Lately, I have been trying to remember. I have been trying to remember things that most people would like to forget. Susan and I have been trying to remember everything that has happened with Jani since she was born because I am writing a memoir. At least, that is the closest name for what I am doing. That is how it would be marketed by the publisher. But it isn't really a memoir because a memoir is written after the events are over. The events of this story, Jani's story, are still happening. We know the beginning of this story. It will begin January 16th, 2009, the day that Jani went crazy at school. The day we were called and told that if we did not come pick up Jani Oak Hills Elementary would have to call the Sheriff's Department. The day I went there but refused to take her home because I was tired of fighting alone. The day I found Jani locked in the assistant principal's office with EVERY PSYCHOLOGIST THE DISTRICT HAD trying to figure out what to do after Jani had run screaming through the halls and trying to through herself through doors and windows. In desperation, the staff had herded Jani into the assistant principal's office and removed EVERYTHING, even the computer. When I got there Jani was playing with her delusions in a bare room. That was the day the Sheriff's Deputy came because I would not take Jani home because I knew, in that moment of clarity, that nothing would change. That was the day the Deputy tracked down one of the only two PET (Psychiatric Emergency Team) Teams in the County. That was the day that Jani finally got into UCLA.

That is the beginning of this book.

The book will move on two separate timelines. It will cover "present day" moving forward from January 16th, 2009, intercut with "flashbacks" moving forward from Jani's birth to January 16th, when it rejoins the main story. Everything that has happened since January 16th is still fresh in my mind. I carry it in my body, where, I suppose, it is slowly killing me like a cancer. But everything before that, especially everything prior to Bodhi's birth and Jani's first two hospitalizations, is hazy. So once or twice a week for the past two weeks, Susan and I have been forcing ourselves to remember, trying to walk down memory lane laced with mines. And like a minefield, some of our memories have been blown up.

I know, and Susan knows, that we have had horrible fights over the past six years. Before I was on Lexapro, some of them were violent. I have had to recall a memory of once trying to throw Susan out of our moving car because I was so angry.

This requires some explanation.

Unfortunately, Jani saw some of my violent rages. She has seen me hit her mother and her mother hit me back. Surprisingly, no matter how violent or difficult she might be in the moments before I went off, she would always grow calm, almost maternal when I did. She would calmly tell me to calm down, parroting back to me all the things Susan and I would say to her when she raged. When that failed, and Susan and Jani had to leave, as they sometimes did, Jani would comfort Susan and tell her it would be okay, that "sometimes Daddy just gets angry."

So what would set me off?

It was always the little things. Perhaps something would spill on the floor (I did most of the cleaning). Perhaps we lacked money to pay bills (I paid the bills), but I am talking about not being able to make a credit card payment, not being put out on the street. Things that since then I have come to understand are no big deal. But then, before Lexapro, I could feel the anger building inside of me, but be unable to stop it. Even during my most violent rages, a small voice inside my head would be telling me "You are going to regret this, Michael." I could see the fear in Jani's eyes. I could see in the pain and anguish in Susan's eyes. But I could not stop. It was a bizarre experience. I was rational, yet not in control of my emotions. There was so much rage in me that I wanted to hurt. Because I was hurt. And I wanted the world to feel my pain.

I suspect that some variation of this is what Jani experiences.

I suspect that this is also what serial killers experience. The only difference between them and me is I eventually listen to that voice telling me what I was doing was wrong.

I was never as bad as Jani, but my experience gives me hope that maybe one day Jani can learn to control her violent urges.

Then again, I was unable to stop, no matter how much I wanted to, until I was put on Lexapro. After three weeks on Lexapro, I no longer got angry when something spilled on the floor. I no longer got violently angry when we had no money. The most important thing that Lexapro did for me was to allow me to realize that no matter how bad things get, there is always tomorrow. The sun will always rise again. And that the small slings and arrows that cut us as we go through life are, in the grand scheme of things, not that important. Now I no longer get angry if somebody cuts me off on the road. Why should I give myself a heart attack because of the actions others?

Nobody that I worked with at CSUN had any knowledge of this. Who I was at work was very different from who I was at home. The girls who I flirted with on campus never saw the side of me that Susan and Jani saw.

I was mentally ill. Maybe not as severely mentally ill as Jani, but I was mentally ill. I could not control my anger. I could not control my emotions. I swung between rage and fits of sobbing (usually driven by my sense of guilt). I had taken anti-depressants before, but none of them had worked. Until Lexapro.

So, for the book, I have had to remember, and it has been difficult. I do not want to remember myself that way. Susan and I have struggled to remember the terrible fights we used to have.

Why would we fight? Logically, it makes no sense. It was Susana and I against the world then, a world that would not believe us regarding Jani's issues. We had no family in the area, no friends that we could trust Jani with. This is in no way meant as disrespect to our friends. Rather, there were days when it took everything we had not to kill Jani. If we are her parents and we are always on the edge of violence with her, how could someone not as emotionally invested possibly handle it? In retrospect, this was flawed thinking, but at the time we did not believe anyone could handle Jani. We believed that in the hands of any other parent Jani would probably be dead. She would try the patience of Mother Teresa.

Family failed us repeatedly. All of them. Susan's family and mine (although Dad was always good for a check when we needed it). Susan's family, all of them, simply threw up their hands and said there was nothing they could do.

Susan and I were alone against Jani's illness, so why on earth would we attack each other?

It was precisely because we were alone that we did attack each other. We had nobody to relieve us and slowly, over months and years of exhaustion, our resentment and anger grew. Every time somebody failed us, family or otherwise, our anger grew. Anger is like methane under pressure. Eventually it will blow. And, exhausted all the time, and not being able to take our anger out on the those who had actually failed us, we turned on each other. For Susan, I was the cause of Jani's condition. For me, Susan was the cause. We would go around and around until we had spent our pain and rage.

You want me to tell you what saved our marriage? Jani being hospitalized. It gave us a break and allowed us a moment to breathe.

It united us in a common cause. We committed ourselves to something greater than ourselves, a cause. And we realized that the real enemy is external to both of us.

Now we rarely fight.

Except for today.

There was no violence today, at least not the physical kind, but I was reminded of how our battles started in the past.

I see my life now in terms of military metaphors. I am in a battle. I am in a war. I do this partially because it relieves my desire to throttle somebody's neck but also because it helps me get through the day. It makes me determined enough to run up the face of Hamburger Hill in the face of withering fire from Jani's mental illness and an unfeeling bureaurocracy. I tell myself lines from Winston Churchill to make myself feel better. I do this to keep from despairing. I am being invaded, but I will fight Jani's mental illness on the beaches; I will fight it on the streets.

In keeping with the metaphor, I have learned never to listen to any intelligence that doesn't come from somebody on the ground. In plain English, if you haven't been in my situation, I will hear you out but I won't take what you say as gold.

Two days ago, Susan made the mistake of trusting faulty intelligence. She called her grandmother, Jani's great grandmother, 91 years old and living in a home. Her husband, Susan's grandfather, has been dead for thirty years now. Susan thought she would be nice and call her grandmother on the anniversary of her grandfather's passing. Almost as soon as the conversation began, Susan's grandmother, decrepit and barely able to walk, tells Susan that our plan to rent two apartments will never work and that Jani is going to die. Yes, Jani is going to die.

Susan hung up the phone, angry, as well she should be. I am convinced Susan's grandmother is still alive only because God simply doesn't want her. She is a miserable woman living a miserable life.

Still, this seed of doubt, which had first been planted by Susan's mother (who also believes Jani is going to die), ate away at Susan, crumbling her confidence in her ability to save our daughter.

Susan refused to talk to her mother anymore, but we needed money for the move. So I got on the phone and begged for one thousand dollars. It was sent.

In the meantime, I returned to flirting on Facebook with various women (sorry, girls). You see, I have no intention of cheating or leaving Susan. For one thing I don't want to and for another, I can't. If Susan and I separated, it would destroy Jani. But I don't drink. I don't do drugs (at least those not prescribed). I have no outlet, nothing to make me forget. So I flirt, with girls who I will not name but are Facebook friends. These girls actually do me a favor by giving me five minutes a day where I can forget the life that I lead.

Yesterday, neither Susan nor I saw Jani. At about 6pm I was called by Jani's doctor to tell me that Jani and "Rachel" were no longer roommates. This devastated us because it has become clear that Jani's return to school (inside the hospital) and better behavior have nothing to do with the lithium and everything to do with Rachel being back on the unit. As I have said before, Rachel looks out for Jani and is trying to help learn to deal with her illness, but from the perspective of somebody who also has the same illness. Rachel does not judge Jani. Because she is same way. Only she has learned to come to come grips with her illness. Rachel is like a big sister to Jani and Jani follows her everywhere.

But yesterday, something set Jani off, despite Rachel's best efforts to prevent it. Jani started trying to destroy her stuff. In her psychotic moments, she will try to rip the head off her most treasured and favorite stuffed animal, whom she cannot sleep without. When the staff told her she couldn't do that, she said "Fine! I'll destroy Rachel's stuff instead!"

And she did. She destroyed the toys of her only true friend on earth.

So the staff moved Rachel out and now Jani is alone in a room meant for two, sleeping on a mattress on the floor because Rachel had had the bed. When I saw her today, she didn't really want to play with me. She was following Rachel around, like a stray cat, always ten feet behind and scurrying into the shadows when you turn around. But Rachel was visiting with another friend. When they went into Rachel's room and closed the door (Rachel has a new roommate) Jani went to her room, still ignoring me, and went to sleep. There was nothing I could do but try to hold her as she fell asleep.

Monday we pull the Lithium. It isn't working.

So what did Susan and I fight about today. Today, after I left the WPE reading, Susan called me. She was supposed to meet me at CSUN and we would all go to UCLA. She called me to ask me if I knew the number for unemployment because she hadn't received her check. After inquiring as to her checking account (Susan and I have separate accounts- a legacy of my near affair ten months ago), I learned that the one thousand dollars that Susan's mother had transferred to Susan at my request, that I was going to use to cover part of the security deposits for the new apartments, was gone. Susan had, without thinking, paid her student loan.

I blew up. I had carefully marshalled funds together to make this move and now I felt Susan had blown it. Susan immediately fell into defensive mode, saying that she had paid her loans because she couldn't trust me anymore, couldn't be sure that I would be there for her in the future ( because I flirt).

There were many stops and starts on the way to UCLA from CSUN as I pondered whether I wanted to leave Susan behind or not. But she was a wreck. She started saying things like if Jani kills Bodhi and then herself, then Susan will kill herself and I will be free to date. Susan has moments where she gets very suicidal. She played with the door lock while I was driving, wondering if she should jump. I told her I was only going 15 miles an hour and she wouldn't die. She wanted me to speed up. Of course, this is gallows humor, but Susan was in incredible pain. She felt abandoned by her family and abandoned by me. She felt cheated, unable to have a normal relationship with a normal daughter. And she was doubting her rather brilliant idea to get two separate apartments.

Look, we would not be getting two separate apartments if there was ANY other reasonable alternative. But there isn't. UCLA can't stabilize Jani. We can't get her into residential here in California where we can visit her. We won't send her out of state. This is the only way to protect Bodhi and her as well, so Bodhi doesn't drive her to do something she may not live long enough to regret.

I told Susan that I wouldn't be trying to get the two apartments if I didn't think her idea would work. I believe, somehow, through hell and high water, we will get both our children alive to adulthood. I believe that one day, Jani will tell her own story to 20/20 and the audience will see an older version of Susan and I walking with a functional Jani and a teenage Bodhi. I believe that.

Luckily I managed to convince Susan of this before we hit the freeway. She didn't jump out of the car and I didn't push her.

Sometimes we come under friendly fire. Sometimes, allies become enemies. Tonight, we were disheartened to learn that Susan's brother, Andrew Mendlin, has "defriended" us on Facebook, abandoning his sister. It's funny. Twelve years ago, when I first met Andy, he took me aside and asked me what my intentions were towards his sister. Oh, Andy, you had no fucking idea. The funny thing is, I'm still here and you are gone. You gave up on your sister and your neice. You abandoned them. You left our Facebook accounts. You, sir, are a coward. You are certainly no brother of mine and no uncle to my children.

I will not wish any ill on Andy though because if he has a soul, it will eat him alive. Enjoy the rest of your life, brother-in-law, and take care of my nieces. Tell them they are always welcome, even if you are not.

Susan has no family now but me, Jani, and Bodhi. And you, Facebook friends. Be good to her.

Sometimes Susan and I both "dream of life underground." Usually, when she is suicidal I am not and vice versa, although I haven't been suicidal since the Lexapro.

The lesson here, if there is one, is that all of us are affected by voices in our ears that will not go away. The voices in Jani's ears make her drive her only friend away. The voices in Susan's ears make her want to give up. And the voices in my ears?

They are no longer telling me I'm going to regret this.