Ennui Go!

What I had considered garden-variety depression was recast as something far more sinister and mysterious, a balance beam of an illness where the upper pole was as much at issue as the lower. My ups were now called hypomania, marked by less sleep, less patience, more travel, more creativity, more talking, more narcissism, more sex, and more shopping. With hypomania, one might engage in “excessive involvement in pleasurable activities with a lack of concern for painful consequences,” as well as inappropriate laughing and joking, and, as one set of diagnostic criteria had it, “inappropriate punning,” a behavior I hoped I had never exhibited, though I had my fears. One might also have a certain temperament, characterized by a tendency for attention-seeking, coupled with a nagging fear of being noticed. An impulsivity that alternated with a fear of acting on what spontaneity had sowed. An inflated sense of self-importance combined with profound feelings of neediness.