Imagine if you will the antithesis of Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In our story, Dr. Grace Jekyll, a pharmacist, goes to work cheerfully every day. She is efficient and productive on the job; she presents a pleasant and friendly face to co-workers and customers; she has a talent for problem solving and can capably handle a number of other jobs besides her own if needed. Perhaps her desk is untidy, and she does spend too much time searching for papers that have been buried under other papers, but all in all her job performance is laudable, and she honestly likes her job. The only problem is that she has a bad back, and the job keeps her on her feet, and bending down and reaching up to get to different shelves, more than is good for her.
But when she gets home from work, a strange transformation takes place. Does she drink some sinister potion cooked up secretly in the pharmacy? Because every evening all her efficiency, cheerfulness and energy disappear, the problem-solving talent shatters into fragments, the ability to deal pleasantly with others drains out the soles of her feet, and where stood Dr. Jekyll now cowers - Ms. Hide.
Ms. Hide - hides. She spends most of her evenings and weekends in one chair, reading. She struggles to keep up with the obligations of living: looking through the mail, paying bills on time, doing laundry, picking up after herself - the simple things that everyone needs to do. Instead of watching her favorite television shows, she has been videotaping them - for months! - and she has yet to view any of the tapes.
She has promised to write articles for pharmaceutical publications, but it has been exceptionally difficult to come up with topics, and often when she starts to write, she finds herself growing so sleepy over the page that she winds up abandoning the project to take a nap. Two years ago she volunteered to moderate a listserv, but now the group has grown so big that it's more than she can handle - yet she doesn't want to give it up. She also helps out answering medication questions on a public service website - something she deeply believes in - but lately each question seems like a brick flung at her head.
That Ms. Hide seldom leaves the house is nothing new - even when much younger, Grace Jekyll was never a social butterfly - but now it's gone to extremes: her hair has grown four inches because she hasn't had a haircut in more than six months. This also means the silver and dark brown roots are four inches long, because the last haircut was the last time she had color applied. Her appearance used to be important to her, but that importance has been eroding over time.
Every evening, every weekend, is spent either grappling with depression or escaping from it into books. Around her chair, the pile of books she has finished reading grows higher until after a week or two she forces herself to put them all away. "Cleaning up" has meant stuffing anything out of place into boxes and stacking the boxes in a closet; by now anything she hasn't seen recently is as good as lost. The chaos is overwhelming.
Through the winter her isolation and the struggle against inertia become worse - yet on weekday mornings, without fail, she steps into a workday routine, and the smile that accompanies her throughout the day is real - she is Dr. Jekyll once again.
The Potion
Closely reading the story, it can be determined that the "sinister potion" is:
- Two parts depression (in winter, add one part Seasonal Affective Disorder)
- One part chronic pain
- Two parts being overwhelmed
In late January, Dr. Jekyll's hair stylist called and left a message: "Are you all right? I haven't seen you in so long. Please give me a call so I know how you are doing." That brief message, and the concerned tone of voice, opened a narrow crack in the prison of Ms. Hide's isolation. She returned the call; three week's later she stopped in at the salon; a month after that, she finally got her hair cut. Who knows - in another month, she may even cover up all that silver hair again.
