I'm really reluctant to mention this here, but I feel it may be important. My wife suffers from a chemical imbalance, which is now being compensated for with medication. Without the medication, she suffers from bouts of extreme despair, she verbally abuses and attacks me, and she has recurrent suicidal thoughts. With the medication, we've become friends again, and the divorce papers I picked up to fill out are somewhere in storage. Before treatment, she curled up into a ball on the floor weeping hysterically, once, and, several times she became upset and took off in her Mustang at high rates of speed, frightening our youngest daughter.

When she first had the symptoms, I thought it was just a spiritual problem, since we had just been ejected from a religious cult and we were both really screwed up. Finally, after several years of off and on hell, she finally found someone who directed her to some help. She's tried several different medications, but Welbutrin, an antidepressant, has worked for her and transformed our lives. I can be friends with her now. Before, she was a raging demon ready to snap like a tightly wound coil spring.

I'm not saying this to embarass you or imply that you or anyone else has a problem, Nico, because I really don't know anything about you except what you write. Maybe I'm in the wrong ballpark. If you suffer from severe mood swings, like my wife did, you might want to have a health care professional evalute your symptoms. It could transform your life, if it really stinks now. The right spiritual beliefs can be beneficial when someone is healthy. They can be a curse if there's an untreated chemical imbalance in someone's body, disrupting their emotional balance and outlook.

Yeah, I'm already on meds. Sometimes they seem to work, other times they seem not to work. Not sure what to make of it all.

Sorry about that, Nico.

It took my wife years to find the right med and dose, even the right doctor. Every so often she has a bad day, but not very often, anymore. Nothing I can't live with. She takes 5 different meds daily to keep functioning normally, not to mention pain meds for muscle injuries. I'm hoping she will take steps to find work not involving any lifting or twisting. Her days as a rural mail carrier, are limited, I think.

I had a really strange idea about something in the next chapter. It upset me at first, but it keeps coming back. It has something to do with slavery.