The Fear

I have received so many messages so regularly from my mother that when they stop, I am afraid.

I don't feel like she is getting better in these periods.  I fear she is getting worse.  I know she's isolated, that no one is there to check up on her, and I worry so much.

How I wish my sister would have an idea of what to do, or share my fear.  I hate being afraid alone.  I hate feeling guilty alone.

At what point is it okay to neglect your parent for being abusive, and at what point is it no longer okay to pretend their problem doesn't exist?

I feel so helpless.

Mommie Dearest, The Real Story

My mother has always been somewhat of a drama queen, even when I was a small child.

I remember watching the movie "Mommie Dearest" with my family at home, and distinctly feeling like I was watching somewhat of an autobiography.  Watching Joan Crawford completely lose control over her daughter's wire hangers was eerily familiar.  I felt very similarly watching movies that involved a controlling mother and her two daughters, against the world - films like "Mermaids" and "Gypsy" were dead ringers for my upbringing in more ways than one.

I woke up one night at about 2 AM to a banging in the bathroom.  We lived in a small, ranch-style home that had the bathroom in the center, so any commotion in that area would be difficult to miss.  My mother was up, throwing things out of the medicine cabinet.  The light was glaringly bright at 2 AM; in the mountains of Colorado, the middle of the night meant pitch black outside, so I had no other lights to help adjust my eyes to the rude awakening.

"Can't find the things that I need, can't find the things that I need, I can't find the things that I need, can't find the things that I need," over and over and over again, this mantra was being repeated in frantic tones.  I was terrified to move or let her know I was awake.  I wasn't the only one.  I knew my sister and father must also be awake, yet we did nothing.  She was crying, openly screeching out these words, getting louder and louder, banging the cabinet doors, throwing things on the floor.

To this day, I don't know what she was looking for.  But it still haunts me.  As I've gotten older, I can now imitate her exact tone, which terrifies the friends that I have retold this story to.

This was sometime in 2000, maybe 2001.  And it only gets worse from there.  I hope through this blog I can help share my story, and encourage others to do the same.  Mental illness is absolutely real - and while my attitude has shifted some since my first blog post here, it is morphing.  My mother's illness has continued to decline into what I fear is true psychosis, and a condition I cannot do anything about.  I cannot get her help because she refuses to acknowledge there is a problem.  I cannot face her, because I finally have to protect myself.  And, as it is, I have to protect my soon to be born daughter.

This is the story of a survivor of a parent with mental illness.  You are not alone, and you, too, will survive.

My Father is a Nazi

Did you know that my father is a nazi?  I certainly didn't.

But that's not what my mother will tell you.  She will spin all sorts of wild tales about his quest to destroy our family.  She's certain that he's done everything in his power to "buy" my sister and I, with an inheritance that we have never seen.  My sister and I are both adults, and our parents divorced officially about three years ago.  They'd been fighting for some time, and were completely justified in separating.  My sister and I were fine with this decision, again, because we are both adults.  But this doesn't stop my mother's claims that we secretly hate her for making this very personal decision.  She's simply adamant that we're harboring awful grudges against her.

This is because we don't like to discuss their divorce.  For some reason, being against the character slams of my father are unreasonable to her.  And it makes her claims that much more fervent.  I know, because I receive several emails daily, describing her viewpoint.

You see, by several, I mean over 30 to 50 separate messages daily.  While she's always been somewhat of a homebody, the email load has tripled in the last twelve months alone.  The constant barrage of inbox dings is borderline obsessive.  Her insistence that my sister and I are against her gets more impassioned by the day.  And while they began as a well-written argument, they are not necessarily well thought out, and have morphed into frequently misspelled and terrifying accounts of abuse and fear.

Such as this direct quote: "I AM ENTITLED TO THRASH THE FUCK OUT OF HIM IN A FEW BRIEF SENTENCES ABOUT FEASTING ON MY CHILDREN'S LIVES LIKE A NAZI WHILE WEARING A SILLY GRIN ON HIS FACE!"

Yes, the capital letters are included in the original message.  Ahem.

Ladies and Gentlemen - my mom doesn't know she's crazy.

I'm not a psychiatrist, but I can recognize odd behavior just as well as the next person.  She's always had a hole in her bag of marbles, and she's always been mostly harmless.  To the outside world, she's a little quirky - but it can be much more than that when you feel like "Mommy Dearest" is a an autobiography.

If you've ever met someone, or are someone, who has a parent such as this, you'll know that these accounts can be so bizarre they seem completely made up.  Who would believe that a woman became hysterical over the almost-death of a fish, or called the police by accident while screaming she'd been robbed - just by chance?  In their disconnect, they become more than just amusing.  If humor is tragedy + time, true hilarity is mothers + madness.

Because, let's face it, people.  Mom doesn't know she's crazy.