Mental Health Molasses

It seems like mental health clients can't get out beyond the slog of our own psychic universe; like there's an unbreakable plexiglass dome around us, something torn straight from a Stephen King novel in 2009. We get stuck in this thick, self-loathing molasses up to our thighs as we rush toward life or love but something provincial keeps tugging us back. In and out of inpatient hospitals and day-treatment facilities, a raven caws, “Help them, David, why not help them with what you’ve already learned?” 
The revolving door squeaks a maddening refrain; Admitted, discharged, admitted, discharged, admitted, and on and on. Family members study their siblings and Nanas suffocating under the heft of mental anguish, which traumatizes. If it were a film, they’d call it Nightmares R Us. Some data from NAMI help with clarity, although it’s bracing truths. One in five adults experience a mental illness each year. And a devastating note: Suicide is the second leading cause of death among kids 10-14. 
I recall feeling trapped for a decade plus, like a claustrophobic fuse was pulsing in my skull set to blow. But on Sunday, April 26, 2009, brilliant sunlight entered my life for the first time in years. I met this young woman named Amy, first online, and then at the Beardsley Zoo in Bridgeport. On that first date, we were surrounded by these proud, magnificent peacocks, lovely indigo and teal and turquoise, wild feathery creatures strutting around, doing their thing with panache and flair. After a decade at a group home on Broadway in New Haven, getting to know Amy was magical and lovely. One date turned into many more as my life began to change for the better. 
We wed twenty-one months later during a snowy Halloween, 2011, surrounded by friends and family from all chapters of our lives. Existence in those early days of marriage was wonderful and challenging and hard and we had honeymooned in Ireland, saw the Cliffs of Mohr and danced by the river Liffey in Dublin, and got drunk in a winding, spooky castle with a claw-footed tub in a wide room. 
I was learning that I was more than my history of depression, schizoaffective disorder, and self-harm and so we gradually learned to trust in one another. My writing had turned into a memoir leading to a book contract with Harper Collins. "Sharp: My Story of Madness, Cutting and How I Reclaimed My Life" came out in 2012. 
Amy and I spent a year signing books and doing workshops and speeches and somehow the two of us had morphed into role models. After spending a year and change in the Ninth Square Neighborhood of New Haven, I followed my wife up I-91 north to her hometown of Middletown, Connecticut, leaving the Elm City behind.
Looking back, I’ve always been a sucker for the underdog, like in 1980 with the Olympics and The Miracle on Ice in Lake Placid, New York. When scruffy American college hockey kids outhustled the detached Russians before going on to win the gold medal which had me and my brothers and dad dancing around the TV as ABC Sports’ Al Michael’s asked, “Do you believe in Miracles? YES!”