Jayson Blair

My fascination with the sprawling 240 acre campus of McLean Hospital , in Belmont, Mass., and what was done there, began in 2003, the year I lost my job at The New York Times and days later found myself 270 miles south, at Silver Hill Hospital , in New Canaan, Conn., a premiere hospital that rivals, and in some estimations, is stronger than McLean . There, I was treated to my first experience in an acute, inpatient locked ward where I was evaluated for the first time by a psychiatrist and quickly diagnosed with a mood d isorder that later turned out to be bipolar disorder. Over more recent years, especially when I struggle to maintain my stability, I think back to that place and wish, for a minute, that I could come up with some reason to return to its 60 acres, complete with a social worker who spends the day checking in on you, the constant psychiatric care, the intense medication management, the priest who comes, if you so choose, to pray with you and the buildings full of fellow ...

The last two weeks have had me repeating a phrase that I learned many years ago from my high school journalism teacher, the astute and sapient Anne Sharp, when we either came across or created an image to represent the dangers of school administrators attempting to spin us, the student newspaper. The final image was of upright tiger wearing a brim hand with a card on it reading "press." The tiger was sitting in front of a picnic basket on a blanket and a person was sitting across from them. The caption read something like (and I'm sure we got the quote from somewhere; I just can't remember), "Doing business with the press is a bit like having lunch with a tiger, you don't know whether you are having lunch or you are the lunch." For those disinclined to my wrapping, winding, wreathing stories, I simplified the principle behind why I don't like doing media interviews, "Once you've been bitten by a tiger, you are a little hesitant to stick you...

I've tried to do my best to rest during the weekend's over the summer, taking trips along the Potomac, going to New York City twice, to the islands off of Charleston, S.C. and Duck, N.C. Feeling a bit tired this weekend, I mused a bit about what the last few Sundays have been like. I went to my camera to see if I had pictures (see above) that would jog my memory, an assessment of my attempt of summer mental health self-help and the results for me. They reach look nice, comfortable, inviting. Well, pictures don't always tell the story. As one particularly well-expressed friend once described her feelings as she sat her in her bikini, a glass of red wine next to her and her father outside by the pool while weekending at palatial mansion on the eastern coast of Florida, "Here I go again. I'm crying hysterically in paradise." There's been a lot of that going on lately. Each picture, in its own way, is beautiful, but each hides underlying sadness. Or perhaps e...