Joanne

My ex wife blamed everything and everyone for her woes, whatever they were.

She was beautiful, intelligent and loving, and yet she managed to feel hard done by life.

Some suspect a mental illness. I’m not so sure.

Like Jessie in Before Midnight, I loved her despite the fact she was crazy.

Thus I enabled her. And suffered for my pride. And she remained crazy.

The mystery remains to this day; what was her problem? Was it a genuine mental illness or a curable personality defect?

My deeply considered guess is that she’ll never find out. Which is why I’m so much better out of it.

This new life is more fun and better for my health. It’s me doing what’s right for me, rather than what’s wrong for my ex wife.

In any case, what is a mental illness? It’s a crazy that gets to the point that others need to assign an external attribution to the thing. It’s a form of acceptance that the crazy is not going away under its own steam. Which is to say the external attribution is by external people, assuaging their own confusions.