Excerpt from In my Wainwrights Shoes  

Guilty but Innocent! Stigmatic Bipolar Conspiracies
By Chris Wainwright,
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3. Ignoring Mental Illness 

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Not long after my return from France I found a vacancy for an assistant solicitor in High Wycombe. In the meantime I’d been working at our Beaconsfield shop as a stop gap. My uncle Derrick. dads oldest brother, had been running the branch until his retirement. He'd told dad he’d never go back again. Owners know the realities of managing and staffing retail outlets. If you're amongst them you'll probably know the stories are legion. I met one owner who employed four assistants. She said they weren't talking to her at the time because they objected to something she wanted them to do. In that situation Dad used to say he’d replace them all on the spot and run things by himself. He told me exactly how! If staff won’t follow reasonable requests then you either give in or let them go. It’s not easy! I heard an experienced retail owner call it 'one of the lonliest jobs there is'. I also heard all Dads stories on the subject. He'd never relinquish control. To keep order in his day he said the staff would go two or three weeks happy then the same not so much. I didn't spend long at Beaconsfield before taking up my new legal position but it was enough to see the difference with Princes Risborough. After his fathers indiscretion Dad made it a rule to distance himself from female staff. I noted however that my brother David had formed a relationship with one of the assistants only to then have another start teasing him. I wasn't there long enough to intervene. If Dad warned him off he can't have listened.

 

High Wycombe Solicitor

To provide a reference for me my former principal AB insisted I divulge all aspects of my health difficulties in detail. For obvious reasons I didn’t want to because I believed they were private and confidential. What had happened was personal no fault of my own and an isolated incident. AB was having none of it. He wanted to protect himself from any come back and demanded I make 'full disclosure' at interview. I'd had a very good interview with one of the partners who'd offered me the job subject to arranging a start date. Having reported to AB I found myself having to go straight back with what I thought would be bad news for me. Listening patiently to my tale of woe RL smiled and without another word said that he still needed to know my starting date. R was an extremely caring man and highy popular in the firm. Always fair but never afraid to be firm if necessary. It was a great pleasure working with him. I sensed later that there could be an issue because of his charismatic nature and popularity. My new position lead to me meeting my beautiful wife Maria. It was love at first sight. I explained to her about my health problems which from what my doctors had told me I had no reason to think would recur. It wasn’t long before we were married. I got on very well with the partners at B L. They were very friendly from the word go and I enjoyed working with a variety of clients mainly with contentious cases. By coincidence one of my very first road traffic clients looked familiar. I asked him if we’d met before thinking it might’ve been at tennis! He looked at me seriously and said that I’d sold him a pair of shoes in Beaconsfield a few weeks earlier.  

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THIRD & FINAL DEPRESSION -
As time passed I went from strength to strength at work. Unfortunately RL had to leave the firm. I've never seen so many employees in an organisation so bitterly upset by someones departure, but more of that laterThe remaining partners offered me a partnership effective in a years time as long as I kept my monthly fees up. Maria and I were married by then and were blessed with our eldest daughter. We were very happy with life and everything was going well.

 

Ignoring Mental Illness is an Abuse

Without any warning, a third and final unexpected breakdown began and got steadily worse. It still surprises me that I didn’t realise it was related to the earlier depressions. I’d got used to feeling anxious and thought it was something which would wear off. I did wonder if Maria might regret taking me on. I felt as though I’d let her down. I was still completely in the dark about having a bipolar illness. From the time of that breakdown Maria never once complained or showed the slightest regret that I was struggling. I think her loyalty was amazing because I know now that I made her life difficult before and after my eventual diagnosis. I’d previously asked the Aylesbury psychiatrist to prescribe whatever he had by way of antidepressants (I knew my brain wasn’t functioning properly and logic told me there had to be something to correct the fault). Without hesitation he said, "You don’t need medication'' so I had no choice but to accept his opinion and wait for whatever was going on in my head to pass. I reasoned that if I did that I’d have a clean bill of health. I assumed my breakdown had to be related to the pressure of legal work. Commonsense said I’d begin to feel better if I went back into retail. By that stage the doctors had kept it secret from me for nearly 14 years. I couldn’t possibly have done better to help myself.  

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RESIGN AS SOLICITOR  

As my confidence slumped and I became more depressed I told the partners that I was going back to work in my family business. I’d done well in the law having been offered a partnership but the way I felt I had no alternative than to use my own initiative. I was 31. I was constantly tense and nervous and still don’t know how I managed to work out my notice. I’d been driving into work counting the days until I could leave. The partners never questioned my decision or asked how I was feeling. They knew from my demeanour I was clearly ill. I went to meet R M a solicitor who was senior partner in a rival firm. He’d taken an interest in me following a convivial phone chat. He also saw I was troubled and I never heard from him again. Had I been assisted at the time I could've been diagnosed by experts and possibly continued in the law. I was no help to myself during that ‘breakdown'. Logic told me legal work was too much for me and I was certain changing jobs was the answer. For several years I went through agonies but after a 'close shave' everything changed several years later when I was properly diagnosed - when that happened I was soon working well at the family business. My legal career ended needlessly in 1986. No thanks to my doctors and employers. What would I have done as a professional if I'd been in their shoes?

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