Eggshells

     Despite my years of experience with mental illness, no one could have prepared me for what to do when my mother started having psychotic episodes and refused to get help for it. But it's not like this is necessarily unfamiliar to me. 

      I grew up living with a grandmother who went from very sweet and pious to very paranoid and mentally ill. And at the time, I didn't know what was going on, because I was a child who's main focus was cartoons and slim jims. The woman who I watched tv with and who picked me up from school was suddenly constantly calling the cops on my neighbors, or sometimes would get carried out in a stretcher because she thought she was dying; she wished she was dying. I remember going to South Oaks with my mother and great aunt and waiting outside, not going in. I don't know if they didn't let me or I didn't want to. I learned early on to follow the uncomfortable pit in my stomach and not do things if they exacerbated the feeling. They brought me to the window and told me to wave at her, and I felt the same feeling of sadness, confusion and helplessness that I feel now. 

      I was used to the screaming and the fighting, like 2 people who needed to get divorced but couldn't, because they were mother and daughter. They were stuck here. And I don't want to be in that situation. I don't want to be stuck here dealing with this. And I feel a ton of guilt about it. It's one of those moments where all of my shortcomings and failures come to the surface. If I just had a better job and more money, I could move out and get distance from this situation. Not be grasping for places to stay, contemplating staying at my dad's, even though I know that would hurt her the most. 

     I'm tired of walking around on eggshells, I'm tired of being so used to mania. I'm tired of feeling like a hostage in my house, who just has to listen to my mother's ramblings and remain neutral, just smile and pay attention, so she doesn't go off on me and tell me something damaging that will swirl obsessively in my head. Like my life isn't that bad compared to what hers was, or ill-fated ways to fix my depression like going to church or drinking 8 glasses of water or losing weight or joining a gym. Anything to not think about fixing herself and focus on making me more tolerable to be around. I'm tired of her acting superior. I'm tired of the weird moments of affection when I don't want it, the kiss on the cheek that repulses me and makes me feel like I'm just being manipulated by someone who is supposed to love me and care about me but is irreparably damaging me. 

     And it all feels so ironic, because all I've been trying to do for over a decade is put out the fire that is my depression, tame the beast of my anxiety with meds and drugs and therapy and yoga and wellness and whatever the fuck else I thought would do something. And I feel so lost and still wanting to die all the time. I can't remember the last day I didn't cry like something very bad was happening to me. Like I was being pulled under and there was no way to stop it, no pill to swallow, no immediate relief to be had; just having to sit with the suffering and see if that would be healing in itself. And I don't feel healed. I feel like I'm running in circles, like it's just a lost cause and I shouldn't have existed in the first place. I really regret it. It's a decision I didn't make but I regret it. My soul floating around in eternity would not have signed off on it 30 years ago if it knew this is what it would be like.