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This will be a difficult post for me but I feel I must share this for the sake of helping those who don't understand mental illness see what it is like.
About 3 months ago I had to make a decision that I knew in my heart would not have a happy ending. I had to either have the woman that I truly love committed to a psychiatric hospital or continue to watch her completely self destruct before my eyes.
Although we both have a mental illness we were very much in love and doing just fine.
I have major depression with boarderline personality disorder and she has paranoid schizophrenia. We each had our meds and some out patient therapy and things really were going so well. We were happy and in love, with plans for the future. We were spending time with our children and families
for the first time in a long time.
Then, what everyone with mental illness fears the most began to take away our happiness. Her old demons started comming back. She began to complain about her medicine upsetting her stomach and she quit
taking them and called her Dr. A month later
she finally went to her appointment and her Dr. put her on a new med and told her to come back in three months or call if she had any problems. She didn't like her new meds either. Then I began to see changes in her on a daily basis. She began talking to herself for hours on end and staying awake for days at a time. Then there were spirits talking through her and sometimes she would just yell at them. Suddenly she trusted no one including me. She began telling me that I was letting people into the house at night and they raped her and killed her children. The FBI was around the house all the time and I was shooting her up with dope while she slept and was hurting her and reaping her. With me it was never raping her it was always reaping. When she was little a man came into her room and cut off her penis and the spirits were always there now. This was only the beginning. It got much worse as the time slipped away untill she could finally be considered a clear and eminate threat to herself or others. I knew that I had to get help for her but nobody would listen untill it became so obvious and so too late. I had to sign papers to have her committed and she hated me for it, still does and most likely always will. While she was in the hospital I could only call her on the patient phone where one of the other patients would go get her. She didn't want to see me at all. She only wanted me to bring things there for her and drop them off. Then after about 12 days when I called to try talking with her again another patient told me that she was gone. I asked to where but they didn't know. I called the hospital and asked where she had gone and they would not even acknoeledge that she had been there. I called her case worker and she refused to even talk to me. Since she is an adult she is protected by the new privacy of information act. They would not tell me or her family or anyone else where she went or
how she was. All I know is that she was released from the hospital and I got that information from other patients. That was 2 months ago. She did call one time and told me that she would be comming to get her stuff and that I was going to jail for what I did to her. Then the county paid for her to get a protection from abuse order against me so I can't contact her in any way for 18 months. As if I could anyhow. I have no idea where she is or how she is doing and no way to find out. So now, though some things have changed other things have not. I still Love her with all my heart. That won't change. I miss her terribly and that won't change. I will always worry about her and wonder where she is or who she is with and that won't change.
so, all I can do is what I am doing and just hope that the next man in her life cares for her and understands her the way I did. And I will pray that no one ever hurts her anymore and that somehow, she will be OK. So, for those of you who don't believe that mental illness is a real illness what do you suggest. Deep breathing and aroma therapy. Perhaps a little meditation on the side. I think not.
From The Heart, Bill
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