Continuing the Discussion with Special Ed

Instead of going on with a comment thread via my post: Functional Illiteracy...I have decided to jump all the way into the blog bog, by going way, way out on a limb. Thanks Ed, let's see what happens with this one. 
 
Your last sentence in your most recent comment to me was regarding mental illness, which is (I'm paraphrasing you here) a very serious thing. I agree with your assessment; would you read my blog again, from Privacy 101 through this post, while keeping in mind that I am disabled by mental illness as well as rheumatoid arthritis? I didn't even want to start on this since my PTSD, depression and paranoia are usually well managed by low doses of medications and an understanding of my own emotional processes. There are some stressors that trigger an episode though, and I went through an episode right here on these blog posts. Didn't know I was in the middle of all that until it was almost over, which is usually the case...Angelmarie suggested that sounding paranoid would ruin my credibility and I say, maybe not. Maybe my foray into the blogosphere is a heads up to the folks who dished out casual cruelties: don't torment people through online bullying and in-person threats. Scaring me to the point where I couldn't function is not some video game or a TV show.

Now, a little background to give context. My mom was seriously schizophrenic. So was her sister. That genetic material was passed down to me and my sister, although in a diluted form. I have two sons, one of them seems to be immune from this but my youngest is very much like me: creative, high-strung, multi-talented, with a tendency to prefer his own company, finding other people to be a nearly constant source of irritation. He is also paranoid on occasion. I worry about my grandkids, meaning my oldest sons' children, most especially my granddaughter. She is a few years shy of puberty (when mental illness often kicks in). She is also an artist, and given to an artistic temperament. 

The only time I have ever been delusional, not just paranoid, I mean completely removed from reality, I was 13. Like I said, adolescence can be the onset of a mental disorder. I didn't want to be around other humans, didn't want to be human, so I imagined myself as another animal entirely and lived that way for a short while. Then, at 14, there were all those other circumstances I ran away from, and I became traumatized for life by life on the streets. My formal education was over after the ninth grade.

Gradually I realized that the biggest risk I could take was to stay human in the best sense of the word: by becoming a humanist. My artistic talent supported all my efforts to close the gap between failure and self-actualization. Now my hands can't tolerate much art making, writing has been my most recent attempt to getoutnstayout. Not much money made so far, some, but I am going to stay with it. This blog was a response to a couple of things; it was a straightforward writing exercise and a response to a something I saw as intolerable, meaning blog X. Thanks for hearing me out.