Hi, Beth!

I think I might have left the wrong impression about not talking. It's not that we don't like to talk about mental illness or stigmatize it or whatever. When the illness first appeared, her family did try to address it properly. As I said, doctors were tried. Mind you, this was sometime around mid-90's. We're from a post-Soviet country and at that time had only recently regained independence. The state of medicine back then was not stellar to begin with. Nevertheless they did try what they could, but nothing worked. Eventually they just... gave up.

By the time I arrived on the scene, the dust had already settled. My future mother-in-law was now living in a safe, stress-free environment (alone with her mom) and everything was fairly peaceful again. I've never even seen her bad side (just hints at it, more below).

However for my spouse and everyone else the subject is an unpleasant one, since it brings back a lot of painful memories. So, I have asked some questions here and there, but I've never pushed them into telling the whole story with all the nitty gritty details. There has been no reason either - the situation was stable and nobody had any desire to do anything to upset it again. They don't even believe that much can be done (and perhaps they are right).

Ok, about the actual symptoms. As I said, I haven't witnessed too much of them myself, but enough to be certain that everything is not ok.

First off, there's definitely an element of paranoia. I've heard stories about how, when she still worked, she used to think that all her colleagues want to poison her. When I first started dating my future spouse, and for several years after that, she wouldn't leave the house, answer the door or the phone. If she was home alone, we had to schedule visits in advance and used a special pattern of ringing the door bell (which has actually stuck with us as a habit now). Thankfully, this has gotten better in the last decade or so. She can now go to the store, take out the trash and do other little erands, as well as is not afraid to answer the phone anymore.

For the actual "schizophrenia" part, I haven't seen much evidence, although she does definitely get various odd ideas quite often. My spouse says that she "sees things nobody else does" (mostly metaphorically, meaning misinterpreting the situation at hand), and that once they got a glimpse of a calendar where she had made some sort of notes and that it was nightmarish.

Then she also often laughs about things that nobody else finds funny (and haven't even been intended to be funny).

She has complained that at night somebody is shaking the house and she can't get any sleep because of that. This was some time ago, and back then I discovered that it's a real thing that even otherwise healthy people can sometimes experience. The cause and treatment are unknown.

Lastly, about the "toxic personality". That's how I labeled it, although perhaps it's not the best label. I haven't witnessed this, but my spouse has talked about it at length. She is never at fault for anything, it's always someone else's fault. She can go off and get angry for insignificant things and blow them out of proportion. She feels that everyone else is inferior to her. And she likes to manipulate everyone to make them do things for her so that she doesn't have to. She's smart and knows how to put things so that it always seems that she's the one being unfairly treated. My spouse describes living with her as "tiptoeing around her all day long, hoping that nothing would trigger her".

There's probably lots more, but I'd have to ask my spouse to dig up some unpleasant memories for that.

Mind you, we all still love her and would very much like to see her happy and healthy again. Although, I'm not sure she isn't fairly happy right now. Unfortunately that can't be said for people around her...