My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward Quotes

“In fact, maybe love, in the purest sense, is about being kind to someone with no expectation of how they’re going to respond. They can ignore your kindness, reject it, or return it tenfold, but you just continue to be kind, and that is love.”
― Mark Lukach, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward

“I realized then why people call suicide hotlines. The person on the other end of the line wasn’t a therapist, wasn’t going to prescribe medicine, wasn’t going to try to convince the caller to feel differently, wasn’t going to love the caller the way a family member would. The person on the other end of the line was going to listen without judgment or fear, an invaluable gift that the suicidal rarely receive.”
― Mark Lukach, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward

“I had long ago given up on the notion that suicide is a cowardly cop-out. I think that anyone who feels suicidal is presented with one of two types of courage. Giulia had one type, which was to face the feelings each day and still choose life. No matter how much life hurt, this courage helped her wake up each day. Marie had the other type of courage, one I wish no one had. She believed in her feelings. So deep was her sense that things would never get better, and that there was no way out, that she ended her whole world.”
― Mark Lukach, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward

“Our small gestures were unromantic but felt even more important than romance, because they were our daily practice of showing each other that we cared.”
― Mark Lukach, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward

“I began to see her mind like an old television set, one with a dial you had to change the channels. She'd gotten stuck between channels and all that was broadcasting in her mind was crackling white noise which drove her mad and scared me to death. The medicine was like turning down the volume. The channles might still be stuck but at least the set was no longer spewing the deafening static. The volume had to be lowered until the channels could work again”
― Mark Lukach, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward

“Families lose when people treat mental illness like it only impacts one person.”
― Mark Lukach, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward

“In fact, maybe love, in the purest sense, is about being kind to someone with no expectation of how they're going to respond. They can ignore your kindness, reject it, or return it tenfold, but you just continue to be kind, and that is love.”
― Mark Lukach, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward

“I was angry because I didn’t feel loved. Whether my sense of abandonment was real or imagined, it was the reality of my experience,”
― Mark Lukach, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward

“Giulia continued to fidget, but after a few minutes she calmed down and sat back on her beach chair. Psychosis waxes and wanes like the tides, and a passing jogger had triggered a fierce return of her disoriented, paranoid thinking. And then just as inexplicably, it faded away. The hospital hadn’t fixed anything. It had only stabilized her, and not even all the way.”
― Mark Lukach, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward

“... from dust you are and to dust you will return. Nothing dissolves into nothing.”
― Mark Lukach, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward

“Besides, as Sascha put it, no matter the diagnosis, psychiatry “gives you terrible language for defining yourself.”
― Mark Lukach, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward

“I began to see her mind like an old television set, one with a dial you had to change the channels. She'd gotten stuck between channels and all that was broadcasting in her mind was crackling white noise which drove her mad and scared me to death. The medicine was like turning down the volume. The channels might still be stuck but at least the set was no longer spewing the deafening static. The volume had to be lowered until the channels could work again”
― Mark Lukach, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward

“I watched my family from a distance. I spent so much of my life in their midst, with a tendency to dominate the group. For the moment, I took myself out of the equation so I could see them for themselves, independent of me. I”
― Mark Lukach, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward

“This cycle of reactions versus expectations was becoming the new currency in our marriage. I worried we were doomed to never return to a place of mutual compassion and patience”
― Mark Lukach, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward

“Her smile bello come il sole once again”
― Mark Lukach, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward

“No matter what mood you were in when she started, you were always laughing along with her before she finished. I loved to make her laugh, because it was like creating a little private memory that was ours and ours only, to add to the growing pile of trivialities that no one else could possibly care about but were becoming the foundation of our intimacy”
― Mark Lukach, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward

“I’ve got this thing for life, Mark.” She looked up at me, gracious and dignified under the weight of her diagnosis. “Call it ‘bipolar,’ call it a ‘disease,’ call it whatever you want, but the main thing is that it’s not going away. It will always be with me. But at least I’m not as scared of it anymore.”
― Mark Lukach, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward

“we were here now, in the gift of this present moment, and yes, life was hard at times, but doesn’t it feel good to be alive?”
― Mark Lukach, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward

“Switch Witch. Distant cousin of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, the Switch Witch comes to children’s houses on the night of Halloween and turns their candy into toys. We told Jonas he could keep his five favorite pieces of candy but should put the rest by the fireplace so that the Switch Witch could perform her magic as he slept.”
― Mark Lukach, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward

“The first few weeks went much like our outing to the beach. Giulia was cautious of everything, desperate to feel comfortable and settled at home but trapped in uncertainty. The psychosis seemed like a bad fever that came and went at whim, and Giulia slipped in and out of it several times a day. Sometimes the psychosis had her fixated on religion, sometimes it was intense paranoia, or it might be delusions. Her body language became the visual cue of its return, with the rocking side to side, the puckering lips, the hands to her chest. For me, the transition from being with Giulia ninety minutes a day to all day, every day, was abrupt and demanding. I rarely left her side. The first time I did, to step into the bathroom on the first afternoon she was home, she walked out the front door and was halfway down the block by the time I got to her. I feared it was dangerous to leave her alone, to do whatever she might want, like listen to the voices that were in her head.”
― Mark Lukach, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward