The Illness: Take Back Your Mental State

By Dr. H. V. Smith

The Illness is a novel that every family must read in order to give them the coping mechanisms that are needed in life. It is intoxicating and intriguing, and it explores life from the perspective of everyday families through mental illness, disabilities, and addictions. The book shows how everyday people cope with life and keep everything together by not letting the everyday battles that they face control or ruin their lives. At least thats what they think.

The story is told in first person limited omniscient and is seen through the eyes of the narrator. His experience with each character and how he or she is dealing with life is unexpectedly told through his experience at work.

However, the narrator has his own battles, and the major battle is the illness. The illness controls his every thought process and how he himself perceives the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984511317

Dr. H. V. Smith

My name is Dr. Hearley Smith, and for as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated with the mind and how it operates. Throughout the years, mental illness and the effects that it is having on society is becoming more evident. With the number of violent and aggressive crimes that have been happening in the United States, addiction on the rise, and the increase number of different illnesses that have been prevalent, I decided to do something that would help and have an impact on society. Throughout my seventeen years of experience, I have seen a number of individuals who suffer from mental illnesses. In addition, I have also seen how mental illness has had a major impact on families and individuals. After diagnosing a number of disabilities, such as emotional disturbance and autism, I realized how families and individuals can be affected in everyday living. Many families had concerns about an illness or suspected that something was wrong, but they were not sure how to receive help. Many did not seek help until it was too late, not because they did not want help, but because they did not recognize the signs leading to mental illness. After working with several families and developing strategies to improve their lives and the individuals that suffered from mental illnesses, I decided to write The 4 Step Process to Mental Illness, A Home Guide. The guide is an educational tool that helps families determine if they should seek professional or additional help. The Four-Step Process I created has been used to help families and those suffering from mental illnesses. In addition to the Home Guide, I wrote The Illness. The Illness is a powerful book that explores disabilities and addictions through the eyes of different families and it shows how we can control our addictions and struggles instead of them controlling us. It sends a powerful message of what happens when we are not in control.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Mr. B

W hat every man and woman must know about life

My name is Simon Kyle, and I am a businessman. I own a building and a drugstore that opened a few years ago. I spend most of my time at the drugstore in which I am the pharmacist and owner and the rest of my time conducting research about drugs and the latest medical interventions to help my clients and to deal with my own circumstances. It is a warm evening as I drive home thinking about what tomorrow would bring and how life has a way of controlling us even though we try to control it. Nevertheless, it is very difficult to control our day and what will happen in the future without really knowing what will happen to us in the next five or ten minutes, yet it is in our nature to try. We try to control life on a daily basis by planning what we are going to do every day and writing and speaking our goals and aspirations into existence as if we control every entity of our lives. Well, after a while, you will see how much we control life or how much life controls us. As I continue to drive and I think about my friends and family and how each of us responds to life and copes with our fears, emotions, addictions, and compulsions, I explore life and all that it brings through a few people who changed my outlook on life and my very existence.

It started with not a person at first, but the Illness. The unspoken Illness—we have all had one or know of a family member or person who had an Illness. Therefore, an illness is nothing that is uncommon to life or unheard of, so what makes this Illness so different or such a secret that it becomes a mystery? That is a question that continues to be unanswered until life itself answers the questions for us, or does it? It is such a long drive home, so it seems, but today, a twenty-five-mile drive seems like an eternity as I sat in stop-and-go traffic trying to plan what I am going to eat and do tomorrow, what bill I will pay next, what car I will drive next, and what I will do once I get home. All this thinking and planning just to take my mind off the Illness and the tension that it has caused in my life. You see, it is better when we plan most of the time because it gives us a sense of control and autonomy to something that we are really unsure about: life. It is also better to think and control the mind instead of letting it control us when we think and daydream in the subconscious.

I began by thinking about my long day at work and how long twelve hours can take and how fast it can pass depending on the things that occur throughout the shift. The morning starts, and I engulf myself in every tiny detail of work and the people that I see and encounter throughout my day. For the only way to deal with the Illness is to concentrate on those things and defeat it by not giving it power over my thoughts and destroying it by helping others and bringing joy sometimes to some people who may think that joy is a nonentity in their lives. You see, an illness is nothing more than an unhealthy condition that is ubiquitous. Every society has heard of some type of illness—cancer, diabetes, and high blood pressure, to name a few, that exist around the world and in every culture or society. Nevertheless, there are a number of illnesses that are curable, but not this one. This is the ultimate Illness. The cure is dealing with the problem itself. The problem exists you see, because this illness can never truly be destroyed but only dealt with. You cannot destroy anything for which there is no death because you cannot defeat something that lives by taking life unless it destroys the very host that it occupies.

While walking past the window this morning in my drugstore, I noticed Mr. B arrives in the building, but I wonder why he is here. It can be for a number of reasons. Because the building is home to over twenty-two different offices and facilities, you never know why one might be in the building because it is the host to a number of businesses. Mr. B’s name is Brady, but I refer to him simply as Mr. B. He just got his daily dose of a B-12 injection yesterday, and I usually don’t see him for another two or three weeks after his injections. Perhaps he just wants to use the ATM, or for whatever reason, he may want to get a glimpse of Ms. D or Della, as she is known, as she opens her boutique.

I met Mr. B a while ago. He is a client and has been for many years. I usually call my customers clients because they are more than just buyers. I just don’t sell drugs; I offer a service by providing my clients with professional, medical, and psychological advice. Chloe is the pharmacy technician in the drugstore and acts as my personal assistant and supervisor of the drugstore. Somehow, Chloe managed to tell all the clients about my degree in clinical psychology as well as pharmacy, and now I do more than just dispense medicine.

Mr. B used to come to my store quite frequently, but now, I only see him on an occasional visit, which is usually a lot less than the