Insanity and me.

Genetically I might be doomed. So many mental illnesses run in my biological family that it's a pretty good chance that a degree of the problems I have in life are naturally occurring. My biological mother was a diagnosed schizophrenic, that's the reason she had to be hospitalized so much. In an incident of coincidence she was frequently admitted to the same hospital that my eventual adoptive mother worked at. I never saw any of her 'craziness' that I can remember, in fact most of the memories I have of her back then are most likely idealized over the years that I grew up without her. They're of her singing "My Little Sunshine" to me while we looked at the moon after my very first trip to the ER, of her reading the 'Little House on the Prairie' series to my sisters and I. She used to make bologna sandwiches with lettuce, tomato and cheese on them. I thought they were fancy because they were sandwiches with 'everything'. There was the time that our car broke down and she joked that we should hitch hike so I stuck my thumb out. I remember her intensity when she told me to stop it as a car pulled over to pick us up, which she sheepishly waved on. I remember how hard it was for her to break me of sleeping in her bed, the very first night I slept the whole night on my spot on the floor in between my sisters' beds they cheered for me. We had a sitter that once burned mac and cheese to the bottom of the pan, the same sitter I got fired for narcing on for letting my preteen sisters smoke. We used to run the neighborhood while she played softball, exploring creeks and catching crawdads that we fed hotdogs to. I remember the boy they pulled out of the lake by my grandparent's house, crying and shaking and the rusty bike they pulled out of the lake that he had injured himself on. I remember the prayer circles we attended to pray for the woman in our church that was hit by a car. In fact I believe I remember us seeing the accident but I really can't  swear by that.

Whenever she was admitted to the hospital it seemed so sudden, that might just be because I thought her behaviors were normal, I don't know. I would get dropped off at Head Start by her in the morning and in the afternoon a social worker in a state issued car would pick me up, say my mom was sick again and it would be off to an unknown home full of strangers. It was scary every time. We wouldn't know the rules, nothing there belonged to us and we never knew how long we would be there. We had to band together the best that we could, my sisters and I. The most consistent caretaker I had in those first few years was my sister Heather. She was groomed for the role of caretaker, I think. I can't imagine how hard it was for her being the oldest, being just as afraid as I was but feeling that she had to protect me in these homes even though she couldn't in ours. She used to call me Honeybun and when she said that I knew that somebody loved me infinitely and everything was ok. She didn't have a person like that and I can't imagine what that was like. When we met up as adults I still had that hero worship for her which was unfair to her. As we got to know each other as adults I found that she was a blond haired, blue eyed version of me. To this day even though we don't talk much I feel like I have a twin that knows that I'm a good person.

The way that it usually happened was that when my mother got out of the hospital she would get us back, one at a time, just to make sure that she was up to par. I was always the first to go back, reason being that I was the youngest. What I remember the clearest about those times alone with her were marked with days in front of the t.v. watching the black and white Mickey Mouse Club shows and eating frozen cool whip, or one time stepping on a fly and watching little white things crawl out of the body. It seemed like these times didn't last long. The only things that I remember of my father was getting spankings and not knowing why, him building a swingset in the backyard, swearing with his ass crack hanging out and the sexual abuse. He was an Alhambra Water delivery man and for years I couldn't see an Alhambra truck without getting a bad feeling in my gut.

I have good memories of a church in the country, visits with my grandparents and cousins, visiting Fuller Park during an art fair to see my aunt's booth. I remember crying and being made to stand in the corner at Sunday school, catching salty tears with my tongue as they rolled down my face because being separated from my mom was the most unbearable feeling in the world. What the attendants there probably didn't know was that I cried because I had learned that when my mother left me it was never guaranteed that she would pick me back up. When she left me somewhere it felt like I would never see her again because that might be so.

My family is ridden with bipolar disorder, depression, manic depression and schizophrenia.
After this last year I'm not sure where I stand in all of this. I tell people that I'm crazy in a dismissive way because then it makes it okay to me if they think that I am. It's like a preemptive strike more than anything. It's okay- I'm just crazy! You want to judge me? Well it's okay because I do that too. It's a way of tricking myself into thinking that people aren't REALLY judging me, you see---because I'm crazy. But the thing I'm realizing now as the anti-depressants do their job and I'm feeling more human is that I'm terrified that I AM crazy. I'm in my thirties now and a lot of disorders don't manifest until later in life. Around the age I am now. Like schizophrenia. Schizophrenia can be hidden and dormant until this age. Sometimes it pops up as early as childhood but a lot of people don't experience it until they're older and under a great deal of stress. I am terrified of what my mind might potentially do to the lives of my children and I. I think that I might just be depressed but I'm never really sure. Trying to explain myself to 'normal' people is hard because I'm never really sure what reflex is motivating me. It could be fear, it could be anger and it could be insanity. I have no idea.

I'm having a hard time today. It's really hitting home that the acting out I've done this year has caused damage. I've lost friends, some of which I don't mind losing because they never really cared about me beyond a person to shoot the breeze with and I can cope with that. What is killing me today is losing friends that I gave my heart to, people I really cared about and felt a certain amount of security in. It's hard to look at someone I felt like I knew really well and see in their face that I am garbage. There is this tiny child inside of me screaming "THAT WASN'T ME!! I HAVEN'T BEEN MYSELF! I THOUGHT YOU KNEW THAT! PLEASE DON'T LEAVE ME!!". It's that kind of sad that makes my throat ache as I fight back tears and choke back snot. The last week I've had people I've loved turn their backs to me so they didn't have to see my face, afraid of what I might say if I approached them. Or other friends that I've been there for, even when they never knew I was, disregard me with a look of disgust. And that little kid inside of me is shouting "Please don't LEAVE ME!!!! Can't you see that I've been crazy! I wasn't myself!". But I can't say anything because how can I explain all of this in one conversation? The demeanor I've been putting off isn't me, I've just been falling apart and falling apart badly. I don't know myself right now. So much rage was coming out of me because it was easier than dealing with my pain. I didn't want to feel sorry for myself so I've been angry, because anger is empowering, made me feel stronger than I feel when I just submit to the pain. And now what I'm feeling is pain. A lot of pain.

I can't control the tears, can't control the feeling of failure I feel inside. I know realistically that this is healing, because I'm finally feeling instead of fighting. But it sucks.