Sitting here this afternoon, needing to fill out legal paperwork for my divorce, I found myself thinking of all of the things that have been stolen from me by mental illness.  Mental illness is a silent shrewd and cunning interloper that steels into our lives and before we realize what’s happening, it steals from us.  Mental illness steals opportunities, stability, family, friendships, love and sometimes, even life itself.  Let me clarify that for the sake of this writing I am not using “mental illness” in a clinical sense with exacting definitions and diagnoses.  I am using the term to refer to deep psychological issues that seriously affected the people I am writing about; some have had actual mental illness diagnoses and some have lived their lives without an official diagnosis.

I was born into a family with mental illness.  So, from the start, any chance of a “normal” childhood was stolen from me.  My parents’ mental illnesses made them incapable of dealing with the stresses of life and love, and made them not able to care for or love me in the ways that I needed. 

The combination of my “issues” and my mother’s “issues” led to us not having much of a relationship the first 35 years of my life.  As a little child I didn’t feel loved by my mother and we grew apart.  When my parents divorced, I chose to live with my father and his third wife.  My mother and I didn’t start to be close until about fifteen years ago.  Mental illness stole thirty-five years of a mother-child relationship.

My father also suffered from mental illness and this greatly affected me as both a child and an adult.  As a small child I idealized my father and didn’t see his illnesses for what they were.  I followed in his footsteps; in many ways to my own detriment.  As an adult I saw his actions through the lens of accepting that he was mentally ill, but that did not make his actions and inactions hurt less.  When I moved in with my father and his third wife, she told me, “I married your father, not his children.”  I was fourteen years old.  Natasha’s mental illness led her to being a cruel interfering step-mother and my father’s mental illness caused him to accept her horrible behavior towards me and my brother.  The nature of the relationship between my father and his wife allowed mental illness to steal my father from me the last fifteen years of his life.

By the time I was a teenager my own mental illness was in full swing and often led me to acting like a total schmuck.  In my lifetime there has only been one woman who truly loved me unconditionally, my high school and college sweetheart, Shannon… and I treated her horribly and eventually permanently broke up with her.  I was a dick.  Period.  I have apologized to her and she has very graciously accepted my apology and we are now good friends… but my mental illness stole the only woman who may have ever truly loved me… loved me for me without trying to change me or “fix” me. 

When I was twenty three I married my first wife, Ava.  Like all people, Ava had some issues, but nothing that I would say elevated to the level of being a mental illness.  I think… or I would like to think, that she did love me.  In some ways she tried to save me/change me.  The marriage fell apart mostly due to my acting out because of my mental illness.  At that point in life I was very difficult to live with due to my depression and anger issues.  At this point in life I don’t harbor any ill will towards Ava for divorcing me.  I’m not thrilled with knowing that she cheated on me and ended up marrying the guy… but I was a lunatic at the time and understand her behavior.  Mental illness stole my first wife from me.  With the loss of that marriage I also lost our home in Georgia and everything that connected me to life.  If I had been able to be a different person back then and remained married to Ava, I would have had a much better chance at a “normal” life.  It was during the divorce process that I shot myself in the heart with a 9mm handgun and six months later took 900 pills.

After my “should have died” suicide attempts I ultimately ended up at The Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, MA.  Austen Riggs is like no other place that I have ever heard of… it’s an open campus mental health hospital, which means patients are never restrained and can and go as they please.  While I patient there I had several romantic relationships with other patients.  One of them, Barbara, shot herself in the head with a rifle up on a hill in Stockbridge.  Barbara was a few years older than me.  She was a lawyer from an extremely wealthy family in California.  She was beautiful.  She was brilliant.  She was an amazing person and had everything going for her.  Mental illness stole this incredible being from the world. 

The CEO of Austen Riggs while I was there was a despicable human being, Dr. Edward Shapiro.  This man’s hubris was so elevated that in my opinion he was mentally ill.  Again, in my opinion, his ego directly played a role in Barbara being able to kill herself.  His mental illness allowed for Barbara’s mental illness to end her life.  I pray Barbara’s needless suicide haunts him.

Due to ongoing legal issues (divorce) I can’t really write about my marriage to Lena right now, let’s just say that we both had serious issues that led to the marriage not working and yet again, mental illness stole love, family and home from me.

At the beginning of this year I started dating a woman, April.  April is a nurse and seemed to be a very caring and loving woman.  When things were good, they were great.  But April suffers from severe insecurity, specifically about infidelity.  I have many female friends.  Several of those female friends are ex-girlfriends.  April’s insecurity led to her acting in very antisocial ways: threatening to beat up women I interacted with, threatening to kill someone and a phone call in which she cursed out an ex, Aubrey, that I have been friends with for more than fifteen years.  April accused me of keeping these ex-girlfriends “on the side” in case we didn’t work out.  Nothing could have been further from the truth.  After the phone call, April told me that I had to choose between her and this woman who was nothing more than a good friend to me.  She wanted me to call up Aubrey and tell her that I would never speak to her again.  I refused… and April stormed out of my life.  April’s mental illness stole another love for her and for me.  April wasn’t “the love of my life,” but I did love her and felt very content with her.  It was the first time in my life that I loved someone, without being “crazy” in love and felt content with that.  This was and is a huge deal for me that I will write more about in the future… I thought it was a much healthier form of love, at least for me.  Mental illness stole that cherished contentment and love from me. 

There are many more examples from my own life that I could write about regarding the thefts committed by mental illness, but these were the big ones that came to mind while procrastinating filling out boring legal forms.  The point is that mental illness effects many people in many ways and causes all kinds of loss… real loss… that hurts… and sometimes… kills.