My mother has a long history of mental illness. She was one of those kids that ran away during her early teens and lived on the streets. When she came back, it appeared she had a whole host of... well, disorders. I don't know whether it's schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, whatever. When my dad met and married my mom, they were controlled by medication. He didn't know until they reared their ugly head again when I was four. Nobody ever said anything to me. They just tried to hide it.
When I was little, my mother starved me and my brother because she slept all the time and never got up to make us meals; we lived on the little things we could find in the fridge and the cupboards. My father was a journeyman (in the trades) so he was always on business trips and never home to see this. I got left at school countless times even though I was only in grade one. I had to find my way home by walking halfway across the town we lived in. One of the most vivid memories I have of her is being in that situation and phoning home at the order of a teacher. Having woken her up, I heard her mumble a few words, the only one I understood was "fish". She hung up on me. I told the teacher that she said to "walk home". I don't know why I did that I should have told the teacher, and let her deal with it.
My mother's first breakdown was shortly after. She began talking about people who didn't live with us, who were imaginary, or even dead. She dreamed up that she was having an affair with some distant red-headed cousin. She left my dad, taking me and my brother, and then came back. She had delusions that people were breaking into our house and changing things; opening cupboards, leaving the toilet seat up, stealing her cigarettes. When she was awake, she began to rigidly control the routines of me and my brother. She told my dad that I was having seizures when I wasn't. She lost track of time. Months passed, but she still thought it was a certain day. My dad came home to find her like this, and put her in the hospital.
The doctors gave her medication. She got better. Stopped seeing things. My dad became a full-time tradesman and started coming home every night so he could make sure that me and my brother were properly taken care of (although I hid the fact that she starved us for him for years, I told him when I was seventeen, and he lives with guilt over it, sadly). We moved to the city to be with family. It wasn't the end of our troubles, though.
Even though my mother's mental illness(s) were "under control", it seemed she had a awful personality. I hadn't been able to tell before, because all I was able to see was her illnesses. She wouldn't share anything, despite the fact that we were a family. If there was a new food in the fridge, and I took a some of it, she would yell at me. She played on my emotions of jealousy towards my younger brother, which were already pronounced (I was already trying to deal with my Asperger's Disorder and failing, even when nobody even thought anything was wrong) by coddling him, giving him gifts on his birthday that were much better and more expensive than the ones I got for mine.
When I made a mistake and broke something, or got into trouble, my mother would at first say it was okay, and then a couple of days later, she would chew into me saying "if you ever do it again", threatening me with things that a mother shouldn't threaten her kids with. It was beyond confusing, like I was at the end of a rope and she was dropping me off a bridge and then suddenly yanking me back again.
If I needed new clothing, my mother, instead of going to the store and getting me something that fits, would go into the basement, go through old boxes of clothes, and drag out dusty, ill-fitting things that used to be hers back before she gained a lot of weight. She even did this when I needed underwear, and I was so disgusted by it that I started not wearing underwear at all. I had none of my own, and for something so close to a sensitive part, it seemed wrong to wear something used.
This continued into my preteen years. When I hit puberty, and needed "girl supplies" to deal with my period, and bras to fit my growing bust, my mother went into the basement. I remember being in gym class, wearing a bra that was made up entirely of lace (it was literally see-through, and horribly scratchy), having both the straps come unhooked and the entire thing hanging around my waist by the time we had to change. I had no pajamas; I wore my mother's old negligees even though I had nobody to show them to, and was too young to be doing that kind of stuff anyways. The thought of this, now that I'm old enough to understand it, still torments me. Did she hate me so much that taking a trip to a clothing store - even Walmart - was too much?
When I was thirteen my father realized how bad the situation was becoming. By this point, my mother was taking all of her frustrations out on me - every day before school there was a screaming match that sent me to school crying and deeply hurt due to her emotional abuse. What made it worse was that I had no friends to rely on, so I would go to school, sit at my desk, and cry in silence while everyone pretended I wasn't. Because of the way I had acted in the past due to my Asperger's, nobody bothered to ask if I was okay. Seeing the state I was in, and the state my mother was in, my father decided that he was going to divorce her. Not because they were arguing, or hated each other, but because she was no longer the woman he had married, and because she was causing damage to both me and my brother (I learned of his motives later when I was in my late teens and asked him).
My mother moved out of the house, taking a lot of our stuff with her (my dad told me that it was probably because she felt like she was getting the short end of the stick). She moved into an apartment nearby. My brother, spoiled by her treatment and resentful towards my dad for breaking up with her (although still believing they'd get back together) went with her. Within a year (or maybe a year and a half) he was back with us. He told us that my mother was yet again having delusions of people breaking into her house. They were mild, but it had become obvious to us that she was no longer taking her medication.
She lost a lot of weight, but still wasn't satisfied. She had a lot of skin that literally hung off her bones. She continued having delusions that got worse and worse. She thought that her landlord was conspiring against her, as were the people at her workplace. She was fired, asked to move. But no matter what I said to her (and I don't know why I was trying to "save" her) she saw the medication as her enemy. "Do you want me to be fat and ugly again?" She'd ask me. "Do you want me to sleep all the time?" I was old enough to know that... well, that if you're on the right medication, there's less of a chance of things like that happening.
By this point, my father had become involved with another woman. By coincidence, this woman was his childhood friend and a person my mother had thought of as a friend before my father had initiated the divorce. She saw this as a betrayal. A memory that still glares in my mind involves my mother visiting the house, but even though my dad's girlfriend was sleeping and therefor my mom couldn't have known she was there, she stormed into my father's bedroom, and dragged the poor woman out of bed before I had to rather loudly ask her to leave. She stormed off to her car and sped off, leaving my brother behind even though she had prior engagements with him. After this, she began telling lies. She told my grandmother that we hated her and never wanted to see her again, and told us that our grandmother hated us. Just being near her was confusing and upsetting.
Having no job, and no home, she asked my father if he could pay for a moving van so she could move into her mother's house a couple of towns over, in good faith, my father decided to give her the money. What was she going to do otherwise. But she promptly went missing. A week passed, the bills from the van rental piling up. Finally, my dad had to drive all the way there to retrieve it, where he found her driving endlessly in circles in the town, having been denied entry into her mother's house (because at this point, she really was crazy). He took the van back. It still cost over $500.
After that, we didn't hear from her in three years.
My mother phoned at Thanksgiving. After three years of being missing, and still crazy. She's in a hospital, somewhere, or so that's what my dad thinks (I couldn't talk to her, so I handed the phone to him when this happened). She thinks that the moving van incident was recently. She wants to see me, and she wants to see my brother.
This makes me unbearably anxious and depressed. I've been coping with it for the past two weeks, feeling off, unable to do anything that I don't absolutely have to do. I know that she's bad for us. I want to protect myself, and my brother. But, like always, I feel powerless, and I know I won't be able to because of the way people perceive me (because I have Asperger's, I must be powerless and more childish than even my younger brother. My words carry no power). I know this woman is not my mother at all, and I don't want her anywhere near us.
We were doing fine, just the three of us, and I don't want her to come along and wreck that. Even more so, when I am anxious like this, I feel like her. I'm afraid of that. I've been diagnosed with depression, just like her, and I have Asperger's. When I don't understand something, I talk in circles. I do not want to be like her. The thought makes me want to throw up. I haven't been able to do my school work, which I promised I would do this year. I want to graduate, to do something with my life, other than be a person who can't finish school.
I just don't know what to do. I wish someone would tell me.
But my reason for writing this and posting this was because I need to get this out or I'm going to implode. Thanks for reading this far. I know it's long... but I wanted to be absolutely sure that I would be understood.
17 Oct 2012, 3:11 pm
