Amy- so how are you feeling?

Michael-Don't know yet. I miss her terribly but I am also grateful for the break from her.

Amy-You seem calmer when she's not there.

you function better

Michael-Because I don't have to be scared when she is not around.

-copied from a chat between myself and Amy Solensky-Vo.

"And I feel like I'm drifting, drifting, drifting from the shore.

And I feel like I'm swimming out to her."

And I gave up. I stopped chasing Jani and gave up. I let her go on without me, because I could not keep up. The pain in my arms and legs was too great. She could swim forever. Jani could swim all the way to Australia. She could swim forever. But the ache in my side was too much. I stopped, choking, treading water. Jani paused, only for a moment, and told me it was okay. She understood. She told me to go back to Susan, that it would be okay, that she would see me again. And then she went on. And I stayed. I gave up. I rolled onto my back and floated, listening to her swim away from me, into the darkness. I wanted to cry. I had failed her. I had told her that I would keep up no matter what. But I couldn't. My flesh had failed me.

I tried to tell myself that I float here for a few moments, resting, and then try to catch up with her. Bobbing on the waves, I miss her terribly in the empty night. I tried to pull her onto our raft. I really did. Susan did too. But she wouldn't come. She went on ahead, the things inside her head driving her on and on and on ad infinitum until her body is exhausted and she drowns.

That is what I fear. That is why I need to keep up with her. I need to be there to pull her back up when she finally slips beneath the surface.

In a way, schizophrenia shows the awful power of the mind. It can create sensations on skin. It can ignore pain and wear. It can push its victims to super-human feats of strength.

It is a mutation that gives incredible strength until everything is used up. Because the heart always gives out before the mind, except for those lucky enough to grow old. That is what happened to Michael Jackson. Schizophrenic? I don't know. Bipolar with psychotic features? Almost certainly. Michael was driven by something inside his head, and it outlived his heart.

My heart could not keep up with Jani's mind. I am only human. Yesterday I had to let her go, or I was going to drown. Tonight, Amy reminded me how close I came to drowning. So what do I do? UCLA is letting me rest. They are taking care of her now. But I can't float here forever. It was only tonight, thanks to Amy, that I realized the terrible cost of being Jani's father. The cost has been the destruction of my body and my mind. Jani came home and in less than week I tried to kill myself. My center shattered. Everything was stripped away. I cease to function.

I have never deteriorated so fast in my life.

"And these are the days when our work has come asunder.

And these are the days when we look for something other."

These past three weeks have been the first time that I really felt like I couldn't do this. When Jani was released on June 1st, Susan and I believed we could return to what we did for the first five years of Jani's life. We thought we could stimulate her every minute. We thought we could keep up.

But her illness has outrun us. The world is no longer big enough for Jani. No matter how many things we did with Jani or how many places we took her, it wasn't enough. When Jani was younger, the play areas and toy stores bought us time. Time to rest. Time to recharge. Now they buy us nothing. The value of life that we tried to provide for Jani had been reduced to zero. We could not keep pace with the inflation of schizophrenia.

I think I must also face the reality that I do not have the energy I had five years ago. I have become broken down. I cannot keep up. I run beside until I am in stitches, hoping at some point she will stop before the pain becomes to great and I have to stop and let her run on alone. But she never did.

I am calm tonight because I don't have to fear the sunrise. Because Jani isn't here. I don't have to fear the new day, wondering how I will get through it. Now I can just live.

And I hate myself for that.

Today, Susan and I agreed to put Jani on Clozaril. Clozaril is an anti-psychotic so powerful that it requires weekly blood tests to make sure it doesn't destroy all the patient's white blood cells. To put it more bluntly, this drug could give Jani AIDS (which is collective name for the illnesses that ravage the body after the immune system-white blood cells-collapse). If the blood tests show her white blood cell count falling, she will have to be taken off it. So the choice is either psychosis or risking AIDS. We don't even know if the drug will work for Jani. Even if it does Jani must walk the narrow path between physical death and mental death. What a shitty deal for a six year old.

Susan wonders if we are killing our daughter. I understand how she feels. But I also know Jani is dying anyway. She will swim until she drowns. She will never stop on her own. And we cannot keep up with her anymore. That is what the last three weeks taught us. We can no longer do what we once did. We once moved heaven and earth for Jani. Now we can't. Now she has to do it herself. All we can do is cheer her on from the boat, always with our hand out, ready to pull her onboard if she decides to take it.