by Lino Viola

Created on: March 30, 2009

In 1992 , my wife of 19 years had her first psychosis. She would later be diagnosed as being bipolar. We had three boys, 15, 13 and 11 years old. When this occurred I found it extremely difficult living with her. She was always ready to pick a fight and I couldn't reason with her. Living in a two family house, I was fortunate to have a tenant just move out, so I decided to move into the vacant apartment. On the very first night my wife threw out my oldest and he came to live with me. At first my wife was taking medications and also seeing a psychiatrist bu within four months she stopped doing both and things got worse. She lost control one night and started to beat my second oldest. When I told my doctor about it he had no choice but to report the incident to the Department of Social Services. They came in and after conducting various interviews with all family members the children were handed over to me since she was deemed to be an unfit mother.

This was the start of a long and tedious road for me since I had to go to work and at the same time care for the three boys. They had a hard time understanding the illness and each time I tried to get them into some therapy they refused. Many a morning I would leave before them hoping that they would go to school. My oldest started acting up and eventually got himself into all kinds of trouble and would eventually drop out of school. Even with the help of some family members life became a roller coaster ride. I couldn't fill the role of both mother and father and that's when I started to really appreciate single parents.

As time went on, I noticed that my boys each gravitated to a different woman who would somehow take the place of their mother. Unfortunately my oldest boy's choice landed him amidst a dysfunctional family where there was drugs and alcohol and abusive behavior.

My middle boy ended up spending a lot of time over a close friend's house and his friend's mother treated him like another son. He fared pretty well. My youngest surrogate mother ended up being my sister-in-law. My youngest was the most mature of them all when it came to understanding his mother's illness and he was the only one to visit her when she was hospitalized. At the age of sixteen he experienced visiting the inside of a locked psychiatric ward. He handled it fairly well.

I hung in the marriage even though we were separated. I did it to not disrupt my son's life but now I wonder if I made the right choice. My wife is now suffering from schizophrenia. In seeking counseling for myself I could never accept being told that I was an enabler. After almost seventeen years of living this way, I've finally tired of waiting for a miracle to happen and am now contemplating getting a divorce. If my spouse was willing to stay on her medications I wouldn't be taking this path. I hope in so doing it will force her to do something.

Learn more about this author, Lino Viola.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.