Good intentions, meet stupid idea. Stupid idea, this is a good intention.

We watched "A Beautiful Mind" Monday night after C went to bed (or pretended to). I read the book back in college, but wow...I didn't care much for parts of the movie. It glosses over so much, such as:

*  Nash’s schizophrenia led him to have homosexual affairs

*   Nash didn’t have visual hallucinations, he had auditory ones. I can more easily forgive this, however; it’s more visually compelling as a movie, but if you’re doing a biopic, then you should stick to the facts of that person’s life.

* Nash was involuntarily hospitalized more than once. In fact, he spent onwards of 8 months in the hospital at a time.

* The Nash’s had two sons.

* Alicia divorced him in the early ‘60s, but was still supportive of his recovery. (The remarried/got back together around the early ‘70s.)

* The youngest son lives a life very crippled by this strange disease that takes the mind hostage

It is not surprising that it hurt me to see Alicia portrayed as this strong woman who held everything together. I mean, I  have nothing but respect for her and what she’s been through—and still goes through, particularly with their one son who is very sick. Yet she only is seen as frustrated once. It never shows him acting aggressive to her, which he did. It never demonstrates the immense relationship strain this causes. No, she holds down the fort, he gets his shit together (as much as he can) and wins the Nobel Prize.

While I think Dr. Nash deserved the Nobel for his work…he may not have been alive to win a Nobel (the prizes aren’t awarded posthumously) were it not for her.

 Seeing the film was very hard. I knew it would be. It brought back so many memories of things I’ve never really talked about. I just carry them, inside, haunted.  I think maybe I should do something with my own experiences with B’s schizophrenia. The movie portrayal of Nash’s actions and progression of his illness, quite frankly, is nothing compared to what B did. NOTHING.

A very, very sore point with the movie for me was that it shows people—Nash’s community—as being amazingly supportive of mental illnesses and all waaaaaaaaay back in the 40's, 50's, and 60's, when many of these things weren’t talked about and certainly weren’t understood even by the best doctors. The best doctors, during this time, still thought schizophrenia was a result of bad mothering. A cold mother.  (Yes, we mothers suck.)  Women still “went to visit an aunt” in a different state to have a baby conceived out of wedlock (if they couldn’t take a trip to Mexico, Puerto Rico, etc). Yes, Nash is teased some in the movie, but that all (if I remember correctly) takes place on campus. In grad school, fellow grad students DO tease one another. I vividly remember hearing not that long ago, “Don’t ever call me a Nominalist again, you damn Meinongian!” So yeah, teasing occurs in grad school.

This was a very sore point for me because when B illness hit and I was newly pregnant, WE were left alone, which was probably in part why I followed him around. His own childhood friend suddenly feared his illness was contagious or they were scared. And instead of facing their fear or realizing someone is hurting deeply, they just left him. And consequently me, to an extent. When I was pregnant, so many of our "friends" in Seattle abandoned us. The phone stopped ringing, and when we reached out, no one accepted invitations, save for one person. I understand that they were scared, I understand that they don't know what's happening, what to do.

I was terrified. I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t know what to do. I literally watched as the person I had known for close to 5 years disappeared and some thing else took over.

But I knew something wasn't right--how am I going to leave someone alone when they're so clearly having some sort of massive neural meltdown? I couldn’t. So I slept in the car one night with him, when the paranoia hit. I covered mirrors. I danced in a hotel room at 3 am because he woke me up and wanted to dance with me. It was creepy, I cried. He was unhappy I cried, so he decided we should “all fall down” to cheer me up. But he didn’t announce this. He just pulled me to the ground, and I had nasty rug burn on my knees. (About 4 hour later was the time I called the police, who decided I was a hysterical pregnant woman and he was just fine—welcome to Wendover, Utah/Nevada, folks, where most car commercials are filmed!)

(If you’re wondering how I know his motives, when the illness seemed to be in remission, we talked a lot about our experiences, and he explained what he was thinking, looking very confused as he spoke. He once broke down in tears, saying, “I can’t believe that made sense to me. But it did. I was so certain it would make you laugh.”)

Wow. See…I don’t talk about this, because it scares people. No one wants to hear about this. No one wants to see a movie about this. They want nice clean edges. They want good and bad, black and white, healthy and not healthy. They don’t want reality. They don’t want to know that what I described above was just the tip of the iceberg. Or if I do talk about it, I am looked at incredulously. “Why would you stay with him? Why didn’t you leave?”

Look: I am not complaining about my experiences. As dreadful as some of it was, I would do the same thing were I placed in that same situation. I believed in B. I believed in him, and maybe more, I loved him deeply, as a friend and as someone I wanted to spend my life with. We were going to have a baby together. New life from us. I wanted him to get better, and oh, I suppose I hoped for some sort of Triumph of MY Will.  There’s no way of knowing the answer for sure, but ask yourself this: were your significant other to start behaving erratically, what would you do? It started very slow. VERY slowly. But it built up momentum.  If they expressed somewhat suicidal thoughts—but not enough to have them committed in the state you’re in—and refused to seek help themselves, would you just walk away?

I can’t do that. I care too much. Love is a strong thing. Friendship is a strong thing. But honestly, I have to say even if I hadn’t known B, and I saw some of the things he did…I wouldn’t walk away. I would gently approach or (more likely) make some phone calls while observing. We are all human. Is it not our job to look out for one another?

Back to schizophrenia:
I believe I have established that A’s understanding of any mental illness is more than a little lacking. I love him dearly, but…it is. Last night, he brought up that watching that movie made him worry about C. He said something along the lines of, “I’m no longer going to let her play games where there are imaginary things or people, because that could develop into schizophrenia.”

Good intentions, meet stupid idea. Stupid idea, this is a good intention.

I had to remind him C is under 5. We WANT her to imagine and be creative!!! Let her have tea parties with attendants like Alice (in Wonderland), Obama, Coraline, and her best friend from school who she’s going to marry (gay marriage and tea parties at our house!) I had to explain that schizophrenia hits—usually—after the age of 20. I reminded A, too, that B’s family has no history of the illness. That there’s a nurture v. nature issue, too; even if there is a gene, and even if C has it, it may never be triggered.  I also pointed out that we, unlike B’s parents, won’t dismiss a sudden and abrupt change in her behavior as “genius,” and follow that explanation up with a line like, “society just doesn’t understand how sensitive my child is.”

(Did you just gag reading that last line?) 

So here I am again, feeling haunted a bit by the past. Not in a bad way. Just…very contemplative. I can prepare myself as best I can, but if C does develop any illness—I have no control over that. My job is to get her the best support she can, in sickness and in health. I love my daughter fiercely. I so often feel like I fought the world for her, during my pregnancy, probably because I was virtually alone for so much of it. Then, when I was no longer alone, I felt ashamed. I felt like B’s illness was my fault and/or that people would judge me for continuing my pregnancy. 

Sorry if this is depressing. It’s actually not depressing to me, because this is my past. This is part of me. This is something I survived, and yes, I truly mean survived. I am not ashamed, I don’t care what people think. If they don’t understand or cannot at least pretend to understand or want to understand more…then they are denying a part of my past, and a part of who I am today.