Please don’t say you’re crazy

My mom has schizophrenia. She was diagnosed when I was thirteen years old or so. For a long time no one understood that my mom was different. I grew up listening to her stories about people following her, her bosses at work having it in for her, and premonitions about bad things that would happened if I, for example, got on an airplane.

After being mandated by a court to take medicine in order to continue seeing me, my mom was fine for many years. She had my little sister when I was fifteen and stayed home to take care of her. They moved to a different state soon after my sister was born, so I would visit over the summers, and for the most part I would blame anything that went wrong on my step dad. After my mom and her husband split up, I continued visiting, this time from college.

However, as I was entering graduate school, things finally broke down. My mom had gone off her meds, partially due to a mix-up with the prescription ording system done via the mail. She was rushed to the emergency room and I was lucky enough to be there to take care of my sister. Even after I left though, my mom kept relapsing, and so I was flying back and forth from my grad school to my mom’s house to take care of her and my sister. After my mom’s third trip to the hospital, I withdrew from my graduate program and started working full time. After another few trips in the emergency room, the doctors have finally found a combination of drugs that works well for my mom, but it took a lot of time and complaining to physicians that my mom was not better yet.

My mom has most recently moved in with her older sister, which has been a tremendous blessing. Although I had been trying to get my mom to move in with me, she wouldn’t hear of leaving my little sister behind. Unfortunately, due to the hospital stays, my sister’s dad got an injunction that prohibited my mother from being with my sister alone. This forced my mom to reevaluate her options. Things are going well, and I am incredibly glad that my aunt has invited my mom into her home. She lives with two of her grown children and so there is always family around to check on my mom. My mom has also found new purpose in cooking and cleaning for the family.

The best part, perhaps, is that my mom has started writing a book. The first time she told me about her visions, I was pretty scared. They are dark and scary visions, ones where suicide seems like a viable option. However, with some distance, I think even these hallucinations have shadows of truth to them. I also hope, that by writing these stories down, she will be better equiped to tell what is real from fiction.

I intent, at some point, to join a support group for family members who hav a loved one with a mental illness. There is no cure for this disease. And it hurts me to hear how much my mom blames herself, how worthless she thinks she is as a mother and human being, and how much regret she has over the past. Her expectations of my life are also colored by her own experiences, making it difficult to always talk to her about what is going on in my life. I have become the parent, and that means I feel a huge responsibility to both my mom and my sister. Hopefully, we can all still find joy in life.