YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

I'm a single father to one amazing almost 3 year old son who lives a state away with his mom and today I signed our divorce papers. We split up because I was taking heavy meds, drinking a lot and dealing with the stress of my parents passing away 5th anniversary. That was last year. I attempted suicide 3 times in three months, so I'm well aware of why my ex wife was scared to keep my son around me. The thing that sparked my sadness was that before I attempted, she was taking him to friends places where they openly keep alcohol and guns around and have kids of their own. Since my attempts failed I moved to one of the shittiest places, San Francisco. A buddy of mine brought me here saying he had a place for us to stay, that place was his 2014 Nissan. I've since gotten my own 20 year old car and am managing a well respected BBQ joint and love my co workers, but the pay sucks, especially for being in SF.

Since I've quit taking meds I feel much better. I only smoke weed at night to get comfortable enough to pass out in my car. I really want to be closer to my son in case anything happens but I'm almost 30 and have a culinary degree which is fun to have but won't help pay off our debt very quickly and I need to pay this off to show my ex wife that they are the two most important people in my life. I could move back to Portland, OR but would have to get another minimum wage kitchen job, making way less than I do now but I'd be able to stay with my siblings.

My other option is staying in the bay area but having grown up here I don't see the allure or reasons why anyone would want to pay the prices here for what you get. It sounds like my ex wife and I are on the same page with each other and I get to talk to my son every Sunday over the phone and that's what keeps my spirits up enough to not down a bottle of pills and some alcohol in my car now that I won't have people to come home early to and get me to the hospital (that was my attempt #2).

I suppose the purpose of this post is to ask if there are any other parents, preferably fathers (but any and all genders of single parents are completely welcome) in a situation similar to or having been in a spot like this and if so what would you say to someone who's going through a rough decision as this. Being bi-polar 2 doesn't help except knowing that it doesn't mean that it'll ruin my life, I just don't know how to use it to commit to something that can become a well paying career. I can stay at my current restaurant and will be able to make an OK amount of money but not enough to let me rent a room in the area and pay off our debt but staying out of my car for the next few years doesn't sound appealing either.

Many thanks in advance for any and all replies and insight!

May I ask two questions, Darth?

(Sorry if this is off topic of your thread's intent.)

First, what is a good outcome regarding your relationship with your son?

Second, what is standing between this good outcome and where you are right now? In other words, what steps/actions would be necessary to effect this good outcome?

Oak,

Thanks for the reply!

The best answers I can give would be that the best outcome for a relationship with my son would be him seeing me as not the frightening guy I was when I had to leave. I was so heavily medicated and in a bad place mentally that I truly felt I had to leave for both of their safety and mine. As shitty as it's been. I don't know how to reverse any memories he may carry about seeing me in my conditions but he is only almost 3 so I'm hoping that his mother and I being on good terms and talking to him over the phone once a week will like a good way to recover from where I was, I.E. my voice being the only way he knows me at least for this last year makes me think that he will be more likely to engage me when I finally do get to see him.

As for the difference between the best outcome and where I am and the steps I'm taking I'd have to say that I've been a lot more understanding of the fact that as much as I'd love to do a handful of things that could make a ton of money but would lead me to a worse depression as opposed to doing what I feel ok with myself for doing even though I make pretty shitty money, that he and she are my two obsessions as far as making sure they're taken care of and that I'm providing that. She now knows how much they mean to me and what my overall goal is. I want debt and money to be the least of their worries, even if it means making sacrifices like living out of my car for a while longer.

I also do this really confusing thing where I tell myself I can do whatever career path I want and see how much or little goes into the gig and the next day after a crappy nights sleep I feel like I'll be better off sticking it out at this restaurant, which for living anywhere else would be decent money but being in SF isn't, but it's secure and allows me to make my child support payments and have enough to barely scrape by.

I see. If you don't mind, another question or two: are you hoping to win her back? Are you hoping for some sort of custody of him?

Are you at the point where you're starting to come up with a plan?

The reason I ask is because I think you have a lot going for you. I think you can pull this off. It will just take some time and planning.

Oak,

My overall plan is to become the father figure to my son that I didn't have. I had a father but he wasn't exactly father of the year any of the 22 years he was around. I took some traits of his I didn't realize until after my hospitalization and this time away from my little man. I would love to get my ex wife back but there's an incredibly slim chance of that happening.

I signed the divorce papers a couple days ago and in it it stated how much I owe for child support and what terms I would have if I want to see him; 2 hours per week, supervised in a DHS office. She has legally gotten full custody due to my lack of stability. I've become much more stable since I quit taking meds and have had some time to try to get my act together but it still hurts having signed the paperwork.

I really want to be able to feel good about the work I do and have it be able to support my family. She is going to be an RN and eventually won't need my help financially though we have agreed to put it away for his college fund when he gets to that age. I have nightmares that she's going to find someone who makes more than I could and will eventually cut off all contact and I can't live with knowing someone else might be being called dada when he's the most important and amazing person in my life. I feel like I've completely screwed everything for him up even though when his mother and I speak it's sharing laughs about how fucked up this whole situation is and agreements on what's best for him.

Adding the fact that she's a psych-nurse and I'm basically one of her patients makes this all the harder to deal with. I really want to should all over myself but will refrain since Paul has said many times how bad that is to do to ones self.

Very good. Thank you for your thoughtful replies.

If I may, I can offer some thoughts, which you are welcome to take or leave.

Caveat: I am not a father or been without a roof over my head, though I've come very close to both

This is going to work out.

You're going to make it through this, and one day you'll vividly remember this, in your emotional rear-view mirror.

You are smart, funny, thoughtful, sensitive, hardworking, savvy, and playful: I can tell all this through your writing.

Even more, you have a job: with a job all sorts of good things can happen. You have excellent prospects.

I say this sincerely, so I hope you feel buttered up as I lower the boom:

The next few years will be difficult, difficult in ways you can't predict now, and life will look different from you imagined it before the divorce.

Let me pull back, to a sort of Joseph Campbell/mythopoetic/sorta-Jungian viewpoint: some men, usually aged circa 29-32, experience a katabasis: going down and out.

These men, morally, are the lucky ones. Disappointments ("failure" is the most accurate word I am thinking of) come all at once, and a man loses everything. If the man makes it out, to other side, he is chastened and scarred, but wiser. Sadder. If he doesn't make it, he dies. Sometimes literally: my friend and I both experienced a katabasis ten years ago: I was broke and he was drunk. I made it through, barely, and he drank himself to death. Katabasis is a very serious matter, playing for keeps. There are real consequences.

My guess is that you are experiencing a katabasis: going down and out. A trip to the underworld, as Wikipedia puts it well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katabasis

In Greek mythology, say, you have a hero who needs to go to the underworld to retrieve something, or get information from someone.

Likewise, the low, the wet, the cold, the fecund (think a swamp) is often teeming with life.

If you are 30 years old, plus or minus several years, you have found yourself down and out: losing family and home. Very difficult indeed!

So what?

Two stories:

In this story, a prince goes insane and believes that he is a rooster (or turkey.) He takes off his clothes, sits naked under the table, and pecks at his food on the floor. The king and queen are horrified that the heir to the throne is acting this way. They call in various sages and healers to try and convince the prince to act human again, but to no avail. Then a new wise man comes to the palace and claims he can cure the prince. He takes off his clothes and sits naked under the table with him, claiming to be a rooster, too. Gradually the prince comes to accept him as a friend. The sage then tells the prince that a rooster can wear clothes, eat at the table, etc. The Rooster Prince accepts this idea and, step-by-step, begins to act normally, until he is completely cured.

Turkey Prince, source Wikipedia

Another story, source unknown:

One day, the kingdom's beloved prince gets amnesia, and walks around homeless. The king, heartbroken, invites his son back into the palace with all sorts of fancy food and furniture. The prince, thinking he is just some hobo, doesn't feel comfortable and runs away. Someday soon the king asks his gardener to employ his lost son. The son is hired to shovel manure. Difficult at first, the prince soon comes to enjoy the physical labor and it becomes natural. Eventually the son is promoted to assistant gardener, then gardener, then grounds manager, then palace manager. As he gets used to life in the palace, he can increasingly see himself there, and one day is welcomed back as prince and beloved son, welcome at the table with the king.

I say all this because if someone explained this to me, and I really understood it when I was your age, I could have avoided five years of trouble and waste. I am 40 now, and could have been well on my way to sem-retirement.

Or, take Luke Skywalker: at first these knuckleheads are pushing him around in that stupid bar. Then, all sorts of things go wrong (second movie). By the third movie he is confronting Jabba the Hut and eventually the Emperor.

That, as I see it, is your journey: you are in a mess, and you'll have to face it like a man.

If you make it, and remember that is not guaranteed, you will be sadder and wiser, with years gone that you can't get back. Things in your life won't look like the way you wanted or hope.

But, you will be given great moral riches that you also could not have imagined.

Rogitgarg4411,

I'm pretty sure we're all, or most of us are here because we have some sort of mental disorder, including yourself. Otherwise we wouldn't have looked for a place where we can discus such topics amongst eachother. Don't be sorry for saying what you said, it may just be more useful to think before you speak, or in this case type/text your opinion.