What I feel today.

I struggle not to view my son's mental illness as a tragedy. In so many ways, it is a gift. I view others, even violent criminals, with more compassion and understanding. It puts a new twist on every person I've ever known who seemed uncaring or insensitive at the time. Perhaps they, too, were mentally ill.

There is not a lot of sympathy for mental illness in this time and place--at least legally, there's not. Mentally ill people are probably responsible for the majority of crimes against others and the public wants to blame somebody, they want to punish.

I've wanted that, too, and it's not to say that I won't feel that again someday. But when I'm in a quiet state of mind and I really think about it, it answers that question that so many of us ask when someone does something amazingly cruel: Why? Why would they do that?

My son does not commit crimes against others. He is a gentle soul who pretty much sticks to himself. But I can see how he could have slid down that slippery slope had we not realized he had a mental illness. If we had not supported him and taken care of him when he needed it most, he would have certainly become homeless and --well, I shudder to think what could have happened to him.

I know that he fights his demons on a daily basis. What's sad about this illness (he is bipolar and he is severely OCD) is that I can actually see the internal struggles taking place. There is the rational part of him which is very cognizant of the other irrational part of him. It's as if his own older brother lives inside of him and agonizes over the choices the irrational younger brother makes. And when he has done something careless and causes emotional pain to others, the caring part of him will always come out later and mourn the bad judgement and callousness of the irrational part of him.

I mourn my son. I try to hang on to the fact that I still have access to him, but he's not always present. I get glimpses of him sometimes, and when I do I feel the warmth of it. I have to battle this other less secure and less happy person who has taken over his body most of the time in order to get to see my old Ian once in a while.

I'm still having trouble going through old photographs. Any pictures of him when he was a kid will usually cause me to cry. I remember that boy, I think to myself. I remember when anything seemed possible for him.

People used to stop me on the street and tell me how beautiful he was. He was so popular and so magnetic, I was in awe of the power he had over people. I have four kids, but only Ian had this effect on people. As a young teen, girls were crazy for him and everybody wanted to be his friend. Of course, that's when the mental illness first started to rev up, and looking back on it now I guess there were clues. But before all that, I was getting to experience vicariously what it was like to have real charisma because Ian certainly had it.

He was and still is quite bright. He went to the best private school in town. He instantly made friends, though even in the early days there, he didn't shine the way we expected him to. I've wondered if we put too much pressure on him without realizing it--did we think too highly of him? Was the weight of the world on his shoulders? I don't know.

Somewhere along the way we lost him. I've told myself -- and him, for that matter -- that what we all pictured for his future apparently isn't what God or the universe wanted for him. He must have some other purpose. There is no denying there is value in what I've learned from his mental illness. I try to hold onto that, and I guess so does he.

I've missed my son, though. Somedays it's so painful I almost can't breathe. It just seems like my boy dies over and over again. Right when I think he's there again, he's gone.