Schizoaffective

When I was around the age of 30, my oldest daughter was diagnosed with autism, and soon after I was diagnosed with bipolar. I felt some bitterness. My coming to terms with not feeling bitter marked the center of my personal emotional evolution at the time. The lessons I learned have helped me get through many struggles without succumbing to too much bitterness. This, good people, is my story! Bitterness is a real danger for both parents of children with special needs and people with mental illness. I was in potential trouble. Both then and now, I believe there were many factors that prevented me from ruining my life with bitterness. Part of it was the need to keep a clear head so I could support my family. I was not only the main breadwinner, but, for most of the time, the only person in the family bringing in much money at all.  There was one overriding factor, however: atheism. I think that, by not believing in a personal God, I was able to more easily navigate the perilous emoti...

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...