I kept remembering when I thought I could "fix" my husband. If I were loving enough, calm enough, strong enough, smart enough, if I were enough at all for him, he would be the way I wanted him to be instead of the way he was. When I faced the truth that I could only "fix" myself, then I was happier and so was he.
I learned to live my life by myself, doing what made me happy and what I enjoyed to do, with him or without him, without holding any resentment toward him for not being able to go with me. I learned to stop wanting what I could not have but to tell the truth, it still hurt to have to walk away from conversations when other people were complaining about such trivial matters in their own lives when I was living with PTSD. Over time, knowing my marriage would be the way it is was a choice I made to stay and I stopped blaming others unable to stay in their own marriages.
That was the lesson of this movie. I highly recommend anyone living with someone with a mental illness or PTSD to go and see this movie. It's heartwarming and transforming. It shows a side of life few others really see with their hearts. While this is a movie about schizophrenia, there are many parts of it that can apply to living with PTSD as well. What we want to give to others is sometimes not what they need from us. Sometimes it comes down to just caring about them that matters the most of all.
The Soloist, starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr.
Synopsis
Academy Award-nominated Atonement director Joe Wright teams with screenwriter Susannah Grant to tell the true life story of Nathaniel Ayers, a former violin prodigy whose bouts with schizophrenia landed him on the streets after two years of schooling at Juilliard. Steve Lopez (Robert Downey, Jr.) is a disenchanted journalist stuck in a dead-end job. His marriage to a fellow journalist having recently come to an end, Steve is wandering through Los Angeles' Skid Row when he notices a bedraggled figure playing a two-stringed violin. The figure in question is Ayers (Jamie Foxx), a man whose promising career in music was cut short due to a debilitating bout with mental illness. The more Lopez learns about Ayers, the greater his respect grows for the troubled soul. How could a man with such remarkable talent wind up living on the streets, and not be performing on stage with a symphony orchestra? Later, as Lopez embarks on a quixotic quest to help Ayers pull his life together and launch a career in music, he gradually comes to realize that it is not Ayers whose life is being transformed, but his own. - Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
http://www.moviefone.com/movie/the-soloist/30936/synopsis?flv=1
My dear friend....what a beautiful post...and yes, my husband and I also had tears. The story did show the auditory delusions and voices. We live with this every day, and the sad part of it is, one of the therapists my daughter was going to refused to treat my daughter because "he" did not know how to deal with her delusions. How sad...my daughter, who has Schizophrenia and our family, has had to suffer in silence for many years, because of the ignorance surrounding the disease. Thankfully, NAMI now has the disease at the forefront, but it is too late for my daughter and our family. The long term damage has been done. Thank you for posting, in such a beautiful way, your thoughts. I do know in our next life, that God will have a special place for the mentally ill (and their families) because of the Hell we have had to suffer on this earth.
ReplyDeleteAre you going to the NAMI National Convention in S.F. CA. I would love to meet you Kathie. Please let me know if you plan to go.
With love and respect.....
Grandma B, you are a delight as always and your "skin in the game" is a testament of love, compassion and grace.
ReplyDeleteThere was a sermon I gave at church when I was head of Christian Education. One of the parts of the job I dreaded when I was given the duty last minute. I had a couple of days to prepare for it. I told the story from the movie the Robe. Needless to say as I put the sermon together it hadn't dawned on me where the story came from. Anyway, there was a part in the movie where Richard Burton played the role of a Roman Centurion trying to find the robe Christ had on when he was crucified. He believed it had demonic power and was the cure for his madness.
He traveled to a village where he came across a woman sitting on a stretcher, singing in the most beautiful voice. She was happy and loving. As Burton talked to a Christian man about the woman, he was told that Christ healed her. She had been angry and nasty before because she was not able to walk. Burton looked at him, wondering what he was talking about because clearly she was still crippled. Then the man told Burton, it was not her body that needed to be healed. It was her soul. It would have been very easy to make her happy by healing her body but he made her happy even with her condition.
The lesson of this is that God heals what needs to be healed. Most of us working with people have "skin in the game" and feel we are here to help them. In turn, they help us by making us more compassionate. When we pray to God for help, He does not simply snap His fingers to make it all better. He sends others into our lives to help us. Because of my life, others are helped, just as with your life, others are helped. When we listen to His voice guiding us, miracles can happened everyday.
I wish I could go to the convention but I cannot afford it. I've been out of work since January 2008 and the grant I've been waiting for has not come in yet.