Will it ever be close to a "normal" life for anyone?"

Hello to all. Update on our situation. So daughter goes before the judge in a few days again. This is probably the tenth time, I have started to lose count. The majority of the last 15 years it has been this way. One sentence after another by the court. My life has been permanently on hold all this time it seems. Friends and family have all drifted away and I have lost all motivation in life it seems. I have been seeing a psychiatrist and therapist and nothing seems to help. I have tried so hard to keep things on track for the last 15 years and feel hopeless. Please keep us in your prayers for the judge to make the right decision because I don’t even know what the right decision is anymore.

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My heart goes out to you, I too hope the judge makes the right decision whatever that may be.

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Our normal is definitely different and it makes it harder when your support system is gone. Earlier today I was trying to explain to a friend the frustration of trying to get help for our children before a crisis/arrest. The pain of having to watch everything unravel before the “system” will step in makes a bad situation worse. I am not sure she got it, but at least she listened. So if you cant find someone to listen remember this forum is here.
I am so sorry you are going through this and sincerely hope the judge makes a decision that is truly in the best interest of your daughter.

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I’m sorry that things are seeming so bleak right now. We haven’t reached the point of hospitalization or court involvement with our daughter, but I am mourning the loss of normal life. I’m writing this post as she paces back and forth the length of the living room in front of me, with a hoodie tied tight around her face to keep the “hole in the back of her head” covered.

It’s a bad cycle. She hallucinates, I get stressed out. My stress stresses her, so she hallucinates. I’m trying to hold it together, but it’s hard.

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I’m sorry to hear that things are going so badly for you and your daughter right now. I don’t even know what normal is anymore, but I do know that recently I started to mourn the life I once had with my husband. My husband was late on-set paranoid schizophrenia at 45. Prior to that, we had a somewhat normal life. Now he has been arrested for vandalism with property damage and I have no idea how that is going to play out in court. My neighbors wrote letters to the prosecutor about how they think he should be committed somewhere long term and all of the things he has taunted them with over the last year. Nothing like things going from bad to worse as I am sure you know exactly what I mean. I have been asking myself this question: At what point do I give up and try to live a normal life, if not for me, but for my 11 year old son? I am struggling with that answer. On one hand, if I give up, I have no idea what will happen to him. I love the man he once was, but he has been a stranger to me for over 3 years. And he is my sons’ father and when he is well, he is a wonderful father. I feel your pain although I think yours is worse than mine as it is your child and not your spouse. I hope whatever happens to her is the best for her and for you. We can only take so much. And when a schizophrenic has no insight into their own illness, which is what I am dealing with and I think you are too, they are not willing to be helped or become vigilant about their own mental health. And at that point, there is nothing more we can do for someone who won’t help themselves. That is all I keep telling myself…“there is nothing more I can do” because I have tried and tried to help him and all I am to him is the enemy; someone who can’t be trusted. Again, I am so sorry you are going thru this, I hope things get better somehow, someway. Hang in there!

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Keep the fire of “Hope” alive. Miracles do happen! Just when you are on the brink of total despair. Unconditional Love and Patience it how I suceded in forming stable relationship and relatively peaceful life with my “special” partner. In fact, he antipsychotic medication is almost homeopathic thanks to a well structured lifestyle: nutrition, sleep, sport, no caffeine, nor drugs and job doing what he loves most - working in the Botanical Gardens.
It is hard constant work maintaining and improving the quality of our lives. And yes sometimes I need time apart for a “spiritual retreat”. To recharge my batteries and focus on my own personal goals and objectives and mental and physical wellbeing. You have to look after yourself better than you look after the person who depends on you, because when you “crack up” everything falls apart and the destructive part of illness( paranoid schizophrenia and a long history drug abuse) takes over.

You are in my daily meditations as my heart reaches out to you.

Just so that you know that somebody lost in the South of Spain has gone through the “hell” that you are enduring, without support feeling totally ALONE. Worse… rejected by the family of the man I loved, Society and the constant “backbiting” of a small city where Mental Health issues and Prison are taboo.

I survived to be wiser and more compassionate.

Om shanti (may you find Peace)

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As I learned in NAMI class, one comes to a “new normal”. The old normal is long gone and unattainable to recover. I have memories of the “old normal” but they are less vivid now. Two years now of my 33 year old daughter at home… there is a new normal. A sort of a strange peace in the home despite hallucinations and delusions, an acceptance that I thought would never arrive on both sides. No police here for over 3 months now.

I understand the struggle from experience, and how the family is twisted and reshaped in ways no one ever could have imagined pre-illness.

How are things with you now?

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