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Falling Down

This Wired story about a talented young man losing his mind to an incurable disease makes for sad reading. For those of us who have experienced losing the "core" of a person to some form of mental illness, this could be relate-able. You happened to have met them when they were normal or even experiencing a fantastic high after overcoming their struggles with mental illness through their own efforts, not relying on prescription medications. This to you is a testament of how strong their will to survive and fight odds, you believe that you could have an amazing life together. If you are like me and value resilience, this could be the single most attractive quality about the person. So attractive in fact that you lose sight of every other red flag and decide to move forward. What you don't realize is that it took an obsessive single-mindedness for them to work on their mental health to the exclusion of everything else. 

 They had one goal in life - to overcome their condition through unrelenting effort and so they did.  A new relationship brings unexpected circumstances to this person's life, disrupts the eco-system that they had developed painstakingly over time to help themselves. So they try to work within the new constraints, take occasional stumbles, you help them get back on their feet. They are encouraged that they have you to count on and the dark days don't have to feel interminable. Over time the stumbles get more frequent, their dependency on you increases past your ability to help and comes a time when they simply cannot get back on their feet. 
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