Ne Sois Pas Decourage

from Thursday, April 14, 2005

Savant is not himself. We watch his storms roll in. I watch with dread, because he needs to get back on medication, but he claims that it is the medication that makes the people in the TV talk to him when they should be doing their show instead. What a load! If you want to make yourself feel horrible, try reasoning with a lunatic.

He has at times been so far gone that he could not make sentences. I've been told the medical name for that is "word salad". Too bad he looses a good chunk of his memory of these times. While we have them burned into our memories. He does not believe that he looses his sanity so completely. I need to film him so that, when he is stable, he can see what everyone else sees, what he is unable to see.

We want to provide a safe haven for him, whenever he needs it, forever. Easier said than done. He has been committed before, and been taken into the custody of our local jail twice. Each of his stays in jail were brought about by his doing something abnormal, when he's too delusional to reason the negative consequences of his actions. And that his actions are based on the delusional mind movie that has substituted itself for reality.

I was in public with him yesterday when he lost it. My objective then became to get him into the truck and go home. He began ranting about how he could sleep on the street or in the woods and eat out of dumpsters. Knowing it was going to be cold and rainy that night increased my distress. I tried to placate him. In the end I did get him home, but the rants were not over for hours, and only after his father got home and took over "rant control". I was falling into my own hole by then. He did agree to see a doctor; we'll see...

The whole thing triggers PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress....) and I become consumed with agony, because my First Mistake/husband used to trap me and our baby, and rant like a lunatic for many hours, or run off with the baby and say they would go live in the woods and eat berries (never mind that the baby was breast feeding) and I would never see them again. When I was pregnant with this first baby, I had to eat weeds I pulled up around where we were staying because I had no food. The husband was always off with his friends that fed him. Sure some days I got a potato or a carrot.

On the local evening news, all over the country, there are murders of women and children, by the husband or boyfriend (If I can't have you, nobody can!). These men can't see why anyone would hate, fear and want to run from them. Do you think maybe the women know you're the kind of guy that could kill them? Besides that, what's not to love?I used to wonder how such a thing could happen. My First Mistake showed me how. Private little hostage situations. I had the chilling feeling more than once that "This is how it happens!", we may not survive the night. What made me put up with Homeless Shelters, starvation, danger, living in the car, his drug use, giving away all my possessions...? I still think I was an idiot to have stayed as long as I did. Now I know first hand that battered wife syndrome is psychological torture as well as physical. I would escape, but not without my son.

I wish the past would not grab me by the throat, but they call it a TRIGGER for a reason.

Looking on the bright side:It is a beautiful morning. I have a new grand-nephew and I have hundreds of pine seedlings to plant. I love trees. With a bit of help from the family, I have planted hundreds on our land. The first trees are huge now. It rarely snows here, but when it does, I like to pretend we are in Canada; Banff Springs Hotel or Whistler or Vancouver, BC....we, Husband#2 and the kids, had wonderful family vacations there. Good memories.