I hated clowns growing up, my mother had freakish looking marionette clowns that hung lifelessly from the dark timber pelmet above the bar in our living room. I suppose their orange and sky-blue suits with matching night caps and white neck ruffles could have almost been cute if they hadn’t been offset by their hauntingly painted faces. Those gawking black mouths surrounded by cherry red lips and beady soulless eyes stared pitifully out into their lonely world punctuated my dreams and gave me shivers every time I walked by.
When I came across Ryan Heffernan’s bipolar memoir Clown & I, I found myself torn between my hunger to devour the lived experience of another person living with bipolar disorder, as I do, and concern that the whole book might in fact be about adventures in clowning and thus reignite nightmares I had presumed lost to childhood.
I needn’t have worried, references to clowns were pertinent but limited and when wrapped in Ryan’s eloquent writing style they became rousing and strangely alluring. I began reading this book in the wee hours of the morning and found it so captivating that I couldn’t stop until I had absorbed every last word. I continued reading as I fed the chickens and straightened my hair, only reluctantly putting it down for a few minutes to drive my children to the school bus. It was that good.
Ryan’s soulful memoir Clown & I is the tale of Ryan’s tumultuous transition from a high-flying corporate media career with the world at his feet to being flung head first into the earth-shattering world of life-long mental illness. Honesty is an unwavering theme throughout the memoir and Ryan lays all his cards on the table openly from his first sentence: “This is not a ‘how to’ book. I don’t know how”.
He’s right, it isn’t a “how to” book, nor does it promise you an unobtainable “happily ever after”. Bipolar disorder is with you for life. It is a roller coaster ride of uncertainty that can leave you swinging from the chandeliers one week and wanting to die the next and Ryan gives you no illusion otherwise. Yet in sharing his experience of what can only be described as an intense and chaotic life, Ryan is able to instill inside the reader a sense of glorious hope. Throughout the book, Ryan’s extraordinary resilience, wisdom, and utter refusal to give up, despite facing enormous odds is utterly inspiring.
Clown & I isn’t for the feint of heart, certainly if you are shocked easily or recoil at the mention, no, detailed description, of drug use and sexual exploration then this might not be an ideal fit for your bookshelf.
But the discerning reader must also remember that the world Ryan presents to you is not by any means a typical one lived by a person with bipolar disorder. It is his personal experience and his unique adventure and yet despite that, it is wholly relatable. I have experienced both none and all of this book simultaneously. I have had virtually none of the experiences and yet I have shared all of the emotions. It is Ryan’s ability to precisely capture the essence of what it feels like to experience mental illness, the struggle of holding jobs, maintaining relationships, taking medication, raising children and making the surprisingly difficult choice to either learn to look after yourself or die, that sets it apart from so many other bipolar memoirs.
Ryan’s unashamed descriptions of what it feels like to live with bipolar, from the soaring heights of mania to the darkest pits of depression, were so hauntingly accurate when compared to my own that it actually took my breath away. Although that being said, this probably isn’t the book to give to Grandma when you are trying to explain what it is like to ‘be’ bipolar.
Ryan writes freely and at times with shocking honesty, proving that nothing is off the table as he delves with fearless, sexually explicit detail into his experiences with ‘hypersexuality’; the dirty little secret experienced by many with the disorder that tends to only be spoken about briefly and in hushed tones. We journey forth into the deepest and darkest hollows of the seedy underbelly of society where hypomanic curiosity overthrows any sense of caution and we bear witness to the unlikely pleasure of pain and all out debauchery.
This is a book that takes you off the sofa and straight into an intoxicating rollercoaster ride exposing Ryan’s rawest emotions as he embarks on an accidental journey of self-discovery. Battling demons in the darkness of depression, fighting addiction, losing jobs and relationships over and over again, while intermittently being whisked away by the exhilaration of mania, spending sprees, days on end of wild eroticism, substance abuse, exotic locations, and even drinking snake blood, are all intertwined around the normality of day-to-day life where Ryan fondly shares the immense love and unbreakable bond he has with his son. Finally, he seeks an explanation for the madness, receiving the diagnosis of bipolar disorder that would change his perspective forever.
There is an air of responsibility that comes with writing about personal experiences with mental illness. You need to provide an exciting and captivating story that conveys to readers, who have little or no experience of your condition, what it feels like, but you also have a duty of care to those who do have shared experience, to be truthful. So many mental illness memoirs tell a watered-down tale, skating over the undesirable and ending with the author’s happiness at ‘overcoming’ an illness that is by definition incurable, leaving the reader misinformed and a sufferer feeling potentially inadequate.
Ryan too ends his memoir on a positive note, yet he doesn’t portray any fallacy that he has ‘recovered’ from or ‘overcome’ bipolar disorder, instead he demonstrates that he has accepted bipolar disorder, the good, the bad and the ugly, as part of his life, embracing the wonderful qualities and personal growth from his negative experiences.
Clown & I does not promise you a cure for bipolar disorder but it will prove to those with the condition that they are far from alone and inspire everyone who reads it to be true to their unique self.
Clown & I can be purchased from all major online booksellers in paperback and eBook, but Ryan requests that you buy directly from his website clownandi.com, because he is broke and tired of missing meals. He also reckons the big booksellers are rich enough.
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Photo courtesy of Ryan Heffernan.