Today started off as Saturdays do for most Americans. I woke up late, did a little dusting and vacuuming, and then took recycling to get recycled. Very mundane stuff. This morning I felt almost human, or at least what passes for humanity these days.

Then began the long, silent drive to UCLA to see Jani. There is always a sense of trepidation with this, as we never know which version of Jani we are going to find. We do know that it will in all likelihood not be our daughter as we once knew her, but either the psychosis that operates her body or the six year old drugged into submission.

At this point, I have to make a confession to you all. Susan and I frequently joke about wanting to die. We don't plan suicides or anything like that. Instead, it manifests usually in this manner. I will make some passing reference to another girl that I fancy (an escape fantasy on my part). A bit later, Susan might complain of her severe allergies (she has gone into anapylactic shock twice) and take her asthma medication. She will then say something to the effect of "Oh, well, at least then I won't have to worry anymore." Or Susan might joke that one of these girls I fancy might kill her, and thereby again releasing her from the pain we both feel.

The point is that we have both reached the point where we are counting the years until the psychic Sylvia Brown said we would die. Money, success, reputation, none of these things matter now. There is nothing we are trying to achieve. We live only for the hope that we can provide a better life for our children, which has nothing to do with money. Susan and I are both waiting to die. The only thing that stops us from speeding up the process is that our children need us. We have no hopes and dreams for ourselves anymore. I do want to die, but not today. The only reason I don't want to die today is that no one will love our children like we do.

t is terrifying to walk around with the knowledge that if you die, your children will likely die too, or at least that the quality of their lives would be severely impacted beyond the normal psychological trauma of losing a parent. I worry less about Bodhi because people line up to take Bodhi. But Jani... nobody wants Jani except us. Both my family (which is really only my father) and Susan's family have said they can take Bodhi but they can't take Jani.

This is probably a good thing as they are too selfish to take Jani. To take Jani, to love Jani, is to be willing to suffer to give her whatever happiness her mental illness will allow. A month ago my father flew in for a day. He took Bodhi, but did not want to come see Jani. Yesterday, we received a call from Susan's brother and his wife. They were willing to see Jani, but only if the visit could be slotted into their busy Passover social schedule.

I listened to Susan talking to them last night. Her voice grew more shrill and distraught as the seconds passed, I think because she couldn't seem to convey to her brother and his wife that our DAUGHTER WAS IN THE FUCKING MENTAL HOSPITAL. She could not get it through their thick skulls that JANI IS SCHIZOPHRENIC and that maybe, just maybe, they should rearrange their other commitments in order to see their niece during visiting hours. But no, the Seders and bullshitting with other family members who are more important simply because they make more money than we do was more important to them. They could not inconvenience those people. But they can inconvenience us, us who are already more inconvenienced than they will never experience, who do not know if our daughter will be even be alive or will throw herself out a window (like she has done before) because her own goddamned extended family thinks she is weird and we should just forget about her and move on with Bodhi.

Last night here on Facebook, I called my brother in law out. Since he has is one of my Facebook "friends" and has access to my page, I wondered, as I drove to UCLA, if they might actually be there. They hadn't called us back or acknowledged my comments on Facebook, but I thought, surely after hearing Susan's tone on the phone last night and hearing her talk about wanting to die, that he would call whoever else he was going to see and say "I'm sorry. My sister needs me." If someone I knew was talking about suicide, I would be over there as fast as LA traffic would allow.

He hadn't called, but as we left the elevator on the fourth floor of the UCLA Hospital and turned into the Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital, I just couldn't accept that my brother-in-law could be that much of an unfeeling asshole. I really expected to see them waiting at the door and I was prepared to apologize for my earlier comments and thank them for coming.

They weren't there.

Susan's brother and his family were not there. Not only had Andy failed his own niece, he had failed his sister as well. I lost what little respect I could still manage in that moment and worse still, what little faith in humanity I have left.

Thanks, Andy. I really needed that. Thirteen years ago you asked me what my intentions were towards your sister. I should have asked you the same thing. I wonder what some of Valli's family, who are also my Facebook friends, will think of you when they read it. You failed in the only duty that really matters in this life.

Why am I doing this? It seems petty and cruel, I know, and normally it would be beneath me, but I hurt so deeply inside and have been failed so many times when I desperately needed help, even if that help was only an ear to listen, that I have reached the point where I feel like the only way I can get anybody to care is if I make them hurt like I hurt. I want you Andy to feel what I feel. I want cut through all the bullshit that you surround yourself with. I want you to know what it is like to not know if the sun is coming up tomorrow.

But I can't do that, because I love Ariel and Haley. They are my nieces. I have not been able to see them as much as I would have liked because Jani's illness has prevented that.

So I hope, Andy, that you never feel what I feel everyday. I hope your children, my nieces, grow up healthy, happy, and successful, and get to do all the things my daughter probably never will. All I want from you is to admit you are fucking lucky.

My brother in law's failure to come through for his sister and niece cut deep, but I had to suck it up because Susan and I were going in to see Jani. It was the first time we had brought Bodhi in a week. After three months in UCLA, Jani has started to miss Honey, our dog, terribly even though Honey was often the victim of her psychotic rages. It is funny that before Jani was born Susan's family was worried about Honey hurting Jani. It turned out to be the other way round. Honey has been hit and kicked by Jani and yet has never bitten Jani or tried to defend herself beyond cowering in the corner. This from a dog that would rip your face off if you came in our apartment. As bad as it is for Honey, I cannot begin to imagine what it is like for Jani, whose life ambition is to be a vet and who in her sane moments loves all animals and is so gentle with them. How, dear readers, do you think she feels when she comes out of her psychotic rages and realizes what she has done?

Since Jani eventually came to miss Honey, we hoped that the same might apply to Bodhi. At first, she seemed excited to see him. She pointed him out to her surrogate family, the nurses on the unit, saying "Look, it's my baby bother" as if she had forgotten that the staff all know Bodhi and have seen him many times. A few days ago, Jani had said that she would love Bodhi when he took seven steps. This is her way of trying to deal with her illness. Janni screams when she loses a game, so she stopped playing games. Now she will not scream if she loses to someone over the age of eleven. When she would spill water or food on herself, she used to scream and try to rip her clothes off, even in public. Now when she spills something on herself, there is a pause and then she says "I meant to do that." She is trying so hard to find ways to deal with the minor stressors that to us are nothing but to her trigger psychotic rages.

When she came out of her protracted psychosis recently, she admitted that she hated Bodhi because he took attention away from her. This is a very normal reaction of an older sibling to the birth of a younger sibling, but Jani was too psychotic to articulate this until recently. And to her credit, she tried to find a way to deal with her rage toward Bodhi; hence her decision to love him when he took seven steps.

Bodhi took ten steps last night and when I arrived at UCLA today I told her this. She immediately put her arms around Bodhi and said she would love him. I breathed a sigh of relief. Jani began to eat the food we had brought her. Susan finished delivering a batch of Easter cupcakes we had brought for the staff and kids and came into Jani's room. She proceeded to tell Jani what I had already told her about Bodhi walking ten steps. She finished by saying "Now you will love him, right?"

Something clicked in Jani. We could see it happening. Her smile vanished, replaced by a flat affect, what the rest of us look like when we are asleep. She turned to us and said that now she would only love him when he took one hundred steps. Susan's reaction was "No, Jani, you said..." but what she said was meaningless when she is psychotic. At this, Jani said it doesn't matter how many steps he takes she will never love him. Then she moved to hit him. I stood there stupidly holding Jani's mac 'n cheese while Susan jumped in between Bodhi and Jani. I had recovered enough at this point to take Jani by the arms, although Jani is a master at inflicting pain when partially immobilized. She still managed to kick Susan in the shins. Using my calmest voice, I tried to steer Jani to the bed so we could talk. Unable to strike at either Bodhi (who was screaming in fear) or Susan, she hit me, leaving a welt on my arm. I barely register the pain now.

Susan said we had to leave and Jani immediately threw her arms around me and.... gave me a hug, begging me not to leave. This was one second after hitting me as hard as she could. If this was a tantrum, her mood would not have shifted so fast. She went from happy to violent to happy again in under a minute. It was like the once the psychosis made her lash out, it immediately left her to face the consequences.

Under observation by one of the staff nurses, I tried to get Jani to talk to me now that she was no longer psychotic. I told her that feelings of jealousy or hate for a younger sibling is very normal but... I never got to finish that sentence because Jani screamed "He is bad baby!" and tried to go after him again. I gently restrained her and tried to calm her down. She looked into my eyes again and then said she was hungry. She returned to eating.

I asked her if she thought she had been a bad baby. She said yes. I asked her why, immediately feeling guilty about all the times we had complained about Jani not sleeping when she had been within earshot. She said that she was a bad baby because she was violent when she was a baby. We told her no, that wasn't true. Manal, the nurse, gave Janni her next dose of Thorazine. I asked Jani if she thought I loved her and Bodhi equally. She said no. I told her that the heart was like a house. My love for her filled up the entire house and when Bodhi was born, I didn't move out any love for her to make room for him. I simply built another room onto the house. Janni seemed to like this and offered Bodhi a truck to play with.

Then Bodhi accidentally knocked over Janni's plastic drawers and her stuff spilled onto the floor. She screamed "Bad Baby" at him again and made another move for him, but I held her back. We picked up the stuff and made as little a deal about it as we could.

Fifteen minutes later, Janni was playing with Bodhi in the hallway. The thorazine had kicked in and now she was in love with him again. Once again, the emotions of normal kids don't shift that fast. If Jani was normal, she would have sulked for a while and this shows that she really does love her baby brother. If she really hated him she would ignore him all the time, but she doesn't. She swings from playing with him to trying to kill him in an impulse of rage within minutes and back again.

Fifteen minutes later, Bodhi found a cup of Gatorade and spilled it. Janni, who seconds before had been playing with him and cooing to him, went at him again. Like a linebacker, I dived in between them and got her, getting her over to the bed where I could immobilize her without hurting her. Unfortunately, Bodhi toddled over to the bed and got kicked the chest by his sister.

The Dutch have the legend of the little boy who sticks his finger in a hole in a dyke, only to see another hole erupt. He sticks another finger in that hole, and then another hole appears and another. It is a losing battle. When Jani is psychotic, no matter how hard I try to protect her from herself and protect others from her, there is always a limb that gets free. If she can't move her arms, she will kick. If I sit on her legs and hold her arms like Jesus on the cross, she will lift her head, her mouth open wide, and try to bite my face. In those moments she looks like she is possessed.

Seconds later, she is calm again and not wanting me to leave, after she just tried to bite my face off. I start cleaning up the spilled drink, watching Jani out of the corner of my eye to make sure she doesn't make another run at Bodhi. After this third incident, we decided to leave. Janni hugged us very calmly and lovingly and proceeded to go out on the outside deck while we were left to figure out what the hell had happened.

She told us before we left that she wanted us to sell Bodhi. She didn't want him to die, just to go to another family, crawl off down the road. When I told her he might be hit by a car, she replied that he could crawl down the sidewalk.

We left more disheartened than ever. It was one of our worst visits. It turns out that Jani had only appeared less psychotic because she hadn't seen Bodhi for five days. Today she told us that she because she can't live with us because Bodhi is there, she will have to live with the rats. The rats don't like Bodhi. The rats want Bodhi to go away. The return of the rats means the psychosis has returned. I told Janni that I wanted her to live with us and that the rats can't give her love and affection. She acknowledges this, but says that they try. So that is Janni's choice: either live with us without Bodhi or live with the rats that only she can see. Those are the only two options her mind will allow her.

UCLA is still planning on releasing her this week but now I don't feel like this will be possible. Jani is still dangerously psychotic around Bodhi. She comes home, and I go to work, it will be a nightmare for Susan constantly trying to protect Bodhi from Jani.

So after all this time in UCLA, we return to the place we started. Nothing has changed. Sure, we know more, but that knowledge gives us no comfort. We are still losing this war.

So, Andy, my dear brother-in-law, how was your day?