We've all heard about it on the news this week: disguised in a black trench coat and wig, armed with pepper spray, a steel mallet, and a BB gun, US space shuttle astronaut Lisa Nowak allegedly was on the warpath to off her rival in a love triangle. Nowak wore diapers so she wouldn't have to stop to use a toilet on a long drive from Houston to Orlando to confront her rival, Colleen Shipman, a captain in the US airforce. The confrontation occured in a parking garage at the Orlando International Airport. Shipman reported seeing a strange woman in a dark coat following her, so like any of us, she raced to her car for safety only for Nowak to pound on her door. According to the affidavit, Nowak demanded that Shipman give her a ride and lend her cell phone. Shipman cracked her window open just enough so that she could be heard, but as she attempted to say something to Nowak, Nowak did her darnedest to spray her face with the pepper spray. With her eyes burning from the chemical, Shipman somehow managed to drive to a toll booth for help. Nowak was later apprehended while she was dumping objects into a trash can near a bus stop. Identified by Shipman, and now finding herself confronted by police, Nowak claimed she only wanted to try to scare her rival into talking to her. The object of Nowak's romantic affectations, Bill Oefelein, also an astronaut, could not be reached because he is currently still in space. On Nowak's person was discovered a letter describing how much she loved Oefelein, emails from Shipman to Oefelein, directions to Ms Shipman's house and receipts indicating Nowak paid only in cash during her trip from Houston, including for her hotel stay. In a taped statement given to police, Lisa Nowak described her connection to Bill Oefelein as "more than a working relationship but less than a romantic relationship".
So, what do you think pushed her over the edge? Lisa Nowak is married to a flight engineer with three children; what was she doing having an elicit affair with a fellow astronaut? Is this simply a case of a jealous crime of passion or a sign that Nowak may have an underlying mental illness that influenced her to act out of character? Yet who is "in character" when it comes to being inflicted with an emotional trauma of the heart? Too many people have made light of this situation, yet it is one that any of us could find ourselves in when we make bad decisions in the name of love. Who hasn't been tempted to egg and toilet paper a cheating lover's car or house? Who hasn't been tempted into a hostile confrontation with The Other Woman? I ask these questions NOT to justify Nowak's actions, but to point out that stories like this one are nothing new. It's only when someone in a position of authority or celebrity misbehaves that we turn our attention to it and mock the situation as if to say they're more crazy than we could ever be.
Some of us have been in Nowak's shoes. Instead of nurturing the good relationships we have, we decide to become enveloped in obsessive love for someone who isn't good for us, and when we find out that they don't want us, we are reminded that we hold no great importance in our lover's life, and so we direct our rage on that other person whom we believe should not deserve the love we feel we have coming to us. I understand that passionate, catharic rage. I wouldn't be surprised if Lisa Nowak suffers from bi-polar disorder like I do. Sometimes it takes a love affair gone awry to make you snap out of your funk and get help. My hope is that she recieves the help she needs no matter what. She may not deserve our sympathy, but we do owe it to ourselves to understand how this could happen to us and what we should do to prevent it.
Some of us have been in Colleen Shipman's shoes, too. You start a new relationship with a guy only to find out that he has a crazy ex-lover who may or may not come after you. You like your new guy a lot and don't want to get hurt. You might understand how someone could be jealous of your new relationship, but you're unprepared for the harassment from the ex. You never know when the harassment can turn from threats to actual violence. Why can't the ex just leave well enough alone? Perhaps it's because your beau hasn't made it clear to his other lover that he's not interested. Or perhaps he has made it clear numerous times and she is simply refusing to get the message. No matter what, you may find yourself on the recieving end of someone's misguided rage and you should do what you can to take precautions; inform police, get a restraining order, make sure you don't stay alone, keep to public places if you are, and whatever you do, don't try to talk your way out of harm's way.
And what about the guy? First off, in Nowak's case, Bill Oefelein can't be reached right now, he's on a mission and out of our atmosphere. Will he make a statement? Should he make a statement? Nowak described their relationship as "more than a working relationship but less than a romantic relationship", in other words, they were having a sexual tryst outside of a conventional relationship which normally includes monogamy. Since Nowak is married and Oefelein isn't, common sense would conclude that Oefelein has the right to "fool around" with anyone he wants to be with. Nowak and Oefelein had a relationship that falls outside the jurisdiction of marriage -- there is no formal committment between them -- yet such a relationship may have been considered sexually monogamous by Lisa Nowak. Being married, and possibly lying to her husband about the affair, plus having an affair with a fellow astronaut who could end the affair at any time or, if the affair was uncovered, the scandalous relationship could ruin her career as well as her family, Nowak was already in a highly stressful, emotionally insecure situation where she had little to no control. The only thing she knew to do when she suspected Oefelein was turning his attention elsewhere, was to attack the person she percieved as a threat to her relationship. The smartest thing she could've done was to end the affair and privately try to work things out to get her life emotionally managable again. Yet when you find yourself in a position like hers, the easiest and most tempting thing to do is to go on the warpath.
It takes a lot of self hate to attack an innocent woman who seems to have more love than we do. It takes a lot of hate against other women to attack and blame another woman for how poorly a man has treated us. Sometimes there's no way out of a bad relationship until the worst-possible-thing-that-could-happen happens. This is what is known as a BREAKDOWN. You don't actually break bones or fall apart during a breakdown, but you do fall from grace in the worst way possible and more than just your heart gets broken. A breakdown can be the most terrible of blessings to come out of an unhealthy situation.
It takes an upheaval to get back into a healthy state of mind again. It's usually during breakdowns that some of us discover we have a mental illness that has made it difficult for us to function normally in society. There's nothing wrong with being crazy as long as you take care of yourself, but the trouble with being crazy is that many people don't know they are crazy, so they can't take care of themselves. A mental illness, as defined by Wikipedia is "an abnormal mental condition or disorder associated with significant distress and/or disfunction. This can involve cognitive, emotional, behavioral and interpersonal impairments" such impairments aren't readily seen or diagnosed until certain environmental or situational factors are in play. Sometimes it's not mental illness at blame, but another medical disorder or disease is causing someone to react and behave abnormally. Someone like Lisa Nowak may have underlying medical factors that might have influenced her to behave crazy, or the situation was just too much for her to deal with and may have caused a personality disorder to develop. She may have been found to be mentally fit to cope with a career in space, but a bad relationship left her emotionally unsound.
The blame for her behavior, however, can still be put on her. I can only recount my own experiences with emotionally unsound relationships that provoked me to attack or withdraw from society. For example, I once burned the hand of a young woman whom I felt was stealing my best friend. I percieved her to be "in the way" and so many thoughts of her doing terrible things and saying even worse things about me to my best friend left me in agony. The only thing that I felt would end my suffering was to get her away from my best friend. I was also suffering from lack of sleep and physical discomfort from spending a very cold night on a bed of rocks -- my best friend and this girl had hogged the blanket (we were spending the night on a beach and it was supposed to be a fun outing) and my entire body burned with rage. Seeing them together seemed to be the source for every ounce of pain I felt that day, so I reached for whatever object I could use as weapon. There happened to be a lighter on the ground. Her hand was clearly exposed and wrapped over his shoulder. As soon as I let that flame scorch her skin, seeing her in pain brought me relief. Yet I can't deny that there wasn't a moment where I stopped to realize that "this might be a crazy thing to do" but soon I was outside of myself, unable to stop myself, only knowing that I needed a release from those horrible thoughts and the pain that came with them. I didn't really hate the girl I burned, I actually really liked her, but at that moment she was in my way, and since my best friend was more important to me than her welfare, something within me snapped. I look back on that situation and am happy that I eventually got help without another psychotic episode. I didn't know it then, but a couple years later I would be diagnosed with bi-polar disorder.
Fear of hurting another person, and fear of losing other friendships because my emotional perceptions may become severely impaired at times, leads me to withdraw from society. It's not just the stress that relationships may cause that make me a recluse, it's also the way the public at large reacts to people like me that provokes me to retreat. I may not be a famous astronaut who fell from grace, I am an average person who fell out of social favor because I had a breakdown which led to a mental illness diagnosis. Such a diagnosis will leave you with a social stigma; people will hate and ridicule you as severely as they do homosexuals or people of a different ethnic origin all because you suffer from a disability they fear and do not understand.
Part of being stigmaized is being made fun of or talked about in a rude manner. People will judge you severely, call you names, and satirize you. This is not "making fun of you" -- this can be percieved as a direct attack on your person because you cannot help being different. Being mentally ill is a condition; it is NOT who you are, yet once you are identified as "crazy" it is an identity given to you by others for the way you behave or for the bad decisions you make that are a by-product of being socially and emotionally impaired. It is not nice or courteous to laugh at those who are in a worse situation than you are.
You can laugh at how crazy Lisa Nowak is, but I dare you to do it without first asking yourself what you would have done in her situation? Whether or not her behavior was caused by an illness, it was most definitely influenced by an emotionally dehabilitating stressful situation that she couldn't get out of without professional assistance -- and sometimes that assistance can't be had until you've really wrecked yourself like she has. Let's just all be grateful that she didn't go as far as murder. I hope she gets the help she needs, but first the woman has to deal with the mess she made, and unlike many of us who have suffered breakdowns in private, hers will be broadcast all over the world.
breakdown
