Living with someone who has Bipolar AND Schizophrenia might not always be the easiest thing, but it’s something that you have to learn to accept. It’s not something that you can change or do anything about. Just encourage them to take their meds, continue to go to therapy, all their appointments, and tell them that you’re always going to support them. They are still a human being and they don’t want to be seen or treated differently.
But when it’s your own mother it’s different. It’s a red light. Being Bipolar and Schizophrenic comes with risk. Suicidal and or homicidal cautions, mood swings, violence, irrational thinking, abandonment, abuse, etc.
My mother was diagnosed in around 2011-2012. She had been living with it for many years untreated whilst my sister and I lived with her. I thought her not getting up was normal. I thought her screaming, smashing and throwing things was normal. I thought being abused was ‘punishment’. I thought I was a bad child. I thought all the pills next to her bed were normal. I thought her checking in and out of the Greenport mental institution was normal.
“Mommy has to go for a while” I was told. “She’s going on a little vacation.”
All the visits to the mental institutions were normal. Visiting hours, and bringing her contraband cigarettes turned into routine.
I thought the time she threw the glass bottle at me was normal. I really did think that I did a bad job vacuuming. As far as I knew, she was just parenting. I didn’t know that it was abuse, I didn’t know that she was mentally ill and unstable. I thought all the times CPS came to my house was normal and that they did it to everyone.
Now that my mother is getting help, her mental stability is deteriorating. She claims to be getting better, but we all know she’s getting worse. Her being my mother, I believe her when she says she’s getting better. I want to believe her. But I am always proven wrong. Let down. It’s a cycle. There’s a part of me that wants to believe she’s getting better. I want to think that she’s not sick. But in reality I know. It’s something that I’ve had to accept.
After all the restraining orders, police reports, suicide threats, regular threats, harassment, she is still family. But I’ve had to learn to let go.