continuum of vulnerability to psychotic breakdown

Anyone with common sense knows that if I am a decent person, I won't post all Michelle's business in this blog. In fact, she's incredibly tolerant (and even enjoys it, dare I say) of the amount of information that I do share, but it's a fine line to walk. Seeing as how we're hardly speaking today, which is largely my prerogative, I thought I would share a couple recent events that are of concern to us both, and hopefully will be discussed further at a later date.

First of all, what really is the difference between psychosis and imagination? Like, if you catch someone talking to an imaginary friend, and they claim they were fully aware that it was only imaginary, might they be lying (primarily to themselves? Especially if they're one of those types who knows all the DSM lingo and what should and should not be occurring)? What if you catch them in the act several times in a row?

For instance, the weekend before last, Michelle stayed over. As I was coming home, I heard her having an animated telephone conversation with someone- she sounded quite angry, in fact she was yelling at someone. When I unlocked and opened the apartment door, there she stood, alone, and not on the phone at all. I said, "Who were you talking to?" And she said, "I was just venting about you." Never mind that it was supposedly about me... I decided to put it out of my mind. The next day we were in our bedroom and I left for a few minutes to do something. As I was coming back, again, I heard her engaged in animated conversation, but this time it sounded light and happy. I thought, "Is she talking to someone on the street through the window?" I heard her say, "Okay girl! I gotta go... talk to you later!" I came into the room and once again asked, "Who were you just talking to?" This time she responded in a much more confused manner, citing the name of someone I didn't know. She initially said she had been on the phone, but then began to admit that she had only been pretending to be on the phone, and not only that, but talking to someone she had made up in her own mind, based on a name she heard at work. "Like an imaginary friend?" I asked. And she assented. At that point, I asked straight out if she were having psychotic episodes, and she said no, somewhat bashfully, as if embarrassed, yet smiling. "I'm not psychotic," she said, "I'm just lonely." Ok, ok. So later in the day, I heard her outside our bedroom window by the garbage cans... I watched her through the window, mumbling angrily, then swearing and talking loudly about how the garbage wasn't organized right, etc., energetically throwing things into the can and slamming things around. Is she just releasing some long-repressed rage? IDK.

Yesterday morning, she texted me that she saw a ghost during the night, and upon waking, couldn't shake the image from her mind. She said that she had addressed the ghost, "What are you doing here?" or some question like that. She said, when I asked, that it was a dark woman, just staring at her from a corner of the room. She said she supposed that it wasn't really a ghost, but an image seen in a half-awake-half-dreaming state. And I thought to myself, "Or, it's an indication of psychosis," and said nothing.

This morning I received an email from her (dated yesterday) saying she had almost fallen into the 14th street subway tracks (why? how? I didn't ask). In the past, I would have emailed back something like, "Oh my goodness! Be more careful next time," but I'm only human, and there's only so much I can worry over losing the one I love. At a certain point, the heart just wants to protect itself and nothing else.

Which is why, when she texted me yesterday asking, "Can do a load of laundry with anything besides detergent?" (???) and wrote that she had taken the day off work, I responded saying, "Nice. Good. I'm thinking of having a sexual affair." To which she responded, "Wtf?" etc. and called me up right away. She said, "It isn't fair," and I said, "I know, I know." But I wasn't sure what else to say. I won't really do it. It's wrong, and I love her. The very fact that I told her about it as soon as I began to consider it is a sign that I won't cheat, but it must be a sign of something else too. "In general," I told her, "This is not what I signed up for." I have been talking with a lot of people who are in relationships (of some kind or another) with an addict, and the stories are all the same, the addicts are all the same, it all has the same ending: if you're lucky, you detach and move on.

That said, I still love her. I miss her. I want the whole thing to work out. Whoa, just got first text of the day from her... let's see what the fuck she's up to now.