Neurosis

I know that, inherently, she isn't a bad person. It was just a few short years ago that I felt very close to her, for the first time in my life. We had about eight years of good after I moved away, talking on the phone weekly and visiting one another every few months. There were still moments of tension and even some arguments, but never anything like before, and not what we have today.

My mother is very ill, and always has been. I've known my entire life that she wasn't like other mothers, but it wasn't until I was an adult that I learned what manic depression is, and that my mother was what is called "bipolar I". It's been two years since she had her latest major manic episode, and she still has not pulled out of it. She left behind her job, her home, and her belongings to move hundreds of miles south and live on the beach. Even worse, my mother has hoarding disorder, a serious form of obsessive compulsive disorder. What this means is that my mother must always be surrounded by stuff, and since she can't afford to buy her own stuff, she is getting it from people's dumpsters and garbage cans. And that isn't the worst.

My mother has begun creating her own reality. She tells extensive stories about her life and the lives of people she knows. She's created life-threatening illnesses for me, illegal occupations for specific people that she doesn't like, and relationships that don't exist. Years ago, my friends and I would lightly joke about how we could be in one room and hear my mother having a conversation with someone in the next, but we would never see anyone with her. She would create characters and voices, asking herself questions and answering them. When we'd catch her, she'd embarrassingly laugh it off as just talking to herself, and we summed it up to her eclectic nature. Today, I look back on that and can't help but think that I could have stopped what I fear may be the culmination of schizophrenia, a disease prevalent in her family. Again, I naively believed that this disease required one hearing Satan and trying to kill family members, because no one educated me on the more common symptoms.

I have begged my mother for years to see a psychiatrist to get the proper medication, but her pride refused to let her listen. She was once in a relationship with a man who laughed at her for seeing a psychiatrist, and I remember him telling her that her head was shrinking and that she was a lunatic. It never occurs to her to remember that this same man beat her regularly and abused drugs, and how can you trust the opinion of a man who hits a woman every night? Eventually, I spoke with her new general practitioner after Mom was approved for work insurance. Her new doctor agreed with my observations and was shocked that no one before her had prescribed anything for my mother's condition, and my mother was put on an antidepressant, an anxiety medication, and an anti psychotic. Everything spiraled down hill simply because, one month, my mother decided she felt well enough to not refill the meds she had been on for several years.

As soon as I realized what was happening, I was doing everything I could from afar to get my mother emergency mental health assistance. I contacted everyone who had been around to witness her behavior and begged them to serve as a witness to her actions. I researched how to have my mother hospitalized under her employer's plan so that she would not lose her job while she was away. I spoke to her landlord and creditors, giving them a vague explanation that her health was not good lately and they agreed to give her some time. My family, though, saw my efforts as selfish on my part, and instead of my mother going to a hospital, she went to live with a schizophrenic sister. It has only gotten worse from there, as I mentioned before.

I still want to help, but what I see as help, her family sees as cruel. My mother needs to be somewhere with professionals and trained caregivers, she needs therapy and medication. My family willingly complains about her behavior, but ostracizes me when I try to intervene with my solution. They see my efforts as spiteful and unnecessary, though they are happy to explain her erratic behavior away with "your mother is very sick right now." Though it's not been said, I am sure that they are waiting for me to volunteer to take her on and let her live here, with me. I can't betray her and tell them the horrible things she says to me when we do speak, and when we are together, she makes a point to berate me, in turn causing an argument. I am told that I should just let her criticisms go because she is so very sick, but I want to stand up for myself to the person that should inherently want to protect me. I want to love her like I did before, but I am not sure if that will ever be possible again.