dearly.

   Manic-depression is a bipolar
illness in the sense that the affected person, when untreated, characteristically
cycles alternately between manic and depressive phases.  In line with this
clinically bipolar course, the book’s structural foundation is bifurcated:  the
first part (entitled:  "What Goes Up…") fleshes out the manic
episode suffered by Jim, precipitated by his abrupt cessation of lithium
therapy; the second part (entitled:  "…Must Come Down") focuses
thematically on the depressive phase of Jim’s illness, culminating in his
tragic death, by suicide.  Numerous conversational snippets, recounted by Eron,
helpfully and interestingly lend considerable support to the book’s structural
configuration.  The writing style employed by Eron is very lay reader friendly,
albeit scientifically informal and, at times, a bit rambling.

   In the book’s riveting first
part, Eron does a masterful job of crafting a chronicle of her personal
experience of loving a man in the throes of out of control mania.  Exuding
poignantly felt emotion, Eron explains that the vicissitudes of her actions,
and inactions, with respect to Jim, were twisted and turned by her sense of loyalty
to her beloved husband, but also by her  disquieting confusion about what to
do.  She was searching for indications that things might again be well for Jim,
and for their relationship, but, at the same time, she was being pummeled
emotionally by her husband’s manic driven verbal blasts.  Eron’s pensive
ruminations convey the sense that, in retrospect, her reactions to Jim’s
displays of mania were tinged unhelpfully with naïveté and a misplaced hopefulness
regarding his state of health.

With the wisdom of hindsight, the
bitter truth probably is that:  when her husband was increasingly being
rendered mentally unstable by an ever contracting vise of mania, she simply
didn’t know what to do to help him escape from the clenched iron fist of his
manic episode.

   Some of the particular
ingredients in the substantive brew prepared by Eron, in the book’s first part,
include: comment on how her husband, when well,  was molded perfectly to fit
her special needs and wants; sorrowful musings  regarding her retrospectively
perceived failure to properly heed "warning signs", concerning  her
husband’s descent into the punishing nether land of mental illness; and
disheartening recollections of her husband’s stark behavioral transformation,
following  his abrupt truncating of lithium therapy, enveloping:  rudeness,
brashness, restlessness, irritability,  and disconcerting disconnectedness from
reality.

   In the book’s succinct second
part, Eron plaintively describes Jim’s steep fall from the lofty elevation of
mania to the seemingly fathomless depths of severe depression, ending
tragically with his suicidal death.  Importantly, and instructively, in the
last chapter, Eron enumerates a list of conclusions and recommendations,
appertaining to manic-depression, based on her personal experiences and
readings.

   Academically entrenched readers,
insistent on scientifically disciplined writing and research, may lament that
this anecdotally recounted story may in not unimportant ways possibly be
anomalously unrepresentative of the life experiences of other manic-depressive
persons, and of the persons who love them.  Yet, surely, the cruel realities,
vestiges of hopefulness, and heartfelt emotions and feelings elucidated extremely
candidly by Eron in her moving story may be of valuable interest to readers in
love with persons spinning and reeling in the topsy-turvy world of
manic-depression.  Mental health counselors, social workers, psychotherapists,
psychologists, and psychiatrists may, as well, be quite gratified and
enlightened educationally by the book’s illumining contents.

© 2006 Leo Uzych

Leo Uzych (based in Wallingford, PA) earned a law degree, from Temple University; and a master of public
health degree, from Columbia University.  His area of special professional
interest is healthcare.

Categories: Memoirs, Depression, Relationships