Everything Else
from the mind of Lewis E Gilbert

Mental Illness in America

I have lived with mental illness. It was not my own, but it was debilitating just the same. The scariest thing about living with someone who is mentally ill is that you start to wonder who is crazy. This is especially true if the illness in progressive, as was the case with my ex-wife.

You really start to doubt your own reasoning. You wonder whether in fact the fucked up explanations that your partner presents might in fact be the case; being engaged and commtteed to "working on it" only makes matters worse. Unless treatment enters the picture, eventually you reach a point where you either get out or you succumb. I was lucky with respect to my marriage in that I managed to get both my daughter and myself out.

So where do I stand with respect to my country? Am I crazy or are they? I think we that we should pay attention to what others think, that we should reflect, recognize mistakes, change our minds. I am scared of fundamentalism whether it is in my family, my community of my government.

I wrote in one of my ESM posts, that I hated Greek tragedy in high school, but I did learn that hubris always comes back as the downfall of the protagonist. Despite Jon Stewart's best efforts, I fear we are in a tragedy rather than a comedy (he was trying hard to be funny last night, but clearly not seeing any humor in the state of affairs - what will he say tonight?), but I don't think the hubris all belongs to W...

I am wondering today whether I should start taking the Celexa again...

posted by leg4 @ 13:35