Photo by Jordan McDonald on Unsplash
When I was little, I thought my mother was eccentric – with the religion, the therapy, and the ongoing list of perceived physical ailments. She wasn’t exactly like the other moms. How would I know any different? Then she had her first breakdown (in my lifetime). I was 12 years old.
Spiraling
She had stopped taking her medication months before, and her ability to reason had gradually deteriorated. There were delusions and hallucinations, God talking to her. It was scary. This would be the first of several episodes throughout my youth in which my mother would go off her meds and slowly fall apart.
As an adult in my 40’s, there are still things I don’t know about schizophrenia. You can imagine the struggle I had trying to wrap my brain around it as a child. There was no internet in the early ’90s. All my information came from family, and what I remember best is my grandmother saying: “Tell no one.”
So, I didn’t. In fact, I kept everything inside. There was an entire year in school when I didn’t talk to anyone for fear of what might leak out of me. The other kids called me “mute” and “disturbed”. I was either ignored or bullied. I cried every day. In retrospect, I think I recognize all of this as social anxiety, and certainly depression.
A House Divided
Two years after that first breakdown, Mom had another episode precipitated again by lack of medication and this time was briefly hospitalized. The paranoid aspect of her condition made it impossible for her to trust me, and, blaming me for her hospitalization, I became a target for her anger. My father was the other, longtime target. Most of the time she believed my father and I were in league against her. To his credit, my father would continue to support my mother for years after they stopped getting along (they did eventually divorce, but it was really, I think, at my mother’s request). Someone else might have left right away. However, all of us living under the same roof made for an extremely stressful situation. The house was filled with either fighting or silence; there was no calm.
As for me, I went about my daily life as well as I could manage. School did get a little better; I befriended other outcasts with similar interests, I got a part-time job. I continued to work hard in dance classes and joined the drama club, which helped me overcome some of my social anxiety. With college on the horizon, I threw myself into my schoolwork and my grades improved. But how was I able to accomplish all of this?
Coping Strategies
Support System
I think the key for me was that I was supported. My father, who remained stable, helped me through the most difficult times in my childhood. I had someone in my life to whom I could go for advice. It was he who urged me to get on the phone and call people (no matter how uncomfortable I was), get out of the house, get involved in other things besides what was going on at home. I also had a good therapist who encouraged me to engage outward. She told me not to worry about things I couldn’t control, the advice I still follow as a reasonably well-adjusted adult. It took time and practice, but I ended up being able to do all the things they suggested and more.
Medication
At times I took Zoloft for depression and Buspar for anxiety. Did they help me? I think they did. I remember joining in conversation with the other girls at dance class being a lot easier while I was on the Buspar. And Zoloft seemed to take the edge off winter and a particularly painful breakup during my junior year of high school.
Walking
It sounds unimportant, but I think walking was my version of wellness, of mindfulness. I walked all over the beautiful town where I grew up. You could see the ocean from the top of my hill. It was healing for me to walk the beach. When I’m asked in meditation to call up my “happy place,” it is always the ocean.
Journaling
Finally, I journaled. This was something I had always done, as a writer. I still have old notebooks from when I was a little girl, chronicling my eighth birthday to my first college hangover. Sometimes I even journaled at the beach. This too proved therapeutic for me in times of difficulty.
What I’ve Learned
We’re told what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, and it must be true. While my early experiences have impacted me in ways that will stay with me forever, I think I have come out of them a stronger, better person. I’m a grown woman now, with a husband and two young children of my own. I consider myself successful. And I do still take medication for anxiety and depression, as well as Adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
Because of my mother’s struggles with medication, I know I have to take mine to be the best wife, mother, and professional I can be. Would I prefer not to have to take them? Of course! For the simple reason that they are an inconvenience to keep track of, order and reorder and remember to take. But I know I have to, to access the best version of myself. Schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, ADHD, and innumerable other illnesses and disabilities are medical conditions that are treatable with medication; there’s no shame in it. I wish my mother had been able to come to terms with that as I have.
