A terrible scourge, mental illness is... a horrible thing.

The thing with mental illness is that we don't talk about it. This blog post is my little piece of talking about it.

I don't know much, and I know a lot.

My knowledge comes from living with another's mental illness for twenty-plus years.

The pain of mental illness was brought back fresh to me today with an incident that happened this morning. And so I will share my heart on mental illness.

For those of you who normally read my posts, you may notice that my writing is different today. At least it feels it is. The profound sadness that has swept through my being, has affected my thinking ability, and I am flat to the core. My energy has fled.

I share not so much to vent my own story, but in the knowing that there are many, many out there dealing with various types of psychological difficulties in either themselves or those close to them. Perhaps what I write will be a help of sorts.

I am no expert, but certainly a participant, and it is this place from which I write.

Scientifically speaking, the reason mental illness affects us so very much is due to the fact that our limbic systems, where the seat of emotion is within us, is an open system.

Contrary to this we have our nervous system, respiratory system, and such that are closed systems. My nervous system does not affect your nervous system, they are separate and closed off from each other.

But the limbic system is open. Therefore your mood affects me and my mood affects you. We are tuned into each others psychological states far more than we realize.

And this is why mental illness is such a silent enemy. It takes down everyone around it.

It is inexplicable, unpredictable and inflexible. Like trying to catch the wind.

To the one with mental illness who refuses to acknowledge or get help, the pain simply breeds more pain. There is never anything wrong of course to the one with mental illness... simply wrong with everyone else round about.

For those with mental illness who get help, I suspect it is different, and yet I don't know, cannot say, because that has not been my story.

The mental illness that I am so well acquainted is a jeckel and hyde thing. Bi-polar to be exact, the spectrum of amazing and up and getting on with life with the swing to raging, abusive and pulling back into the shadows, retreating till there is no-one there...

Is simply exhausting

"Oh God but for a bit of sameness... just grant us stability, we beg..."

It affected what we ate, how we ate, when we went to church, how we participated in family events, whether we were spending money or saving money, did we have friends, did we not have friends, were others allowed in the house, were they not... and on and on... and on.

While the unpredictability is the worst, the chilling predictability is what kills,

"Oh we are at this phase, and after this one comes this one, and after that one then the other one, and then we are back at the first phase."

Each cycle is flipped like a switch, good one day BAD the next.

Month after month, year after year, day in and day out... with all ones senses attuned to the every present signs of 'what stage are we at now and how much time do we have before the next one kicks in'

The getting ready for one's world to flip upside down, for everything to make no sense whatsoever, ensures that even the good times aren't good any more. They simply signal the bad that most surely comes.

Nothing can be trusted, and good simply becomes a worse sort of bad... good is the joker that mockingly reassures and draws one in, simply to be close enough for the hit to hit hard.

I don't have all this grey hair for nothing.

Mental illness untreated is a black hole to which everything is consumed. All energy, focus, passion; mental illness demands that the very core of a family's exsistence revolve around it and it only. Like all disease it is exceptionally selfish.

When the doctors at the psych ward diagnosed bi-polar 14 years ago (this month actually... trauma bores into ones memory), they came to that particular diagnosis because, and I quote, "It can't be schizophrenia because you would not have remained married this long."

Mental illness, unless attended to, drives people apart.

One of the worst things with mental illness is that unless one has experienced it up close and personal, it doesn't make sense. And so it divides friendship and family and community.

Isolation is the darkness that makes way for mental illness to have its day, and every time we discount someones experience, simply because we've not experienced it, we are party to the silent deaths that surround mental illness.

I am reminded of a funny story in a Laura Ingalls book: The student sits down at his desk to land on a tack put there by another student. He yells, shrieks as he launches himself off of the tack. The teacher, obviously perturbed by the ruckus gives a detention. And the student when asked why he was punished, "Because I got off a tack."

It's not such a funny story after all.

This has been my experience. It took me a long time, far too long in fact, to get off that tack, but when I did there were a number who simply were perturbed (some offended no less) by the ruckus.

"How dare you get off the tack!"

I've lost some friends over this, lost my church, and family has been divided... many are simply not sure and keep their distance.

One more price to pay for mental illness that refuses to be attended to. The costs keeps on, and on, and on.

Loss upon loss upon loss...

upon loss upon loss upon loss...

Though I have distanced myself and have said, 'No more.' My kids are still paying the price in various ways. And as their Mom, I weep and weep and weep for them, and for us.

Does it never end?!

No, it doesn't

It doesn't end.

Till death do us part. The pain this morning, the profound sadness that sweeps through my body immediately takes me back to those days when I begged of God, "Either take me, or take him, or release me from this marriage. It doesn't matter which, I simply can't do this any more."

If you are reading this and are dealing with mental illness in any shape or form, or suspect that you might have a mental illness, if anyone around you is suggesting that you might, take them seriously and check it out. Get help.

Our story is simply one of tens of thousands...  maybe yours can turn out differently