Life, Love & Sinn

When Someone You Love Has A Mental Illness

News of Sledgehammer’s death struck me exceptionally hard today. I wish I knew how to reach out to his girlfriend. She must feel like hell right now. I empathize with her…

A year ago on March 14th, the man I loved and had been living with for 3 years had a paranoid schizophrenic mental breakdown. Over the course of 3 days he went through a range of emotions that I had never seen before. He apologized profusely for the loss of our unborn baby. He wanted to leave me. He wanted to get me pregnant right then. He thought I’d been drugging his food for the last 3 years. He wanted me to make his grandmother’s chicken soup. He went for a walk at 4 am when he couldn’t sleep and picked a bouquet of flowers from various neighbors yards and left him on my pillow. He had to get out of our house and didn’t feel safe anymore. He loved me so much he’d never hurt me. He thought my step-father was trying to recruit him for the Black Panthers, (my dad WAS a former Black Panther.) He told my dad he had misrepresented himself to him and wasn’t good enough for his daughter. He wanted to marry me. He needed to leave to keep from hurting me…

He was able to maintain his sanity in front of my children we had been raising & he’d disappear into the bedroom and smoke medical grade marijuana to try to calm down. He was manic. He was panicking. He was completely paranoid. He wasn’t making ANY sense.

And I was madly in love with him.

When I read the XBiz article today about Sledge, I realized, that could have been me calling  911 for help, that could have been my man dead from a police officer’s taser. I immediately picked up the phone and called J because I knew he would understand. I started explaining the story and as I did, just as I type now… the tears started to flow. He comforted me… and thanked me for being strong enough to NOT call the police for help.

A Daily Beast article from 2008 stated that 90,000 calls answers by police annually are regarding emotionally disturbed people. When a loved one picks up the phone for help, they don’t expect the person they are calling to get help for to wind up in the hospital morgue. I was lucky… I called my boyfriend’s mother instead.

We took the risk of putting him on a cross country flight from Los Angeles to Miami where he could get private care and treatment to correct Neurofeedback treatment he’d been getting at the VA for his PTSD from serving in Iraq & Afghanistan. We limited the amount of money he had and his possessions. I did his laundry, packed him a bag, tried to get him to eat and finally got him to sleep in the car on the way to the airport. When we finally arrived… he thought we were in Italy and he was on his way back to serve in the war that destroyed him in the first place. I was heartbroken.

For the next 2 weeks while doctors tried to piece my man back together, I wrote a love letter a day to him… each one while typing through my tears. I was terrified that in an attempt to heal from the wounds of war he’d made himself worse. He had a family history of paranoid schizophrenia. I was scared I’d lost my man forever. His mother & I spoke every day. He had taken a bottle of aspirin out of our medicine cabinet at home & thought that’s what I’d been drugging him with. His mother had to remind him, “K loves you. She wasn’t drugging you.” It was the most challenging moment of my life. Exactly 2 weeks after he left, my phone rang & it was him. He sounded happy. He loved me. He was better. He wanted the kids and I to move to Miami when school let out.

The first time I saw him I knew he wasn’t the same man. The sparkle had left his eyes. He moved more cautiously… so far removed from the man that took me sky diving the first time he came to LA to visit me. He seemed so much more fragile than he had been before. Even today, while he is healed from the mental breakdown, I realize he STILL isn’t the same man I fell in love with. Watching him try to piece his life back together has been daunting because its something that only he can do at this point. I still love him but his illness has driven us apart. He still loves me, but not the same. We broke up for a bit and tried to get back together but it just wasn’t the same. Our love stands, and he is still my best friend… but he’s withdrawn from life and his focus is so different than before.

Today, I had to reach out to him for comfort, the way I couldn’t reach for him while I endured the pain of his absence during his illness. He immediately understood. What happened to Sledgehammer and his girlfriend could have happened to us. Our story could have ended so differently. He is such an beautiful spirit, such a wonderful man and has always been a rock for my children and I. To think, had I picked up the phone and dialed 911, my grief could have been so much more inconsolable.

When I gave myself to him, It was for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health for as long as we both saw fit. And we did. I’m so happy that this amazing man still has an opportunity to share his gifts with the world… despite his battle with mental illness. Even if I can’t be the woman by his side, I’ll always be in his cheering section, with the biggest sign, and the loudest voice… and so much LOVE in my heart.

And though today, the universe is setting us on different paths and this chapter in our lives together is drawing to a close.. a new one is opening for us to pursue endeavors on our own. I have always believed that the Universe brings people into our lives for a reason, a season or a holiday. I believe I was brought into his life to save his. I believe he was brought into my life to help me with a difficult transition in mine. And though our paths are no longer parallel, the bonds that we shared doesn’t end here. Our intimate love may change and become something more pure… but we will always have one another’s back.

The experience of watching someone I love so much suffering so deeply is one which has changed me forever and for that I am eternally grateful.

For my lover I leave this personal note:

J, thank you for being my biggest supporter and my greatest fan. You know I’ll always be your biggest supporter and your greatest fan. I can’t wait to see what you do with this chapter of your life. I love you. Always. Still. K.