Polar opposites

Janet has been in my life for two months and change - not by choice, but by happenstance - and because I am neither rich nor at the moment well (stomach flu then a few days later, an upper respiratory infection), I'm not quite strong enough to shove off. I won't tell you whether she's a coworker, my bus driver, my hairdresser, my teacher, my boss or my shrink. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that when people have what Janet has - dramatic mood swings that result in her lashing out if I so much as utter a word (slamming doors, screaming) - it is impossible to be around. I have actually taken video of my hands shaking when I know she's around. I fear her. Once upon a time, after 9-11, when I was new to New York and Connecticut I met a sweet young man named Conner. Oh by the way, Janet is not really Janet and Conner isn't Conner either. But let me get back to the story. Conner was schizophrenic. I heard about it, but since I didn't experience any weirdness around him most of the time - and he took medication - it was pretty foreign to me. Until one day I found out that he had had a violent past, that he had apparently pushed his mother's husband to the ground and beat him to a pulp. Now, there were differing stories on this. Conner told me that indeed, he had done it but he was off his meds, and that is not something he would ever do again. Because of the episode, his mom was not talking to him, which seemed to eat away at Conner. I understood. As Valentine's 2012 approached, I knew I had to shake Conner loose. I was falling for a young man in the bookstore where I worked, and by comparison, my beau seemed needy. I also was beginning to sense signs of his mental illness, like the time he rushed cigarettes to me at work (I smoked then) even though I didn't ask him to. (I had asked when I left for work if he could pick some up later, but hardly expected him to surprise me at my place of business.) That was an unsettling moment - Conner breathlessly handing me the cigs as I stood eyeing him curiously from my cash register. So Feb. 14, I dumped him. I was convinced I was falling in love with someone 16 years my junior who actually only wanted, well, you know, and it was time for Conner to take a hike. That. Is. How. I. Dumped. Conner. So on November 12 of that year, when I got the call at work that he had committed suicide, should I have been surprised? I felt guilty. His friend told me, "He'd run into his mom at the gas station, and he asked if he could come for Thanksgiving. When she told him no, he decided, apparently, to go to a motel room and just end his life." I was shaking. I left the diner with three items from my boyfriend's life - a shirt that said Myrtle Beach (oil-stained), a bohemian blanket-cover, and one of his coats. ... It's 13-1/2 years later. Wow. And I am lying in bed with my fever, realizing that the boyfriend I dumped because he ultimately could not promise me what I needed -- to stay on meds and try to have a "normal" life by getting and holding a good job, etc. -- never taught me how to handle the situation I am in now. Or did he? My boyfriend did go to counseling and he did take meds, so what went wrong? The problem in America isn't so much that there are so many mentally ill people walking around, but that we stigmitize mental illness to the point where people don't want to acknowledge they're sick. Further, there is not enough funding to support the kind of concerted, focused, long-term care people like Janet require. Janet has screamed at me, only to later cry and explain she's sorry, that it all happened because of a recent tragedy in her life. If Janet's moods were a rollercoaster, they'd be Coney Island. And all of it's left me feeling I've been on the Tilt-a-Whirl.

Photo: Armand Gautier - Transferred from en.wikipedia, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12201396