home

contact

CRAZYPAGES

Chapter 14
LOVE WITH THE MENTALLY ILL, 1988-2001

Thoughts about Loving the Mentally Ill
       One thing I never suspected about my own being mentally ill is that I would come to the point when all of my present and future girlfriends would be mentally ill. This phenomenon did not start to happen for six years after I was first diagnosed. I lost at least three girlfriends who were so-called "normal" because of my mental illness. These are described in more detail in the "Public Appearances" chapter in my speeches. Briefly, I feel that Carol-Jean, Amy and Jeanine left me when they found out that I was mentally ill. The stigma of mental illness was too much for them to handle, no matter how much they loved me when they did not know that I was mentally ill. I usually hid my mental illness from my girlfriends, but these three were all told that I had been hospitalized. Carol-Jean was with me in Las Vegas for the week leading up to my first hospitalization so she knew what was going on.
        I have had had some "normal" girlfriends who knew about my illness and who were o.k. with it, Paula, Dian N. and Olivia. Paula was with me in Las Vegas, had taken psych classes at U.S.C. and observed in the locked unit. We lived together three years and she was mostly sympathetic, but sometimes took sides and said that I was "acting like a mental patient". When I was with Dian N., I did not want to reveal that I was a client and I always took my meds behind a locked door and took care not to make noise with them. One day I figured to hell with this secrecy and showed her my bottles and we talked about my medicine and my illness. She was supportive. I never told Olivia about my illness until one day I overdosed on Tegretol. She helped me call the emergency room and took me to the hospital. We discussed all of my medicines and I told her a lot about each. She was supportive. Later she said that she donated $150 to County Mental Health (CMH) each year, so she already had her heart in the right place.
        Those six years were when I lived independently and was able to find girlfriends from the cross-section of the population. When I moved into the Board & Care in October 1988, I became enmeshed in the social world exclusively of the mentally ill. I did go out to a singles' dance maybe twice and took a friend from Mensa to dinner once, but that was the total of my non-mentally ill social world for the two years that I lived at the B&C. When I lived at Chrysalis, I was again in the mental illness social world. When I moved out and into independent living, I still felt part of this world.
        I wonder if being in a relationship only with other mentally ill persons helps or hurts one's mental state. I feel that it helps because when you are confined to a Board & Care or hospital, it is good to have someone to talk to, to do things with, to like, to love, to make love with. It is good to have someone who really understands what you are going through because he or she is or has been in the same spot that you are in. It is good to have someone who has the same or similar limitations that you have.
        On the other hand, being in a relationship only with other mentally ill persons might potentially hurt one's mental state because it is less challenging to approach a fellow mentally ill person to be in a relationship than a "normal" person. This might be contrary to growth because the person with mental illness takes the easy course by seeking out another mentally ill person. To do so can be a first step to gain confidence to approaching a "normal" person later if that is a desirable thing to do. I think that maybe it should not be desirable to seek out a "normal" person because one can have greater rapport with a fellow mentally-ill person, and a "normal" person may exhibit stigma towards the mentally ill as I have experienced.

1988-90, Board & Care
      Of the 46 people living in the Board & Care, Char-Lou Manor, usually only about 10 were women. I talked occasionally to some of them but never felt comfortable enough with any of them to consider one a girlfriend until I met Helen. She was in her early 20's, a schizophrenic who had self-mutilated herself, which turns me off extremely. There was nothing in particular that I can pick out about her that would attract me to her but I guess she was a good talker and I was a good listener. Once she came up to me and asked if I wanted to go for a walk. I had been looking for an excuse to walk so I said yes. She walked quickly and I kept up with her. We went about 6 blocks altogether. She went off on her own when we were done. Once we went a couple miles and stopped at a store and I bought 3 boxes of anticholesterol cereal and half a gallon of ice cream. Both of these items were luxuries at the B&C. We shared the ice cream with some of the others.
        We were friends for a couple months, just holding hands. Then one night, she had sex with my best friend, Mark, while some clients guarded the door. This made me mad at her. She moved out to live with her aunt in Pacific Beach. When I wrote my chapter on the B&C, I totally forgot about Helen.
        About 3 months before I left the B&C, I approached Marnie, one of the residents who I just barely had known for a couple months. She was 25 and I was 42. She looked like she was 13 except for her gallon-sized breasts. We talked and we decided to go out for her favorite thing, a chocolate malt at Burger King. Being a mental health client on Social Security and living in a B&C, this was an affordable, once in a while, date. When we were drinking our malts, Marnie told me that she had voices, about 20, including Warren Beatty and Madonna. I called them "celebrity voices". She said that the voices come from a computer at CMH. While we were drinking the shakes and kissing, she suddenly interrupted and exclaimed, "the voices are filming this!"
        Although others might have found her talk about the voices to be distracting, I found it entertaining, without laughing at the illness that caused them. She said that when she was 16 she took "every drug imaginable" and that this "drove her crazy". She had a violent streak and had just been in a fight with her roommate, throwing her into a lamp. A couple months later she broke 3 lamps. I looked beyond the voices and the violence and saw her as a nice girl with problems.
        We went out for shakes or sodas often. I took her out on her 26th birthday to see "The Exorcist III". This and other movies that we went to reflected her taste for violence. I didn't like this, but I didn't think that I could change her.
        One day we were sitting in my room and were trying to think of things to do although it was raining. Marnie, looking like an innocent child, said, "We could fuck." I was worried about being caught in the act and getting evicted, but I wanted her. I knew that my bed squeaked a little when I was by myself. We made love and I cringed as the bed squeaked a lot. The thunder drowned out some of it.
        The day after Marnie and I first went out, Julie, who I talked with almost every day, was upset with me and said that I was robbing the cradle because of the age differences between Marnie and me.
        By coincidence, I was on the board that oversaw Marnie's treatment program. It was the Intensive Case Management Client & Family Council. I often wondered to myself if there would be a conflict of interest but I felt that there would not be one. Then, one day, an officer of the program came and interrogated Marnie about me and whether I influenced her. She said no. Nothing came up about this at the next board meeting.
        I left the B&C at the end of October 1990, having been there just over 2 years. We continued to be in a relationship.
        In November my boss, Ken Kenworthy, raked me over the coals for 20 minutes for being in a relationship with one of their clients of the Intensive Case Management program. I didn't point out that it was 4 months that we had been in a relationship. He forced me to resign and said it was a noble thing for a professional to resign and move on to another board.

1991
        I was in CMH from December 1990 through February 1991 (see Chapter 12, CMH Diary). One day I was surprised when I saw Marnie walk in to visit me. We had had a relationship with no visual sighting, only phone calls. She reminded me that I had said I'd pay for the cab if she came to see me. It was $8, a lot for a client on Social Security, but I figured it was worth it this one time to be visited. I told her not to do it again and try to get bus fare.
        The rest of the year I visited her numerous times as she was in one locked unit or another, including Harbor View and Mercy Hospitals. The typical routine was I would get her a candy bar or a Coke from the vending machine and visit her for whatever the rules allowed, an hour or two. This is not a typical relationship.
        In July, she lived in a B&C at the time that I was leaving Chrysalis. They had a strict curfew. I picked her up and she ran off to the trolley to go home to her father's hotel in Mexico. When I brought her back the next day, her case manager and the manager of the B&C were mad at me, assuming that I had kept her away. When I brought her back to the B&C, the B&C manager called the cops on me, and told the cops that I was taking pornographic video pictures of her, which was a lie. He said that I was banned from their property.
        I wrote a 3-page letter complaining about all of this, with copies to the B&C owners, the Patient Advocate, Public Defenders, etc. Jane Fyer, President of the Intensive Case Management board was sympathetic and made copies for all the board and distributed them. They didn't have time to discuss it at their meeting, kept delaying it a month to the next meeting, and the issue fell by the wayside. Two years later, I'm still mad about this issue.
        In September I went to visit at my old B&C. I saw Helen who had returned there. I asked if she would like to see my new apartment. She lit up and said "yes". I had expected her to say "no" or "some other time". We walked the three blocks together. I showed her the small studio apartment and she was very appreciative. She asked me to call her tomorrow after her day treatment. We visited each other for the next five days. She gave me a cup and a couple things that she made for me at day treatment including a plastic stained-glass piece. She told me that she was working on something else that she was making for me.
        One day she asked me to drive her somewhere. I said that's only two blocks, why don't you walk? Why wear out the car? The next thing I knew she was hanging up on me or refusing to take my calls. I walked to the B&C and she saw me from a block away and turned the other direction. She told my roommate's wife that we had broken up. Helen hadn't told me the reason but I thought it was because I wouldn't give her a ride two blocks.
        Marnie had moved to a nursing facility, Friendship Manor in Lakeside, about 20 miles from me. When I told Jeff Elias, the Supervising Attorney of the Public Defenders in Mental Health, that she was living there, he replied that Friendship Manor is like a mini-State Hospital. I always told people that Friendship Manor was misnamed. It was like a holding tank.
        Once I took Marnie out on a four-hour pass from Friendship. We were at a store and she asked for some beer. First I thought not, then I thought she doesn't get any pleasure these days and a little beer wouldn't hurt her. She then grabbed the biggest bottle of beer that I ever saw. A few minutes after she finished it, she was throwing up and asking for more beer. I said no and that I hoped they wouldn't know that you've been drinking. She assured me that they wouldn't.
        A couple hours later when I returned her and they started the routine of emptying her purse out and checking her pocket, they immediately said you've been drinking. I was banned from the property and not allowed to take her out on a pass. Finally, after six or seven weeks, I wrote a letter to the head doctor to request that I could take her out. I was surprised when he agreed.

1992
        By coincidence, both Marnie and Helen lived in the same facility, Friendship Manor, and occasionally were roommates. Helen told me that she had broken up with me for the reason similar to my guess that she was upset that I wouldn't drive her two blocks. Her reason was because "you never wanted to go anywhere." I would have offered to take her out right then for pizza which she was talking about, but my previous ban on visiting Marnie was stretched to include Helen. Helen told me that they had changed that so I could take her out. For some reason Marnie couldn't come along.
        We went to the nearby Lakeside Park which was pretty. She kept looking for a particular guy who had sold her drugs before. She couldn't find him. Then she walked us to where we were hidden by tall reeds in the lake, and she gave me long and wonderful oral sex. She said it was to make up for the poor way she had behaved towards me.
        We got a "Hawaiian" pizza with pineapples all over it. We brought it back to Friendship and shared it with Marnie. She threw up while eating it.
        Marnie later lived in CMH in one of the wards that was contracted by the private company. She couldn't get a pass out the first month, according to their procedure. Sometimes I would visit and bring her a candy bar and coke. Sometimes we would go out. One time she got away from me after saying that she was going to catch a bus and then take a trolley to the border and go to her father's house. According to CMH, this was the worst thing she could do and I would lose my guest privileges if I let her go to Mexico. I was sympathetic with her going home to her family but I knew that I couldn't let her do it. I caught up with her and grabbed her wrist and she laid down on the ground. I tried to pull her up by the arm. She got up and ran for a block down the street and I could see a bus approaching her so I didn't pursue her.
        The next week Lou, my buddy from Chrysalis who was her Social Worker at CMH  said that she claimed that I had raped her. He didn't believe this and advised me to straighten  out my relationship with her.
        On Labor Day I felt really good and put on my headphones to listen to music. I kept them on when I went to CMH to visit Marnie. I still had them on while I made a call on the payphone, just pushing one of the headphones aside to accommodate the telephone. While I was on the phone and facing away from the front desk, I heard a staff member say, "Is he part of the ward?" I knew that he thought that I was a patient there. I wondered why. I figured it was because when I have music coming loudly out of the headphones, I compensate by talking loudly.
        A security guard came up to me to escort me out of the building and towards my car. He said to stay of f of the property. I was complying. Then he was gone and I realized that I needed to use the bathroom and make a phone call. I wondered if the building next door, the Health Services Complex, where I’ve been going to meetings for 4 years, was considered part of the same "property". I used the bathroom and then was on the payphone. Suddenly, a tall Black security guard was pulling the phone off of my ear and telling me to get off the property. Then three Black guards were chasing me the short distance out of the building. The head guard pushed me through the doorway and I lost balance and went spinning. The guards were chasing me because of my badge. I got in my car and backed up in their direction.
        I was pissed that they were chasing me. I was pissed that all I had done was visited my girlfriend on a holiday. I drove 10 miles to the beach to calm down. At home, I wrote up a description of what had happened, headed in red letters, RIGHTS VIOLATION. I showed it to my buddy, Dr. Richard Danford, Director of the Patient Advocacy Program. He remembered that Marnie was the same girl as in my write-up the year before about the B&C Manager. He was apparently mildly interested in my new report but didn't do anything about it.

        + + +

        After three or four years with the same two women, sporadically at best, I met three more in 1992.
        Charlotte lived in Chrysalis after I moved out but I met her at the weekly "Alumni Nights". She seemed very young, maybe 25, but had had and lost 3 children. She was evicted from Chrysalis for drinking in her room and from a hotel for having sex in the hallway. I've seen her drink a 6-pack of beer with no apparent effects. To look at and talk to her, if she were not drinking, she did not seem to have any problems, mental or with alcohol. [Nine years later we’re still friends.]
        Joann is not her real name [as is true of most people in this book]. I could write a lot about her but hopefully she will do it herself.
        Laura is chronologically the last one for the year but is eternally first in my heart. Should I break the suspense of the next few pages and say that she is my wonderful wife, mania, depression and all?
        Laura and I met because we were fixed up by her friend Yvonne. I have always disliked the idea of being fixed up and I think that this was my first time. Well, it worked. Yvonne and I met in a despicable set up called County Employment Services. We had daily classes together for maybe 2 months and she had told Laura that there was this man in her class whom she should meet because he has a doctorate, something that Laura reveres in a man, including her father and friends. Laura put off the idea because she had too much going on in her life, a platonic boyfriend, her hospitalization and her father's hospitalization for a heart attack.
        Finally, Laura and I talked on the phone a few times, once for 3 hours, when Laura was phonesitting for Yvonne. Laura and I met on Christmas day when I dropped off Yvonne at Laura's apartment. I was sitting in my car and I couldn't see her face because of the glare. I saw her at Yvonne's New Year's party, but I avoided Laura because she was with her boyfriend.

1993-The End of Temporary Relationships
      Marnie was released from the locked unit at CMH. Her time locked up there and at Friendship totaled more than a year and a half. She moved to a private boarding house for mentally ill women only, called Big Sisters. I picked her up there a couple times but she didn't really want to go anywhere.
        I talked to Helen and she said that I was not allowed to visit her but she was supposed to be released from Friendship in a short time. The next time I talked to her, she punched a guy out the day before she was supposed to be released. She could now be there for another couple months. The good news was that she was going to be hospitalized and that I could visit. So I bought her a Roberto's burrito, which she reimbursed, and I visited her at Vista Hill Hospital. [Coincidentally, I lived in a house with her 7 years later and she was absolutely vile and violent towards me. I told people, "Believe it or not, we used to be friends."]
        Joann I consider as one of my friends and neighbors.

1993-Permanent Relationship--Laura

Engagement

        Laura and I wanted to go out together but I put it off for a few days because I had asked her to be my character witness at Employment Services at an upcoming meeting to discuss some accusations against me. I felt it would be unethical if she were going out with me and were also my witness. We finally said to hell with it and went out a few days before the meeting. She couldn't find the location on the meeting day anyway.
        We got engaged on Sunday, January 24, just less than a month after we met. We both feel that we knew what we were doing. We have so much in common. We were both born in Chicago, have high intellectual ability, both took Latin, are interested in culture and music in particular. Both of her parents were teachers and I have a teaching background. Both of us had our professional career stopped by mental illness. We mutually agree that we have the greatest sex in our lives and it keeps getting better.
        The night of our engagement we went out to karaoke at McDonnell's. We wanted to keep the engagement secret. Rob, the photographer for my Union-Tribune story, was there and shot a lot of pictures of us putting cherries in each others' mouths and singing and dancing. He figured out from our actions that we were engaged. The karaoke leader, Freddie, found out and sang a special song for us.
        We do have minor problems such as my peeves over the clutter and her shoes being left all over the house. Also, I think that she watches TV excessively. When we had our first argument on Valentine's Day and I reluctantly told Rob, he smiled and said that it was good that we were human instead of just putting each other up on a pedestal.
        Also, her 9-year old rubbed me the wrong way from the second I met him. The first hour we met he was talking in non-stop obscenities and kept asking about my sexuality—

"Are you a virgin? Yes, you are. No, then you did it with her!"(Yvonne)

He has been diagnosed as manic-depressive with severe oppositional disorder. That's an understatement. When Laura and I became engaged, however, he surprised me by calling me "Daddy". Sometimes he's friendly to me, but mostly he's not. When I thought of living with him for the next 9 years until he would move out at age 18, I did not like the idea but was willing to accept him because of my great love for Laura.

Marriage

        We had a beautiful wedding ceremony and reception with many mental health clients and professionals in attendance. Laura thought that I didn't kiss her long enough during the part "you may now kiss the bride" so she had me do it again as people laughed. We had a beautiful honeymoon. The wedding night was at the Hotel del Coronado, famed as one of the best hotels in the world. The night's stay was a wedding gift from her friend Elizabeth. We then drove up the coast, staying in Santa Barbara and going to Hearst's Castle.
        I am glad that we are doing things together. We go together to mental health meetings and flew to Sacramento for the annual mental health rally. She has become active with Clients & Others for Action (COFA, that I am past Chair of) and she is serving as its education chair. She was elected to the board that I am on, the California Network of Mental Health Clients. She has worked closely with me on my two major projects, my San Diego City Council campaign, serving as Chief-of-Staff, and my nonprofit corporation, MindStar, serving as Secretary/Treasurer and Education Director. She will be developing and teaching courses on mental health for health care professionals for MindStar. We have written some poetry together (see the poetry chapter for more details).
        We had a medium problem at first that is hopefully solved now, at least it hasn't come up lately for several months. The problem was her spending sprees. As an upper-middle class woman most of her life, she was used to going shopping and buying a couple hundred dollars worth of clothes at a time. I quickly stopped her, explaining that we could not live like that on our combined Social Security incomes. I reduced our clothing budget to zero. She was also using her ATM card to withdraw a couple of hundred dollars a week. I caught this after two or three weeks. When I asked her what she spent it on, she couldn't remember most of it. I seized her ATM card and said that she couldn't have more than $10 a day. She interpreted this to mean that she got $10 every day. I explained that that's not what I said and that we could not afford that on our low income. I gave her her ATM card back after a month because she had been good. I still monitor all of the expenses closely because we are so marginal (and below) that we cannot afford to spend money foolishly.
        Two major problems happened very soon after we were married--death threats on us by two of her relatives. [I’ve decided to edit out this bad experience.]
        Laura admits that it is too much for her to take care of her son. He has been placed in a foster home. She visits him 1 or 2 or more times per month at the foster home. Sometimes she asks me to go along and I tell her no. The only time I see him is when I'm being supportive of her and he is there, too, such as at funerals. When she tells me about him, I tell her that I don't want to hear it.

The Mental Illness Issue.

        Laura claims that she cannot do simple things because of her illness: fill out a Social Security form; talk on the phone to Social Security; clean the house; remember that she is on new medications. When she can't do something, she blames it on her illness. I don't blame my illness for anything. I don't feel that I exhibit symptoms. She had me hospitalized because I was only sleeping 2 hours per night. I don't consider that a problem; maybe it is for her. Recently I was really mad at her for something and she said, "Go take your pills". I said, "I'm angry, not crazy!"
        We have great rapport because we both have the same mental illness, have gone through similar experiences, even take one of the same medications, her doctor was my doctor's student, and she's just changed to the same doctor as mine.
        We were both hospitalized during the first 6 months of our marriage. She visited me almost every day at Southwood Hospital. I could only get a ride to visit her twice at UCSD. So we missed each other for several days. Then she spent the night away from home on the day that she was released because she was mad at me.
        Just together. One night when I thought that a comedian on TV was not funny, Laura said that we need to laugh in this otherwise unfunny world of ours. I was busy focusing on my writing and could not laugh. An hour later, I came out of the room and put my thumbs and my fingers to my head and finally made her laugh.

Expected Future: Wonderful!
      Despite some negative remarks above, our expected future is wonderful. We love each other completely and will not let problems get in the way. We are surviving through poverty together and know that we can survive when we are affluent again, hopefully through working together on MindStar, the nonprofit corporation. We agree that it is o.k. to have differences and to argue. Laura once put it as,

"Our marital matrix is developing--we work so well together--we're growing."

[We lived together as a married couple from March 1993 to December 1995. We spent one month together in 1996 and finalized our hostile divorce in November 1997. That’s not forever. She remarried. After a couple years of post-marital irritation, we consider ourselves friends and exchange cards and occasional notes.]

1999- 2001
        I live in a small Board & Care whose women have the collective brainpower of a toad. They (and the men) only smoke, drink, do crystal and cocaine, and all they talk about is the same. Some of the females are combative ("I'll kick your ass!!...Fuck you!!") If I were interested in "love", I’d have to look elsewhere, and it’s the same old problem - how do you go out without a car and money? If  I went to a singles dance, the first two questions after your name are - "what do you do?", "how much do you make?. Well, now I can truthfully say "entrepreneur/self-employed ecommerce webmaster" and "the sky’s the limit!" But I don’t know if I want to go through this. Till then, the only girl for me is Angie Harmon on Law & Order (I know she’s married), Charlotte on the telephone, and Elaine in the hospital..
        Once when I was thinking about how long it was since I had sex, Marsha, one of the board & care girls gave me some care on her last weekend there.  Her romantic line was, "I'll have sex with you if you get me a beer at the liquor store." I figured she was worth a dollar or $1.29 and I said yes. When we were done she wanted another beer for sex again. I gave her a dollar bill and let her walk the block to the liquor store. Marsha said she would visit after she moved because her dope connection was in our neighborhood, but I never saw her again. Besides the tale of this paragraph, I remember the cross that she carved in her forehead. Most self-abusers don't carve where everyone can see it.

top

home

contact