If you can’t laugh at mental illness, you’ll just cry all of the time. Trust me. I know.
There is an unspoken code in my family. My mom has been sick for a very long time and like a team of lifeguards, each of us steps up to take his or her respective turn swimming out furiously to save my mom while desperately trying not to drown as she emotionally clings and flays about. It gets exhausting trying to save the person who lives in the tide.
Whenever my mom boards the ‘crazy train,’ family code dictates that whoever she drags aboard with her makes sure to notify the rest of us so, as we lovingly say, “crazy goes to voicemail.”
We all love my mom and we all want to help her, but Schizoaffective Disorder is an emotional leech. So each time, one of us simply ‘takes one for the team’ and spares the other three.
Last night, my mom called me four times between 7:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. I didn’t hear the first two and then out of irritation, I ignored the second two at 11:14 p.m. and 11:28 p.m. respectively. Her voicemails were reflective of her current mental state: manic. Even though I knew I couldn’t do anything and calling her meant taking away from my life, good old Catholic guilt (@#$%) got the best of me and called her back.
When she’s sick, which is most of the time now, she can’t see beyond herself. She doesn’t inquire about me or my job or my husband or my life. She doesn’t care can’t focus on anything other that what she’s fixated on. And it’s life-sucking for all parties involved, including her. The neediest girlfriend doesn’t hold a candle to psychosis.
I’ve been working with the therapist and she blew my mind with one simple sentence. “It doesn’t matter if you’re happy or miserable, her life is going to be the same.” What?!
From therapy part one, I learned and accepted (work in progress) that her decisions are hers. I cannot influence them, I cannot change them and I’m certainly not responsible for the consequences of her actions. This is her life and these are her choices, regardless of where mental illness stops and my mom begins.
But now in therapy part two, I’m learning to live my own life. I’m learning that as much as I love my mom and want to fix her…I can’t. There is simply nothing I can do. It reminds me of Love Actually when Laura Linney’s character picks her mentally ill brother over her own happiness. Yeah. I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to be happy.
Mom, I love you a lot, but I can’t follow you into the dark anymore. I’ll be right here in the light with open arms if you can ever make your way back here. But I can’t live with you in the dark anymore.
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