by David D. Horowitz.
I entered my mother’s apartment, as I often visited her to share dinner, chat, or help with errands. She sat on the edge of her bed. Whispering, she confided she was having a nervous breakdown, couldn’t teach or work, and would be in a psychiatric hospital for several weeks. She asked me if I could care for myself during that time. Yes, I answered, I can. I was a senior at the University of Washington, and I lived in a campus dorm, and I would be okay.
My mother’s nervous breakdown occurred late in 1976, and recuperation extended well into 1977, at which time she began seeing a psychiatrist, whose several years of treatment proved helpful. For over a year, though, my mother was granted a leave of absence from her job as a political science professor at the University of Washington in Seattle.
I wasn’t shocked my mother had a breakdown. Her job had strained her ever since she’d been hired and moved to Seattle in 1971: three classes per quarter (and two per summer), with grading, lecture preparation, and student conferencing for each class; committee work amidst departmental strife; and writing and submitting articles for tenure, all while helping to support me and my older brother and repaying her student loan. Add the pressure to excel she put on herself, and she snapped. As a graduate student at Washington University in Saint Louis, she had won a Woodrow Wilson scholarship and earned excellent grades. A friend there deemed her the next Hannah Arendt. The expectations were huge, and they proved a terrible burden. Although her commitment to her writing gradually ebbed, to her dying day in August 2015 she rued not finding a subject about which she could write significantly and successfully. After her return to teaching, she researched phenomenology, political economy, and pornography, among other subjects, and she even began writing a murder mystery set in academia—but she didn’t complete any article or novel, and this left her feeling ineffectual.
Mom’s breakdown and depression, though, influenced me. I no longer viewed academia as amicably collegial, with reasonable workloads allowing for much independent research. My mother’s department witnessed frequent hiring and tenure-vote battles. Good friends would stop speaking to each other for years. Workloads often felt crushing and depleting. Midnights saw my exhausted mother—and likely some of her colleagues—struggle to begin an article hoping some refereed journal would publish it and lessen chances of being fired or feeling shame for want of productivity. Fortunately, my mother suffered only one nervous breakdown. By 1978 and 1979 she began to resume some of her teaching responsibilities, and she had won tenure—barely, but officially. Getting tenure lessened some of the financial pressure she experienced.
I learned from my mother’s one breakdown, though, and in other times and places this proved salutary. A decade later I left graduate school before I began a dissertation—and I landed on my feet as an office temp. A decade after that I left my teaching and tutoring job at a community college and, sick of academic politics, I returned to temping. I didn’t clutch at academic prestige. I was fine with manual labor, temping, and entry-level jobs, so long as I could pay my bills and be treated reasonably well.
For, then, I could write my poetry. I could start and sustain a small poetry press. I could attend, organize, and participate in readings and book fairs. Yes, at various times I worked as a telemarketer, court reporter, office manager, data entry clerk at an insurance company, conference room attendant at a law firm, and much else. Evenings and weekends, though, were mine, and I could write well and productively. I wasn’t competing with an image of prestigious success. And to help pay my bills, I’ve recently taken a part-time job as a tutor at a tutoring and test preparation center, but I have no interest in teaching, especially not at the college level. For some scholars and writers, college and university teaching are a perfect fit. I am not one of those people. And my mother’s example helped show me I needn’t worry about that.
I can choose among empowering, self-crafted options. I don’t have a mere two choices: be a professor or endure occupational meaninglessness. I’ve had a wonderful work life and literary career, relatively free from insane expectations. Of course, some expectations can healthfully inspire us to refine and improve our work. That should never come with suffocating pressure, though. Creativity can sometimes feel like a burden, but something is wrong if it feels draining and tedious. I’ve struggled my entire life to preserve an invigorating work-life balance. And my mother’s breakdown contributed to my understanding how essential that is.
