LW, of course you're feeling frazzled. You're living with someone who has a serious mental illness who is refusing to do anything about it. You say yourself that "it feels like living in a pressure cooker or walking on eggshells constantly."

I would go. It sounds like your partner isn't giving you--perhaps at this point is incapable of giving you--much support with parenting, forget about the added stress and burden of his own illness. Move back to where you have a support network. Try to work things with your partner so that he is still a part of your child's life.

Additionally, get some sort of parenting help for yourself. Your child *always* needs love and nurturing, regardless of how you're feeling yourself. You choose to become a parent. See your "path" or whatever as how to be a genuine and genuinely good parent. Hint: remaining with your partner in a tense and fraught household for the sheer symbolism of a "whole" family ain't gonna cut it. Kids pick up on that kind of tension, it makes them tense and anxious.

@marc22309:

LW says this:

I have moved across the country with a man I don't want to be with anymore, mainly because we have a small child together and I felt that to stay in the town where I was (where I was happy) would be to become responsible for separating my child from her father.

I interpret that as the father was leaving anyway, and it was up to the LW to decide if she and the daughter were going to tag along. It is ambiguous, though, and could also mean the LW going along with a mutual plan to move, even though her heart wasn't in it. Or any number of situations.

And this is probably why I hate economics. The focus is always on money and business and productivity and workers as automatons, who through faulty programming, don't give their employers 100% productivity at all times possible.

People aren't just cogs in a wheel; they aren't just workers and consumers. People need days when they aren't working, and yes, I'd wager that most people have exaggerated or lied about an illness in order to just have one freaking day off. Especially in the U.S., where we have very little vacation time in comparison to the rest of the industrialized world.

You also have companies like mine, where you get 12 to 20 days total of PTO, depending on your time here. There are no extra days for illness. So, what does everyone do? Come in when they're sicker than a dog and infect the rest of the office, because if they can just make it one more day, they won't have to come into the office the day after Christmas. Because everyone knows that someone who is constantly coughing, sneezing, blowing their nose, and who feels like shit is a highly productive worker. It's even better when illnesses spread throughout the workplace, so you have entire cubicle farms full of coughing, sneezing, fevered, miserable people!

LW:

You're not being unreasonable at all--the American economy and political system are rigged to the benefit of the top players. And if we at the bottom are lucky, the Dems are in control so we might get a bone or two thrown our way.

You do sound really overwhelmed, though. You have a newborn. Have you gotten yourself checked out for postpartum depression? Is your husband really helping out a home? Can you hand the infant off to friends or relatives for a night, so you can get some sleep? I'm not a parent myself, but those of my friends and family who have kids seem to have really had their worlds turned upside down by their first ones. Not in a bad way, necessarily. Just in a everything is completely different for the rest of their lives way.

When you get stuck on a negative loop--constantly replaying the battle with the insurance call center, or focusing on how many lobbyists overrun Washington, whatever--it can help to deliberately break the chain of thought. Focus on a flower; think about your favorite book; compose a letter in your head to your favorite relative. I struggle with depression, and this tactic doesn't always completely stop the negative feedback loop, but it can help to have little distractions in between whatever horrible thoughts are overwhelming you.

Once you've gotten through the daze of having a newborn in the house, take small steps as you are able. You can't change the world, and neither can you probably withdraw from it, but you can, say, be frugal and sock away as much money as you can. You can recycle and buy as much organic/non-toxic products as you can afford. You can volunteer in your community. We all want to save the world, but almost none of us can. We can only do our small parts to improve the sometimes hellish world around us.