Patterns of Madness, Peeks for Peeps into Madness, Addiction & Love

PAY ATTENTION . In the event that you don't get anything else from this book , my hope is that you learn to witness yourself and others who suffer from confusion .Pay attention to details. One such detail I was oblivious to was Melanie's' school report. Recently I went looking for Amanda's baptism certificate. She was in need of it to enrol one of her girls into daycare. I did not think anything of the task until I began shifting through years of documents. I had not realized that even with all the transfer and moves we had, when it came to school documents I kept everything. I took the time to review Melanie's.( A bitter -sweet experience) . I planned to get her school reports  in some type of order so her children could have them if they so desired. I was stunned as I shifted through each document.  Grade 1 -10, teachers remarks were the same. "Melanie is a good student". "Melanie needs to learn to focus and not be so active”. “Melanie is to scattered .

Each year she would come home, I would look at her A,B grades , congratulate her and think to myself , "Oh , those teachers, they are just not fast enough for her" ." Not for  my clever girl". However when she was home she was tired, sulky, rarely smiled. I was very young at the time so the reports did not registrar the  difference in her mood swings. That did not come into my consciousness  until she left us and  her home when she was 16. She was in and out for four  tremulous years. It was at this time , John and I went into counselling to ask for direction , guidelines ,suggestions, anything to help us deal with her behaviour .

We tend to think that everything will go away. Tomorrow will be a better day. We are living the best way we know how and that this is normal. The mood swings, the lying, the anger, the blaming, the tears, the panic, the chaos, this is all normal. This is NOT normal, these are patterns. Patterns, recognize them for what they are. Yes, seek help, either for yourselves to deal with the crazies or for your loved one. Mental illness will not go away. Unfortunately the person may leave, die or emotionally shut down. Watch the patterns, witness the sequences of sadness, madness. They have a story to tell.

I have been watching our billing patterns with Bell, don't even get me started on that. "Let's talk about it,” their campaign for Mental illness. Bell will drive us crazy with $11.000.00 phone bills and their poor communication skills. Will they talk about that? I think not. (but that story is for another chapter)