THE BEST I CAN DO: A True Story of Navigating the Complexities of Mental Illness and Homelessness by Cheryl Landes – Memoirs, Mental Illness, Family Dysfunction

Cheryl Landes’s The Best I Can Do: A True Story of Navigating the Complexities of Mental Illness and Homelessness, follows the devastation of a happy marriage as mental illness slowly takes over the mind of her husband. Landes must then make the journey back to peace.

Cheryl and her husband, Tom, had known each other since their college days. A classic love story, Landes does a beautiful job with the set up, and then delivers the tragedy of Tom’s spiral into paranoia as their plans for the future begin to fall apart.

The Best I Can Do tells the story of what happens when Tom insists someone is trailing him, believing a car passes by his and Cheryl’s home every day even though no one else sees it. He claims someone installed listening devices in their house and refuses to speak unless his white-noise devices are on. As his paranoia increases he locks the refrigerator with a chain and a padlock to protect himself from the certainty someone—perhaps Cheryl—wants to poison him.

When Tom is laid off from a job he’s had for ten years, he decides to switch careers from sales to finance. The shift takes the couple from Seattle to New York City, disregarding Cheryl’s objections. With compassion and love, we follow her journey to understand his illness as she sets the boundaries she needs to rebuild her life.

But New York is only the beginning of a series of moves, all orchestrated by Tom’s inner voices.

He wipes out their savings, spends money the couple doesn’t have, and before long, Cheryl’s resilience is tested as she finds herself homeless and regularly sleeping in her car. The story jumps around, back and forth in time, from Seattle to the East Coast and back again as it weaves the tangled web of Tom’s life into a narrative that resembles the clear struggle of Cheryl’s new reality.

Pride keeps Cheryl from telling anyone at her white-collar job about her situation as Tom, thoroughly in the depths of his mental illness, is rarely seen. He pops up occasionally with no answers regarding his long absences or evidence of clarity. Cheryl’s inner voice attempts to warn her about her own downward trajectory, but not soon enough.

Landes’s novel is a fascinating and grueling tale of navigating the complexities of living with a person dealing with mental illness.

The Best I Can Do: A True Story of Navigating the Complexities of Mental Illness and Homelessness is a heart-breaking memoir. Cheryl Landes does a superb job of chronicling the ups and downs of her life as her husband becomes a prisoner of his schizophrenia.