Mark Lukach and his wife were doing what most twenty-something couples are doing a few years into a marriage: They were building their careers and planning a family. Until the night he got a glimpse into a future that would be different than the one they'd imagined.
He wrote about it in Pacific Standard:
There's no handbook on how to survive your young wife's psychiatric crisis. The person you love is no longer there, replaced by a stranger who's shocking and exotic. Every day I tasted the bittersweet saliva that signals you're about to puke. To keep myself sane I hurled myself at being an excellent psychotic-person's spouse. I kept notes on what made things better and what made things worse. I made Giulia take her medicine as prescribed. Sometime this meant watching her swallow, then checking her mouth to confirm that she hadn't hidden the pills under her tongue. This dynamic led us to become less than equals, which was unsettling. As I did with my students at school, I claimed an authority over Giulia. I told myself that I knew what was better for her than she did. I thought she should bend to my control and act as my well-behaved ward. This didn't happen, of course.
[For more of this story go to http://www.mprnews.org/story/2...tal-illness-marriage]
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