My mom is crazy. My mom is bipolar. I know it's not nice to call her crazy, but it seems to be the best way to sum it up when people begin to wonder. Being her daughter, I almost make the claim now with affection. I've learned to accept her crazy; as I've grown (hopefully wider), I've also learned that every person and every family has their crazies. I've always told folks, I can only speak for my own.
As a girl, I didn't know my mom was bipolar. She was MOM, perfect, and the way a parent should be, because, as a child, how do you know any different? She encouraged my love of words, enrolled me in music lessons, tutored me and helped me with homework, provided food and shelter, and defended me at all costs. She was a good mom. But, there is usually a time in a child's life when she realizes her mom is flawed. Although I have never studied child pyschology, I am sure this moment must contribute to one's "coming of age." My moment sent our relationship spiraling downward.
I never remember my mother being single. There was always a man around, sometimes different "friends" at the same time. I do believe my mother deserved a love life, I just wish I hadn't seen so much of it. She once said, "I love being in love." A few years ago I had a conversation with a bipolar coworker, and she said that bipolar people, when manic depressive, usually have a vice. My mother's has to be a weakness for men and spending more than she could afford. She remarried when I was 10. I had only met the guy (and his demon of a son) once, while I was getting my hair braided. Two weeks later he and his son had moved in, a couple of months afterward, they were married. He was okay, his son was satan on Earth, and I hated him. A few years later, they divorced. My mother began to sleep; she slept too much.
I don't remember exactly how I got the news, but I know it was shortly after I had arrived at my grandmother's after school. My mother had been committed to Shepard Pratt for an attempted suicide; she had eaten an entire bottle of Tylenol (or something like that). Although I resented my mother deeply for moving practically strangers into our home, I still had a childlike image of her. However, from that day, our realtionship was never the same; she was no longer MOM. I remember crying, but not feeling sadness. The news was numbing. I became cold to the world, and I never remember anyone asking me how I felt about it, but always silently urging someone to inquire. I believe that simple gesture of offering a listening ear and heart would have saved us. I internalized the emotions. I cannot fully recall memories from that period; they are the blacked-out pages of girl's diary. Eventually, I thawed. Not only did I regain feeling, I began to boil. I remember feeling abandoned, and then angered by that abandonment. What kind of mother would leave her child alone in the world on purpose? My answer, a terrible one. Every piece of advice or guidance, every repremand, every word of wisdom from my mother's mouth was permanently damaged. How could I take the advice of someone who is mentally ill? Those were my thoughts at age 14...a dangerous and vulnerable time in girl's life to no longer have faith in the guidance from her mother.
I moved in with my aunt for 9 months. I dated, I lost my virginity, I had my first brush with domestic violence, and my first break up, all without my mom. Due to reasons I won't get into here out of respect for my aunt, I moved back in with my mom. At that point, we were more like roomates than mom and daughter. Yes, she paid the bills and kept a roof over my head. However, anything beyond that, I had to provide on my own. Clothes, extracurricular activities, etc. I got my first job and became what I have found to be both a blessing and a curse--independent. People still ask us "Well who's the mom and who's the daughter?" Not because my mother looks so much younger than her age (although she is beautiful), but because I was always the mature one, some have even argued (dare I say it), the more conservative one. My aunt say that once I hit puberty, it was almost like my mother felt she had to compete with me. I'm still not too sure what she means by this, but I get her drift.
Now, when people said, "Girrrllll, your mother is crazy." Instead of giggling in agreement, I would reply, "No, she really is." When she would make unnecessary or derailed comments, I now believed people were laughing at her, instead of with her. I regret never defending her, but the abandoment I felt from her suicide attempt has only begun to lift itself from my heart.
For a brief peiood during my teenage years, my mom dated a drug dealer. I wasn't fully aware he was a drug dealer, but knew something just wasn't right about him. I know this sounds bad, but he seemed so below my mom. He had nothing to offer her. Unbekown to me, my mother was also not paying the bills. The house was going into foreclosure, and so we moved into a 2-bedroom apartment on the other side of the city with this guy. (I only knew him by his nickname, Rock, nothing else.). All of this, most likely the result of her illness. During this period, I fell in love for the first time (yes, I lost my virginity before I fell in love), but instead of my mom taking us on our first date, it was my aunt. Eventually their relationship desovled, and with the help of family, we moved back into our house.
I went away to college, escaping a controlling, verbally abusive, and jealous boyfriend; escaping a city that stiffled, no suffocated the dreams of low income black girls; escaping a high school where I never had a best friend but was sufficiently popular (I also thought that most of my classmates had no commendable priorities or goals); escaping my mother and her men. Because she was not treating her illness, I knew that she had to be a ticking a timebomb, and I did not want to be around for it.
The summer before my senior year, the bomb began to tick loudly, again. My best friend, who had just graduated from college, was living with my mom. Since going away to college, I had never planned on coming back to Baltimore other than to visit. I had an apartment with friends near campus, and worked year round. However, since the bestie was home, I came back to visit for a bit. She had warned me that my mother had started to act a bit wild, but I really didn't think anything of it.
I came home to my mother dating a guy my age. In fact, he blantantly came on to me and my best friend in front of my mother. She thought it was funny. I went back to school. A few weeks later my best friend calls to tell me there was a "For Sale" sign in front of the house. I asked my mom and my family what's going on, and found out that my mom was about to lose the house, again. She had quit her job. A few weeks after that, I found out I was pregnant by my best friend (that's a story for another post).
When I called to tell my mom she responded "I can't handle this. Get an abortion," and hung up the phone. She called back a couple of days later to talk more, but the conversation did not include much else. Flash foward a few months, my mom is living with me in Virginia, and all hell has broken loose between us. She had put some money away in an account we shared to pay the rent every month. She went through that in 3 months -- tens of thosands of dollars in 3 months, and she didn't have a job, and I could not afford the apartment by myself working part-time as a bank teller. She moved in with my grandmother, and I made the long trek back home 7 months pregnant to live with my Aunt and Uncle. I stayed with them only a few months, and moved into my own place shortly after my daughter was born.
My mother had no income, and was living with her aging mom whose dementia was progressing into Alzheimer's. By this time it seemed that she had calmed down, and her personality was beginning to come back to the middle, so to save money, and help her out a bit I suggested that she be my daughter's daycare provider. Our relationship blossomed with the birth of my daughter, and we thought what a miracle a child could be to a family. But again, my mother has an illness, and unless you believe in divine intervention, an illness does not go away without treatment.
Earlier this year, I began to see signs of my mother's manic depression creeping up. She began to talk in circles, make irrational arguments, and suddenly the world was against her. She honestly believes that her family is out to get her, when they've been the only ones there for her in her time of need. She has cursed out my aunts and uncle, and my daughter's other grandmother. She got a Facebook page and started spreading horrible stories about the family, including part of the family who have a big political name in this city. She sent emails about the family to the mayor and other politicians. She told my cousin to go kill himself, knowing he has a history of depression. Then a few days later she would call up everyone like nothing had ever happened; an apology has never escaped her lips.
Every conversation began to turn into an argument. My daughter's father and I agreed that we should plan to put her in conventional preschool, but wanted to wait until he went off to the Air Force and it was more affordable. Six weeks before her planned preschool start date, my mother blew up in our faces one morning refusing to care for my daughter. I had not responded to my mother's recent attempts to get me fired up, but this time she cursed in front of my daughter, and even slammed the door in our faces. That was it, I went off. I went on a rampage. She began to yell about how her male friends say I use her and am mean to her. I don't even know these men. They don't know our history, or what we've been through. I responded with, "Them niggas only ever gave you a hard dick to sit on!" That was the last thing I said to my mom in weeks. I regret it; it was mean. However, I do believe my point was valid.
Because I worked in publishing, with daily deadlines and had no daycare, I lost my job. It's been nearly 2 months since this incident, and my daughter and I have only been to see her once. My aunts are obsessed with her illness. It depresses them both, one just takes pity and prays about it, the other seems to want to chat for days about it. I've told them both either to shut up about it, or don't speak to me. The entire situation is exhausting, and I am struggling to bounce back. (After losing my job, I lost my car, and nearly my apartment.)
I remember envisioning my mom in a way that she could never be without treating her illness. I did not want to "strip her of her personality" as my mom would yell during heated arguments between us, and I never wanted to see her "unhappy" or "couped up in the house." However, I did imagine my mother as a more blanced version of herself. I simply wanted her calmer. I imagined her to be more comforting, and more of a guide to help me navigate life. Unfortunately, my mother has never lived up with that image, and as I grow wiser I don't expect her to anymore.
My mother acknowledges her illness, but has only seeked treatment once in my life that I can remember. I have read that bipolar disorder is genetic, and mental illness does run in our family. Thus, there is a fear always lurking that one day it will appear. I have seen a doctor four times in the last five years simply to confirm that I am sane, because my fear of beign bipolar sometimes consumes me. I see myself making similar mistakes with men, and although I am considred a smart girl, you can't teach about those things in school. (Needless to say, I am a daughter of the fatherless tribe.) I find myself panicking that a fault or flaw of mind is the result of hormonal imabalance or defect. My aunt says that the mistakes I am making are not the result of a mental illness, but of never having a parent I could depend on as a young adult. She tells me this not to give me an excuse for my mistakes, but to let me know that these mistakes are just that; I should learn from them and move on.
No one explained to me, at least in a way I could comprehend, how it would be to live with a parent who has a mental illness. I feel that my relationship with my mom could have been so much better if I knew about her illness before she tried to kill herself (she was diagnosed in her early twenties, and had tried to comit suicide at least once before). I always ask myself, why didn't my family try harder to make me understand? Why didn't they seek professional help for me?
With time, that image faded and I became to accept and appreciate my mother for who she is, but after this last incident, I am not sure where our relationship will go from here. I love my mom, but I feel that in order to protect myself and my daughter, I must stay away now. This is the longest I've gone not speaking to her, and my daughter misses her terribly. I am fiancially facing a hard road in front of me, and I can only carry my burdens. It saddens me, but my mother is a burden I no longer can carry.
