Ending a relationship with someone you love is never easy. What if that person also has a chronic mental illness? The decision becomes infinitely more complicated.
There are a lot of things to consider and it quickly becomes a thin line between wanting to support someone who didn't ask for their illness and keeping yourself healthy and out of a potentially abusive situation. If you have a child together, you must also look at the severity of the illness and decide if it is safe for your child to be in their care and immersed in their symptoms.
Both of my children's fathers have mental illnesses. I've had to ask myself the following questions: Were they trying to get better? Receiving treatment from a doctor? Was their condition improving? How patient could I continue to be? Did their behavior put my health or my children's health at risk? Did their presence, especially for Cory, who struggled with her own mental illness, create stability or instability? How did Cory's mental health respond to their presence or absence in her life?
I'm a pretty patient person. I enjoy helping people. It's what I do for a living. If I can see you are trying, I will turn myself inside out for you. But I am a mother first. Never forget that. My children have always been and will always be my first responsibility. If I see they are coming to harm, know that I will protect them. Always. And at any cost.
It's hard enough for a child to have a parent -or parental figure in their mind- leave due to a separation or divorce. It's something else to make this the only pattern of you that they have ever known. It's hurtful enough to ignore your child because of your illness and refusal to seek treatment; it's another thing entirely to tell her one minute that you love her more than anything in the world and the next that you lived without her for ten years and you can do it again easily because you honestly don't even like her.
It's one thing to let your mental illness prevent you from being supportive to your child when they are suffering from their own mental illness, but it's another thing to toy with her thinking and tell her she's nothing but a crazy girl who thinks a clown lives in her basement. If you cannot help, at least do not harm.
Mental illness makes life more difficult. Yes, a thousand times yes. But it does not free you from being accountable for your behaviors, your choices, and your actions. You and you alone are responsible for you. If your symptoms have driven you to make decisions you're not proud of, it is time to get help. I respect Cory so much for being that type of person, and for expecting the same of others.
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