Background...

You know when people get frustrated with a relative and say, "God! They drive me crazy sometimes!" Mine actually do: I have some mental illness in the family. (I know: who doesn't, right?)

My mother was diagnosed as being paranoid schizophrenic when I was an infant, but later on her diagnosis became more along the bipolar lines. When I was little I simplified it for myself by saying that my mother has good days and bad days. Good days meant she was awake, drinking coffee and laughing that gravelly smoker's laugh and smoking unending cigarettes, trying to be philosophical but falling a little short. Bad days meant she was asleep (or awake for the third or fourth day in a row) or completely unreasonably argumentative or bizarrely religious.

Since my parents divorced early (I was maybe 3), and my dad was one of the first dads in CA to get full custody (this was the early 70s), I saw my mother on visitations. She was painfully happy to see my brother and I, but it became harder and harder to bear up under her neediness -- she wanted so much to be a mother to us, but she couldn't take care of herself, much less us. Her neediness ate at me, grated on my nerves, made me anxious. As a simple example, she'd do things like save the ads in the Sunday paper for silverware patterns so she could ask which one I liked best. I'd pick, and she'd immediately say that was her favorite, too. It was like having an annoying little sibling trying to copy me... wanting to crawl inside my head and BE me... wanting to take me over. The four hour visits left a fog of depression over my brother and I (and my mother, too, I'm sure) that lasted for a day or so after we returned home.

When I became a grownup I tried to have a relationship with her, but the parenting thing was an issue. At 18, 19, 20 I felt I didn't need parenting; I had finished my vocational college training and was working and paying my bills, making good choices and moving foward in life. She wanted to be my mother in the tell-me-what-to-do sort of way that had already been done by that time. Plus, I felt like I was sort of pushed into the parenting role with her: I was the adult, she was the rebelling teen, smoking because no one was going to tell HER to quit, or staying in a hellacious relationship because at least it was someone there... Again, it became exhausting, depressing, really, to just be around her.

I tried to explain it to someone one time and the best I could come up with was this: She is the black hole of need. No matter what you do, it's never going to be enough. I love my mother; I just can't be around her and remain sane enough to carry on, myself.

When I became a parent, myself, I began to pull back from my mother even more, to protect my kids and myself from the emotional rollercoaster. I couldn't stand the smoking, I couldn't stand the calls that berated me for one thing one minute, and ended with crying and a religous diatribe the next. I couldn't stand the neediness that had no end... I went through enormous amounts of guilt, and still do feel terrible about not seeing her, talking to her, or being involved in her life... but I know, deep down, that it is the ONLY course that I can take right now.

I have compassion for people going through mental illness, but also for the family members who have to watch as bad choice after bad choice gets made, with predictable results. The family members are the ones that have to pick up the pieces... Mental illness is not contagious, but it affects more than just the person with the diagnosis...

I don't have a relationship with my mother, not because I don't care, but because I care so much it hurts too much.