Schizoaffective

by Jay Paul [This piece does not directly address mental health. All of the posts on here do not. I want to present my thinking on a variety of issues because I wonder if there is something characteristically schizoaffective about how I use my mind. Maybe there isn't. But if you see something, please let me know, because the following question is animating much of this blog: what does schizoaffective contribute to the diversity of human thought? I know schizoaffective is often devastating. But it is also a specific window on experience. This piece originally appeared in a Vail Place newsletter.] written on April 29, 2020 The irony is not lost on me: I am about to burn fossil fuel to drive in my car to a place where I can commune with nature. My assumption is readily apparent to me. “Nature” is not what I see and hear out of my apartment window—the cars, the parking lot, the hum of the highway blocks away, the birds, the trees. Somehow, “nature” is considered that which exists indep...

by Jay Paul   At the end of a book I recently relished was an interview with the author. She mentions her divorce in passing with the explanation that her husband had mental illness—nothing further was said about it. I was devastated. I thought so highly of this author, and I learned that she felt so little of people like me. Giving mental illness as the only reason for a divorce is to assume that people with mental illness all make poor spouses. That’s the only way such a remark can make sense. Plenty of people with mental illness make good spouses, and plenty of neurotypicals make for poor spouses.   It’s called stigma.   A few years ago, I was talking on the phone to one of my best friends from childhood. He mentioned that his sister was seeing a difficult man “who has BIPOLAR.” He said the last word with a heap of disdain, apparently forgetting for the moment that I had been diagnosed with just that and with a condition considered even more serious. I decided not to s...

by Jay Paul Four diagnoses of me or someone in my family have defined a large part of my life. In 1995 my ex-wife and my oldest daughter sat in a doctor's examination room. A nurse placed some wooden blocks in front of my daughter, who sat on the floor. My daughter was uninterested. She looked around the room. She made eye contact with nobody. The nurse gave the doctor a look, picked up the blocks and quickly scurried out of the room. The doctor faced us. He wore a white lab coat over a dark shirt and a tie. He said, "Has anyone used the word 'autism' with you?" I put my arm around my ex-wife. All I could think to do was protect her. She seemed to crumble. Early on, we thought that the autism was probably mild and that my daughter would have to deal with some major social difficulties. But we were wrong. As the years went by, my daughter did not meet the usual milestones. Most significantly, she lost the few words she knew and was unable to speak. She is now 27. S...