Hiatus due to insanity....

Typical exchange: A - "How've you been?"
B - "uhhh, well you know."
A - "That good, huh?"
B - "Life with mental illness."

I feel like I'm eternally on the edge of the abyss. The stupid worst of it is that the better things seem to be, the closer I feel to falling off. I've learned that this is often truly the case, and so I now suffer from a sort of constant negative paranoia. When I don't hear often from my son, no news is definitely not good news; it's just the quiet before the hysterical phone call from his wife. It's not a question of IF something bad will happen. It's a question of WHEN. I'd say conventional wisdom will give that quiet period an average lifespan of six months. Tops.

It doesn't matter that I've worked hard to educate myself about the nature of his disease (and probably hers as well,) and for that matter, my own. When the doodoo hits the fan, I'm back to square one. Back to being pissed off. Back to wondering if I'll ever have a life of my own, free of the day to day drama of theirs. Back to a grief so deep I think I'll never stop crying - that I am the cause of his suffering, the carrier of mental illness, that I passed this on to him and probably made it worse by every parental failure. Back to the futile sense of responsibility and the desire to fix it, somehow, someway. This usually pulls me full circle back to pissed off - that someone who is chronologically an adult can do such bonehead things, make such awe inspiring errors in judgment and then put the cherry on top by lying about it.

I'm being selfish here. I'm struggling with my own depression, the beginning of summer when my husband is away for the better part of four months, living alone for essentially the first time of my life, weight and health issues and trying to redefine myself with an empty nest. I was pretty wrapped up in all of that and having a nifty little pity party when the phone call came. Now I'm in the limbo of waiting to see what they will decide to do with the newest crisis. My self assigned role as their main support means I must remain rational, reasonable and available. I try.

But although I never miss the onset of crisis, I'm rarely in on the work of it. I hope that they are talking, that the rush of discovery and accusations has been replaced with the labor of staying committed to one another despite the obstacles. Marriage is damn hard work. Marriage with mental illness in the mix? I believe that they love each other, despite his knee jerk habit of lying to her and despite her knee jerk habit of saying it's over. They've been through a lot and still come out together. I believe they can handle this. I hope they can. And I'll do my best to handle whatever comes out of this. Life with mental illness.