Peace Disrupted: My Mother and Her Mental Illness Running Amok
The system fails once more. My mother has been released from guardianship to live independently.
I have been in cars, planes, hotels, and conference rooms more in the last month than anytime I can ever remember. A huge event that has been in the works for months had finally come to pass. It was an incredible success and a personal and professional victory.
My joy was made complete during that signature event because, in the midst of all the highs and lows, my dearest was at my side. When the event was over, we had much-needed downtime scheduled.
It was a blissful time of sharing and growing together with snuggles and giggles about our shared dreams until exhaustion finally got the best of me. We collapsed into the fluffy king-size bed and he rubbed my back until the mental race track running in my mind gave up and let me sleep.
The Notice
A little after midnight, I awoke a little restless. I got up to get a sip of water and my phone detecting my motion lit up. As I turned it over so its light would not wake my dearest from his much-deserved slumber, my sister’s email popped up in the notifications.
It was odd. She never emails me.
Because of the event I had been running, I had not been on my personal account for a few days. She had done some work to help with the event, so I assumed that she was asking for pictures to post on her company webpage. I opened the message to forward it to my business account and my heart stopped.
The phone slipped from my hands and fell to the bed as I read the opening line: “Mother is being released.”
The Path to Here
My sister and I have struggled for almost forty years with my mother and her untreated mental illness. It has always been difficult for us to determine how much of the abuse we endured in childhood came from her untreated illness or just the dark mean places that exist inside of her. Sometimes it seems like the source should make a difference in my response, but I am learning that there is no valid source — no acceptable cause — for the abuse my sister and I endured.
Almost four months ago, I sat on the edge of this very same hotel bed weeping. Trying to separate the compassion for this woman’s suffering and the exhaustion of fighting for my own health after years of debilitating mental, emotional, and physical abuse at her hands finally had a resolution.
A horrific accident revealed the damage she was doing to her body. In the weeks that followed, we navigated once again the doctors, lawyers, and court system until my mother was declared incompetent to care for herself. Neither my sister nor I would take custody of her as we had done so many times before on this journey, so she became a ward of the state and was assigned a legal guardian.
It was a gut-wrenching series of events, but when it was all done, there was a freedom I had never experienced. For the first time in my life, I did not go to bed wondering if my mother was safe or if she had eaten that day.
I did not worry that I would be awakened by a sheriff once again with awful news and a hurried trip to the hospital. I did not need to balance my own needs to protect myself from a woman who abused me in the most unimaginable ways with the duty of care everyone seems to assign the eldest daughter of a mentally ill mother.
Though the decision to leave her in the custody of the state was hard, it was clear to me and to my sister that it was in everyone’s best interest.
The doctor who evaluated her believed that she would remain in assisted living with the care that she needed for the remainder of her life. The emergency room doctors and nurses that had worked with her at the initial admission after the horrific accident said she was the worse case that any of them had seen in their decades-long careers.
This process left my sister and me feeling like we had the support and understanding of medical professionals for the first time in this long, painful journey.
And just like — in a simple email that was forwarded from her guardian to my sister and then from my sister to me, it was all over.
The nightmare begins again.
The Reckoning
I turned off my phone as I slipped back into our bed. My body was shaking as I held in the waves of sobs that wanted to pour from me like a tsunami.
Questions swirled in my mind.
How did this happen? How stupid is the person that fell for her manipulation? Did they even read her case file? Where does this leave everything now?
My sense of safety evaporated leaving me in an ocean of relentless tears and relentless worry. I fought unsuccessfully to keep control and try to get back to sleep.
After a while, my stirring and likely my sobbing woke my dearest. My heart braced for the worst. In my experience with other partners in my past, middle-of-the-night wakings with huge emotional stuff is always a disaster.
It adds to the “I am needy” narrative ingrained in me from childhood that I despise. It also makes me feel like a foolish child that is being patted on the head over a nightmare that no one believes is worth all the upset.
I expected to be dismissed and seen as a bother. It is all I have ever known in these moments. I learned long ago that these are dark places that I must face and journey through alone. It has always felt like I was a burden to those around me when I asked for help carrying these heavy things.
The years of abuse at my mother’s hand taught me that I am not deserving of compassion and support, so I braced for the dismissal these moments have often brought.
Only that’s not what happened.
Through my tears, I apologized to my dearest and tried to hide my trembling body by keeping some space between us. He asked what was happening.
I told him about the email and tried to hold the tears and sniffles in. I felt dumb for reading the message in the middle of the night and figured that fact alone made this upset and waking inexcusable.
But rather than fussing with me about disrupting his sleep or asking if this could wait until a decent time in the morning, he pulled me close in his arms and held me as I wept. He stayed fully present with me. For the first time in my whole life, I was not alone in this mess.
He didn’t try to rush me back to sleep or pretend he was listening through his snores. He asked questions that helped me process what was happening. He helped me return to some important truths.
He returned me to safety. He held space for me to create a plan of how I could move forward. He spoke truth to me. He was kind to me. He was love to me in those hard moments.
A little before 5 am, my storm had finally settled. He stayed with me through every moment. No one has been my comfort in the hundreds of these scenarios I have faced before.
As my body tucked into the curve of his arms, he took a long deep breath and my body joined him. After a couple of deep soothing breaths, I relaxed into his warmth and drifted into a sound dreamless sleep with the wonder of what it feels like to truly be loved.
Moving Forward
In our conversation, he helped me to see that her release did not require me to change anything in my world. The freedom that I have found in the last few months remains mine to claim.
My sister and I did what we needed to do for the woman who gave birth to us. Through her manipulation, she has undone the safety net and protections that we worked so hard to get for her.
We know that she is not actually healthier than when she went to the hospital. We know she looks better because she has been fed, has been sleeping, and has been practicing basic self-care because the assisted living facility has professionals that make sure that happens.
We also know that it will be a matter of a few weeks of her living on her own before all that goes away completely as she dives back into the delusions and paranoia of her mental illness. Then the phone calls and desperation begins.
I am no longer tied to the opinions of others and the fallacy that all mothers are good and noble.
She is an abuser — she is my abuser.
There is nothing left for me to give. Nothing left to advocate for. Nothing left to do, but pray for the souls of those who fell for her manipulation and lies.
That is not my problem now. I don’t have to pick that burden back up. The system is severely broken. My mother is irreparably broken.
However, I am not broken any longer. My path to healing has been hard fought. I do not have to subject myself to her abuse for another moment of my life. She has destroyed me and my heart for the last time.
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