Gray is the Color of Mental Illness

I’m kinder to my husband when I write.

I’ve said this for a long time, ever since I began writing a memoir about living with Steve’s mental illness. The book, Rambler: A family pushes through the fog of mental illness, is finished; it’s being released by The Artists’ Orchard this fall.

Mental illnesses affect people’s thinking and behavior, which can wreak havoc on their interpersonal relationships. When Steve got sick, well-established family routines changed, and we lived for years in a fog of uncertainty.

Steve was diagnosed with… Well, he’s had several different diagnoses. First situational depression, after impulsively quitting his engineering job when our three children were young. His diagnosis was changed to bipolar disorder after an explosive incident in Detroit while at an engineering society conference sponsored by his former employer, SAE. And finally it changed to schizoaffective disorder, which was a relatively new diagnosis in the mid-1990s, when all this was happening. Schizoaffective involves some of the psychotic symptoms associated with schizophrenia, like paranoia or delusional thoughts, and the mood swings of bipolar disorder. It took several years after his breakdown for the doctors to figure this out, which meant living with an unstable husband and father for what felt like a very long time.

After a semblance of family harmony returned, I squirrelled myself away in the local library on Saturday mornings to write. When I emerged several hours later, I felt kinder towards Steve, less angry about what had happened. I knew that having a mental illness wasn’t his fault, but I didn’t really understand this at first. Mostly what I saw then was a man who acted like he no longer cared for his family, someone obsessed with fixing an organization he no longer worked for. Writing about his illness helped put this in perspective. And by attending mental health workshops and conferences—and especially by listening to Steve, who shared his confusion about what was happening—I learned a great deal about his diagnosis.

Writing this memoir forced me to look deep into the nature of mental disorders, which affect one in four adults each year. I hope that by blogging (and talking) about my experience, more people will better understand what it is like to have or to live with someone who has a mental disorder. Because only through understanding will we begin to tackle the stigma of these devastating disorders.