Happily, September 11 is just another day 'round these parts - My Patch.com remembrance essay

Front page of the NY Times today, Sunday, September 11, 2011.

I wrote the following for Patch.com but my editor decided not to publish it. He said "it's too personal." What I think he really meant is that he's uncomfortable writing about bipolar disorder and psychosis.

This is a world few people are comfortable with. I love my bipolar friends. A minority of us have experienced true psychosis (this is called Bipolar One as opposed to Bipolar Two).

I consider those of us who have experienced psychosis - or out-of-reality thinking - as "the chosen few." If you use your experience well, you have wonderful insights into the world and of your unconscious, like a powerful drug trip.

During my 20-year-tenure with bipolar disorder - gone as mysteriously as it came - I responded very well to meds and was able to shuck off the psychosis very quickly. I'm proud that I was only hospitalized once - at the infamous Bldg 16 on the grounds of Norristown State Hospital.

I've written about it in my book, "Yes I Can: Conquering Bipolar Disorder and Depression," available free at our meetings or $10 from me.

I asked my son Dan to read my remembrance of 9/11 below. He said he never knew I had gotten psychotic that day. I tried to shield my kids from the dark side of the illness.

IT WAS JUST AN ORDINARY TUESDAY....AND THEN THE TWIN TOWERS EXPLODED

It's something you remember forever, like the day Kennedy was shot.

I worked in Langhorne, PA, as a psychotherapist but this was my day off. My grown son, Dan, 24, lived in the lower level of my house on Cowbell Road, Willow Grove, while saving money for his own home.

Suddenly he came upstairs, shouting, "Mom, turn on the TV!"

We sat down on the living room couch and watched in horror replays of the beautiful Twin Towers of Wall Street crumbling like cardboard boxes onto the ground.

It was surreal.

"Dan," I said. "Would you mind giving me a hug?"

We stood up and hugged one another.

Then I walked around the entire house, my mind shattering. I had bipolar disorder - mood swings - and was having a psychotic episode.

Because we're Jewish, I truly believed that at any moment Nazis would march up our quiet street and arrest both of us, even though my son is only half-Jewish.

Pacing around, I thought, Where could we hide? Could we fit into the little crawl space by our living room stairs? The crawl space in the basement? Closets?

No, I said to myself, they'll find us. Maybe they'll bring dogs and sniff us out.

I was absolutely despondent but said nothing to my son. I'd been psychotic many times, as is the nature of the illness, but always hid it from my children. No way were they gonna grow up with a crazy mom.

Suddenly there was a loud knock on the front door.

Peeking outside, I saw it was two black women. Could they be Jehovah's Witnesses, or were they Nazi spies?

I slipped out so they couldn't see Dan in the living room.

Exiting the house, I began to come to my senses.

They were, in fact, Jehovah's Witnesses. They had their Watchtower magazine in their hands.

What timing!

On the other hand, they brought me back to my senses.

I explained to them about the crumbling of the Twin Towers. They looked at one another in disbelief and then walked up the street to knock on more doors.

I bravely walked down the street to see if the Nazis were coming.

*

When I got back home, totally sane now, I got the American flag out of the closet and stuck it outside on the lamppost by the street.

I have no idea what made me do that, but I was the first on our street to do so.

Not a single flag flies in our neighborhood 10 years hence.