(This is going to be very long. I have a lot to get out.)
My mother has severe mental issues from her horribly traumatizing childhood. She’s told me most of what happened to her, and just from that no one could blame her for having issues. She has been bipolar her whole life, but never got treatment for it until she was old enough to know she needed it. Her family never treated it. On top of that, her schizophrenia was diagnosed when she was 22, but I believe it was triggered before then by something that happened to her. When she was diagnosed she was with a man who cared enough about her to make her get the diagnosis in the first place, and subsequently start the meds. However, that led to another dive into drug addiction. She had been an addict in her teens, came out of it for a while when she had me at 15 and my brother and sister by the time she was 19, then when she got on the meds for her mental issues it started up again. At this time I was about 10 or 11 when it started. We went from being able to live comfortably to noticeably having financial issues, me being the oldest at 10 and my two younger siblings noticed the decline but we didnt really pay attention to why. We were focused on school and kid stuff. Subtly, other things were shifting too. My mom quit her very good corporate job, and started to stay home more. You’d think this meant more time for us, right?
She spent most of it in her room. Door locked. We got in trouble if we knocked and didnt have a good reason. Then my stepdad would get home, say hi, go straight to the bedroom, and we wouldn’t see either of them until briefly in the morning. At 10, I was cooking dinner for my siblings, making sure we all did chores and homework, as well as getting them up in the morning for school. I didnt really think it was weird at the time, it was just how life was, ya know? Looking back on it now though I see how strange it really was. It wasnt like this every single day, some days they would be downstairs talking to us and stuff. But most days were us pretty much on our own. They had swinger friends over to the house multiple times and they’d swap partners when they thought we were asleep. My mom would get all dressed up randomly and go out, come back looking not quite as nice and suddenly one of our bills was paid. I dont think my siblings caught it, but I did. She tried to leave after we were asleep but a couple times I would catch her leaving and my stepdad telling her bye. I dont know of he put her up to it or of it was her idea but he definitely knew and was on board at the very least.
This went on for a couple years, when my mom decided she wasnt happy anymore. Her sugar daddy (yes, I said it and my siblings and I knew that’s what it was at the time as well. Crazy right?) Put my siblings and I up in a hotel with her for a weekend to have a “family meeting.” She made us take a vote about whether she should get divorced or not. At this point I was maybe 15, my brother and sister were around 13 and 12. We just wanted our mom to be happy, we weren’t old enough to realize the financial crisis we would be putting ourselves in; no, correction, that SHE would be putting us in, if she divorced.
As you can probably guess, the vote was unanimous that she get divorced. After that, obviously they sold our house because she couldn’t afford to keep up the expenses and my stepdad moved back to his hometown because he had nothing anymore otherwise. From there my mom moved my 2 siblings, her, and myself into a 2 bedroom apartment. It was pretty cramped. My sister and I shared a room and my brother was post up on the couch. The three of us used to talk about it all the time, but the place was pretty expensive as it was down the street from my high school. We didnt know how she was affording it. Then, I dont remember how we found out, but one of us found out she was a stripper in a biker club. She started bringing home this scary looking biker guy named Diablo. How cliche is that? We could tell by her behavior she was back on drugs and it was worse stuff than the pills she was on with her ex husband. A couple months go by, and she has to tell us to start watching our backs and teaching us techniques to make sure no one is following us and what to do if they are. Apparently she had been “bought” by the biker gang and now she wanted out. I dont know how she got out of it, but the next thing I can remember is her getting arrested for a DUI. Cops came to the house, they should have taken my siblings and I somewhere because we were all under age. But after talking to me they determined, and I quote, “This 17 year old is more responsible than the grown woman we just arrested. The kids are fine.” At this point, my mom was hardly home anyway, and when she was home she was shut in her room. Maybe three times a week we would see her. The rest of that time, I was working after school and when I got home made sure my brother and sister did their homework and had eaten something.
She got a new boyfriend a little while later, and we moved to a trailer park. This one was a pill popper as well as a heroin addict. Guess how that went? You got it. Right before my senior year, my mom got arrested again. About a month after that she went back to the PD and turned herself in. My brother went to live with my aunt, my sister lived with one of her friends, and me? I moved out on my own. Illegally emancipated myself. I worked 2 jobs and still managed to graduate my senior year.
That’s the shortest version I can condense this story into, I left out some of the minor verbal and physical abuse that happened while my mom was under the influence. In some ways, she was an amazing mother. She has always been my best friend, to this day still is. I know it wasnt all her fault, it was the drugs she couldn’t get away from. She has been doing so much better since she finished her 2 year prison sentence. She’s without a doubt clean, no more drugs, barely even drinking. Her husband now is amazing, hes a great man and he makes her the best she can be. He makes her take her meds for her psychological problems. She’s been good for a while. But what prompted me to even start thinking about all this was because recently she’s been sliding backwards in a downward spiral. With her condition, it’s not uncommon for her to have “off” days where suddenly she will have an episode. Suddenly she can talk to animals, and she sees Angels, and believes that “god” is trying to use her as a messenger. But these episodes usually only last anywhere from hours to a couple days and she is back to normal. Recently, she’s been delusional for going on 2 weeks now. Every time I talk to her she tells me how she has been preaching to cows, taking to the crickets and relaying the stories they tell her, telling me prophecies told to her by angels….I love my mother so much, but sometimes it’s just too much to handle. It makes me shut down and just get kind of sad because there’s no way I can help her.
Submissive Angel 