Today is November 11, 2007. I have now been in NC at my Mother’s, with our son, for over 5 weeks now. I am completely desperate to go home to my husband, my dogs, and my home. I have battled with depression myself for many, many years. For the most part, it has been successful, but there have been a few times when it was not. I fear that I am moving into one of those times again, and I am scared. Our son is more stable than he was when we left CT to come here, but the meds are not right, and the battles that I repeatedly fight against with people of authority in CT are really wearing me down. My husband is still depressed, so I cannot bring our son home, and I am left with trying to manage all of this plus a stressful job in a Fortune 100 company.
Our son is starting to get more argumentative over time. He is very frustrated while he is waiting for news of all of these battles. He has nothing to do most of the time, he is cutoff from therapy and his friends, and this is proving to be disastrous. My Mother is wearing down also, because this has gone on so long. She is in her mid-70′s, and although very healthy and active, the mental drain of our son’s mental illness issues, and my issues, are taking their toll. She is getting more and more tired, and waking up in the middle of the night too often.
I am waking up in the middle of the night more and more, and I am not able to go to sleep for at least a couple of hours most times. Then I am exhausted for the rest of the day. There is more and more of a breakdown of communication between the three of us, as the triangle that existed many years ago seems to be re-forming. What I mean by that is that my Mother is starting to act like a co-parent, instead of a grandparent. This undermines whatever I do to manage our son’s illness, and try to get him to manage his illness on his own. If I try to discipline our son, or make him stay on task, my Mother will intercede and back our son instead of me. This is a very bad situation, and one that I remember from many years ago, when I was a single Mother and our son was a toddler. It’s so true that old behaviors do not change unless the person wants to make changes, because they have to recognize their behavior is causing a negative situation.
I am beginning to feel old emotions stir back up that are actually harmful to me. I try to stem the tide of these feelings, but they are becoming more evident throughout the day. What I feel is that I cannot be a mother to our son, because my Mother interferes with almost everything I do or say regarding our son. This creates an untenable situation that has created a living breeding ground for arguments, volatile discussions, and increasingly negative pressure on me. I love my Mother, as she is a wonderful Mother, but she tries to be a Mother to our son also, and that does not work. After years of therapy and treatment for our son, I know what he needs, and what he should not do on many different behavioral levels. For some reason, my Mother goes against all of this, and feels sorry for our son, thereby allowing him to feel quite empowered with regard to me. When my Mother interferes, our son immediately starts an argument with me, and he and my Mother team up against me in a very solid front. This has gone on since I first had to live with my Mother when our son was very young. My Mother knows no boundaries when it comes to our son — my husband’s and my son — not hers and mine!
These types of behavior act to undermine my authority as a Mother to our son, and therefore begins to erode my self confidence, and inner strength. It also makes me very angry, and I keep that very much in check, so as not to disrupt the entire household. This is what drives my depression — suppressed anger. Because our son needs special treatment, I don’t raise my voice, even in a heated discussion. I remain calm, and talk myself off the edge in the midst of the storm, so that I can keep our son calm. If I didn’t do this, then our son’s rage would emerge and boil over, and then it really goes from bad to worse in a hurry. I already have to listen to his ranting and raving about how horrible I am for putting him in psychiatric hospitals and residentials when he was younger. I listen to him cry about how I, and his father, abandoned him, neglected him, and didn’t raise him properly. I try to keep in the forefront of my mind that it’s our son’s illness that drives these conversations, but it doesn’t make it any easier for me. I am not trained to manage anyone’s bipolar illness. I am not geared toward being able to fend off psychological and verbal abuse — in fact, it can “lay me out” pretty quickly. The sad thing, is that most people don’t understand than any severe mental illness is a FAMILY ISSUE — it’s never just an issue with the person who is mentally ill — it affects everyone in a family, and close friends as well. Our family has been absolutely and completely traumatized by our son’s mental illness. Bipolar illness is a severe mental illness, and it is complex and difficult to manage in the best of situations.
The other part of why I am feeling like I am sliding down the “slippery slope,” is that having to battle with multiple agencies in CT, as well as filing paperwork, being treated like I am less than human by agency workers, and so on, is also very debilitating and exhausting. While many people are very compassionate and sympathetic, and that is greatly appreciated, there has really been no action as of yet. The letter writing, phone calls, faxing, and everything else that goes along with this type of advocacy, takes a tremendous amount of energy, quick-wit-edness, and commitment to many hours of research and and intense thinking. It would be exhausting if it were the only thing I had to do in this world. But for me, it is just an addendum to everything else I do and think about.
I worry about my husband and our marriage — this part of the journey has really taken a toll. I have 4 beautiful dogs that I miss tremendously. After my husband, they are my solace and comfort for everything in my life — which usually revolves around our son’s illness and adjacent issues. I miss my plants, and taking care of them all. I miss my things — all of the feminine things we women have around our home, you know, special containers, jars of moisturizer, keepsakes that remind you of good things, past letters and cards from loved ones, photographs of the happy times, pots and cookware that are as familiar as your own skin.
The daily habits that I had in CT are all gone and changed. The times when my husband and I would spontaneously decide to run out somewhere to look at something, go to a flea market, go to a cafe for coffee, curl up in the bed with our dogs to watch some good sci-fi, or just spend time planning our future as old people, are the most precious of memories that I hang on to everyday that I am away. All of the looks that two people share throughout the course of the day are now not part of my daily life — and I miss those looks that we shared. We love each other very deeply, even after going through all the years of dealing with a mentally ill child. We love our son, and we are both committed to getting our son the help he needs, but we cannot do it without help. Help from agencies, individuals, and loved ones. We need alot of help, and we need it now, and at 100% capacity. I am now feeling like a total failure at advocating for our son. Nothing I have done has worked, and I have not been able to find appropriate legal representation for my husband and I and our needs.
If anyone out there has any tips on how to get this all accomplished, please let us know. We are good people who love our son, but we are dying a slow death from all of this, and that should NEVER happen to anyone.
Thank you for reading.
