A Reflection of God; Learning How to Love

Needless to say, I've been musing a lot about my last years in my hometown in the last couple days. Remember my post from Friday night, wherein I was lamenting that I'd never seen a reflection of God through marriage?

My parents divorced when I was eight, and I still remember pulling the covers over my head while Mom and Dad argued in the kitchen on the other side of the house. I don't have a lot of memories of their marriage. My brother and I both had the burden of explaining to our friends the definition of "divorce" because it seemed our parents were the first to experience the event. And in the process, I still remember being a pawn.

Where is the reflection of God in that?

Fast forward several years, and to a different state. I met my best friend at the youth group our parish was trying to form. They were using music and fun, and when we were done rehearsing, she and I sat on the steps in front of the church, giggling as though we'd already been friends forever. It was a cloudy winter Sunday afternoon and she invited me to go ice skating with her. So we walked to my house, only a block away from the church, so she could meet my Mom and we could get permission for me to go. My new friend called her mother from there to come pick us up. I grabbed my inherited antique figure skates and a few minutes later, we were climbing into their van.

My friend lived a block from an ice rink, so it wasn't long before we were doing pirouettes and awkward spins, and making up olympic-style routines. Before long we tired and headed back to her house. En route, I slipped on the ice while crossing a busy road, somehow managing to get up and out of the wayof an oncoming pickup in the nick of time, nursing a bruised hip while I tried to catch up with my friend. (Who was doubled-over laughing as she hurried ahead, by the way!)  It was an afternoon of non-stop laughter.

As soon as we entered their warm house, I learned that Sundays were "pizza night", and her Dad was making pizza as usual. My Mom gave me permission to stay for dinner, which was delicious. Her family made me feel very much at home, and I was told that the only proper response to the chef was to say, "It was the best pizza I ever ate!"

This I dutifully accomplished. And this sealed the deal; forever after, I would be welcome in their home. Because my friend's Dad said so.

I don't think he realized what he was getting himself into.

I've written of this before, but there's more to the story, as one could guess. It was not long after, maybe a month or more, that I spent a Saturday night there. Our friendship had deepened, the way teenage friendships do, and it was the first time I was to stay over at her house.

It was a last-minute decision, as my friend and I had gone to Mass that evening and decided at that time that we didn't want to separate that night. Our fun should continue! When I got home, though, I knew something was wrong...Mom had big eyes and had apparently ordered a pizza. But she gave permission for me to go to my friend's home. And to this day, I feel guilty because she seemed stricken by the fact that I was leaving her to spend time with my friend.

My friend's Mom again picked us up at my house and drove us home. That night I slept on the floor in my friend's room. Sometime around six or six-thirty A.M., there was a pounding on the front door. My friend's dad got up to answer it, and my friend poked her head out, curious. She came back to get me...my Mom was there.

My friend's dad told me that apparently someone was looking for me, according to my Mom, and that I should go talk to her. We went into the basement (a finished basement where we could have privacy), and I saw that Mom's eyes were even bigger than they had been the night before.

With a note of desperation, she explained very earnestly to me that the night prior, the pizza she'd ordered had been delivered in an ambulance. The person with the pizza had continually looked past her as if looking for someone else, and she "realized" they'd been looking for me. She said further that this was happening because she was a terrible mother and I'd been raped; that's the only reason they would have been there.

What a shock this all was to me! I explained to mom that the pizza had NOT been delivered in an ambulance, although conceivably the driver maybe had a van. Or a truck. And that the driver was not looking for me. And that I had not been raped.

But of course, my Mom, fully in the grips of full-blown paranoia, wanted to check.

Um....no. Not necessary. I figured that I would KNOW if I'd suffered that kind of trauma.

We went back upstairs...I think I declared the conversation over, because I didn't know what else to do. She must have told my friend's Dad, and then her Mom, what was going on before she and I spoke, as they were both waiting in the living room for us. Her parents told my friend and I to go to her room, and in the meantime, they spoke to my Mom, and convinced her to go to the hospital. She argued. They discussed, and in the end, she went.

I was told that morning that I was going to be spending some time at their house, and they'd take me home to get some more clothing and whatever I needed for school. My new "Mom" picked me up every day after school, unless I walked, and that following weekend, we went shopping in the Cities (what we called the Twin Cities), where she bought me my first pair of designer jeans.

Of course, as a trade off, I also had to help with chores around the house. No problem.

For years, I've always wondered how they were able to put up with the two of us...two giggling teenage girls. I was the quieter one, she was the wild one pushing all the boundaries, and we balanced each other out. And in the process, drove her family nuts!

I asked my long-lost "Dad" on Saturday how they had managed to put up with us through such years. He told me, "You two taught us how to love."

He explained that until only recently, he and his wife, my second "Mom" really hadn't understood marriage, really didn't know how to love each other. And he apologized to me for not being able to show me a reflection of God's love in a marriage.

But there's a problem with that....they DID! 

When I was at their home, things not ordered to flying did not fly through the air. While they were more permissive than my own mother with regard to curfews and the like, they DID have boundaries and there were consequences when those boundaries were not followed. And their boundaries were logical. When there was a disagreement in their home, while voices might be raised, they weren't insane, they didn't bring up old history, and they didn't scream until they were hoarse. And they didn't brood.

Until Saturday, strangely, I never considered what they really sacrificed. There they were, going about their lives when suddenly a teenager was dropped into their laps, and boy, did they realize that girl's mother was SICK! And they acted with compassion both towards her and towards that girl, taking her into their own home.

For weeks. Consider that scenario...what would YOU do?

They could have called my relatives, and I think we discussed it. But they lived close to the school, I couldn't drive yet (it would be years) and they felt it was best for me to stay with them, if it was OK with everyone. My Mom had given her approval with that, and we made sure my closest relatives knew where I was.

God bless them, they never tried to ditch me, as much as an inconvenience I must have been to them. They always made me feel welcome in their home, and really became my second family. From that point on, I knew I had somewhere to go, and for the next several years, their home became my refuge. If I showed up on their doorstep, they just handed me a key and told me to remember to lock the door when I left to go to school in the morning.

That's love. That's real.

That saved my life.

He told me that we taught them how to love; I argue that they taught me about sacrificial love while offering me a reflection of God. I didn't see their marriage problems; I saw people who were willing to treat me as their own.

I've often wondered why I'm not more messed up than I am, and now I know the answer: Because at that important time in my life when all was in an upheaval, I still had a family, I had a stable home, and I had two surrogate parents who sacrificed their own preferences on behalf of a teen from a troubled home.  Me.

I can't see anything other than God in that. I can't see anything other than love.

*

"Aunt Nutsy"

I was bloggin' around today and found a couple posts on the subject of Bipolar, so thought I would chime in as I'm somewhat of an expert on the subject myself. After all, my big "welcome to adulthood" incident occurred only a couple weeks after my 18th birthday, in which I became my Mother's guardian after her suicide attempt, and my signature placed her on a 72 hour hold and nearly got her committed.

Terry commented in his post,

Most of the people I’ve known are incredibly talented and highly intelligent. Their suffering seems to have provided them with keen insights into human behavior, and as I always say, they were a hoot to be around when they were going into mania, or, as in the case of one friend, when she over-medicated. (Another trait is that they never share their drugs!) However, sometimes the medication produces side effects that are no fun at all.

He's right; many of those who suffer from this disease are highly intelligent. In the case of my mother, when I was in 5th grade, she went back to school, and although she hated the class (Women's Studies), and thought the professor was hitting on her (she was a militant lesbian - the prof. not Mom), Mom studied her butt off and got a 4.0. She did the same thing when she finally got her LPN license...she excelled academically.

And yes, she probably did have keen insights into human behavior at one time, but now, due to all the drugs she's been taking for so many years, her mind is no longer sharp, and in fact, she almost seems senile at times.

But let's back up a bit so I can give you an idea of what it was like to grow up in a house ruled by Mr. Hyde and Mr. Hyde.

Mom flipped her lid around the time she and my Dad got divorced. It was summer, July, I think, and it was hot and humid and we were looking forward to our last day of swimming lessons that morning. But we didn't get to our lessons, because Mom was pacing up and down the livingroom and into the kitchen, muttering to herself. If it were regular pacing, that would have been one thing, but she had a pace like that of a bridesmaid in a wedding. Right foot forward, feet together, left foot...both feet together. Pause. Repeat. She did this for hours.

Then a neighbor came to get us and take us to her house, and Mom went to the hospital, and a couple days later, an Aunt came to stay with us, and then Grandma. I can't remember how long Mom was hospitalized, but I still remember going to see her in the hospital a couple times.

We moved up to Minnesota a couple years later, and I think by then she'd been hospitalized once or twice more. I think by then our whole huge family realized my brother and I were going to be messed up for life, but that's another story.

So fast forward to Jr. High, when Mom's bipolar really revved into gear. It didn't happen all at once so my brother and I just became accustomed to the fact Mom was nuts, irrational, and no matter what the infraction, there would be much screaming and possibly broken glass to clean up in the kitchen. We actually thought this was normal. And in fact, we were pretty well convinced we must be horrible children because from the time we arrived home from school until we got up in the morning, Mom never ceased screaming. That's how it seemed, anyway.

I can't remember all the details from all the years, but a few things really stand out.

Mom didn't like our next door neighbors, so they became her target for awhile. They were squatters, a family that would move from place to place, would not pay the rent, would be evicted....and go somewhere else. They had done this for years. Mom got the idea that at one time they had lived in our basement (which, by the way, was not a liveable basement, was not finished, and was full of spiders and centipedes. This family usually did MUCH better than that!). Mom would not let go of the idea. She would go down and check the windows and doors, and went so far as to place old pans on the basement door into our kitchen, and glass jars, so that if they came upstairs we'd hear them.

Then Mom's manic psychosis took another step. This was around the time my brother left for college so was home only on weekends and vacations. She decided that the people living in our basement were breaking in every night and drugging and raping us. Seriously. She was absolutely convinced of this horror and saw "evidence" of it everywhere.

I was also preparing a report on drugs for a class, and she used this as "evidence" that I was using drugs myself. Around this time she forced me to go to counseling with her, which was fine. I was just as close-lipped yet joyful there as could be. If she wasn't going to show her true evil, I certainly wasn't going to be anything other than a sweet teenager.

Until, of course, she pulled my diary out of her purse. Yup. My diary. Where I wrote my deepest and darkest thoughts, where I vented and explored ideas I had no intention of carrying out. She also read of my suicidal thoughts.

The psychologist told my Mom in no uncertain terms that to take my diary was a HUGE breech of her parental "rights" especially since she had not broached the idea with him before doing it, and only her manic psychosis made her think I was using drugs. She tried to justify her actions by stating that I knew so much about drugs I must be using them; the psychologist disagreed, coming completely to my defense here. He did ask me about my suicidal thoughts, which I denied as being serious, and given that Mom was sitting right there, I certainly was NOT going to tell the truth. And in fact, for the rest of the session, the only time I spoke was to deny what I had written as being anything serious, and the psychlogist let it go. He also realized that with such a breech of trust in a household already in an uproar, well, I wasn't going to speak frankly.

He did ask me to take a personality test, and I came out as perfectly normal. And with every question with regard to suicide....I denied it. Consistently. (See? These tests CAN be manipulated when you know what they are looking for.)

Mom had other events of paranoia as her disease escalated. She had gone off her meds, doing the typical thing; she assumed everyone was poisioning her. Oh, and she was being raped everywhere she went, especially at the hospital. But she only "remembered" the alleged rapes when questioned about taking her medication and the possiblity that hospitalization was needed to get her back on track. She refused to go. And so, predictably, got worse.

One Saturday after evening Mass, I went to spend the night at my best friend's house. Mom was disapponted, she had ordered a pizza and wanted to "hang out" with me. Of course, I wanted nothing more than to get away from her unpredictability. Had I been home, I would have been locked in my room. She did let me go to my friend's house. Well, at 6:30 the next morning, Mom was pounding on their door. My friend came to get me and I went upstairs to chat with Mom in my friend's room while the family gave us some privacy. Mom explained that, the night before, the pizza she had ordered was delivered by an ambulance and they were looking for me. And then she wanted to check me for evidence of rape and wanted me to disrobe.

Um, no, Mom. That didn't happen. Ever.

I was horribly embarassed...I had just met my friend's parents and was pretty certain that they would never let me near their daughter again. But instead, her Dad drove Mom to the hospital and I lived with them for two weeks. I think I went to stay with my Aunt and Uncle for another two weeks.

And, of course, that's when I realized how weird my home life was. Because, at my best friends' house, and at my relative's house, whenver there was a disagreement, they worked it out. Sure, voices were raised at times, but rationality prevailed and not a single one of their glasses, not even the crystal, shattered. Things didn't fly through the air.

The peace in those homes completely unsettled me. I didn't know what to do in the face of rationality and normal behavior. It was completely alien to me.

Another thing Mom did...I'm not sure when this happened, exactly, but I remember my brother lived at home and it was summer. Mom became convinced that someone was stealing the car at night and bringing it back. Every night. She, of course, first blamed my brother and I, and then when we pointed out that we were home when this allegedly happened, she blamed the ever-guilty neighbors.

She took us out to the car to point out the mud on the tires. My brother and I directed her to the recent rains, the muddy driveway, and the fact that the mud on the top of the tires was dry, indicating that NO ONE HAD DRIVEN THE CAR OVERNIGHT.

Mom called the police anyway to report the theft. My brother and I went and hid in the house, wanting nothing to do with the person we began to call "Aunt Nutsy."

Things escalated when my brother went to collge, and immediately before. Mom loved to scream at him, blame him for everything, and even throw things at him. But after he went to college, she turned her anger to me. I was the devil incarnate, as far as she was concerned.

During my Senior year of high school, I left home twice, and went to live with my best friend. Her family, having actually made me a semi-adopted daughter, accepted my presence in their house without question. I went to school, I went to work, and thank God they were there for me. I was prepared to live in a box, though...anything to get away from Mom.

When I graduated, my Mom's sisters did their best to defend me from her anger and her irrational limits. The closer I got to graduating, the earlier she wanted me home at night. On the night of my graduation, she didn't want me to go to Northfield to visit my boyfriend, who had a wonderful family. She wanted me home by 8. At the time I was leaving, it was 6 pm. My aunt intervened, and told me, "Don't worry, I'll handle this. Be home by 10. That's the city curfew, right?"

I turned 18 a couple weeks later, and a couple weeks after that, it all came to a head.

My brother was home from school for the summer, and for some reason, Mom was going off on him all night. She was in a complete rage, screaming at him, throwing things at him, and finally he crept into my room and laid down on the floor, just trying to keep out of her sight. She was up all night.

I had to be at work at 5:15 to open the pool because I had the 5:30 am lap swim, and really needed to sleep. Given all the noise and screaming from the kitchen, things breaking and the like, I didn't get a lost of sleep. A neighbor from upstairs came down to talk to Mom, and literally sat with her all night long, just talking.

So when it was time for me to leave, it was the neighbor who gave me permission to take Mom's car. I already had permission, but given Mom's state, I wasn't sure what to do. None of us wanted her to have access to her car.

So I took the car and left for work. Mom didn't acknowledge me, thank God.

I was back home at 8 or so, and as I entered the communal foyer, I stopped, shocked. It was full of our belongings. I opened the door to our apartment, and junk was nearly waist high. Books were thrown off of shelves. Papers were everywhere. Keepsakes were broken.

As I entered, I could see that Mom was sleeping. The dog was nowhere to be found.

Immediately, I turned and fled the house, returning to work to use the phone. Our phone had been ripped off the wall. Somehow I got ahold of my brother, and he explained he'd grabbed the dog and took her to a relative's home for the day. When he left, the neighbor was still there.

I called my best friend...she was leaving for work, but her Mom was home. I headed there immediately praying someone would still be there when I arrived. I was speeding, even hoping to be pulled over so that someone else could take control of this mess.

When I got there, my friend's Mom had to leave so she gave me a key and told me I could stay as long as I liked, but I should probably take Mom's car back. I refused; she did NOT need her car, not in that state of mind.

Not knowing what to do, I called the psychologist my Mom used to see. I wasn't aware she wasn't seeing him anymore, but he was aware of the doctor she was seeing, and, after hearing of her behavior, he said he could help. He told me what time to be there, and we'd have to get a 72 hour hold if Mom didn't go willingly to the hospital.

So I swung by his office at the appointed time, and we took his car first to Social Services for the hold forms, then went to the police station where we met with the on-duty Captain. I'd spoken to this captain on the phone when arranging ride-alongs; I was known to this department and many of the cops there for that reason, but I'd never met this Captain before. He explained the form to me and what they would do...but hopefully Mom would go peacefully. He was very sympathetic, and I was terribly embarassed at the pus of my home life being exposed to so many people I respected.

We went to our house, where a squad and an ambulance had arrived. The front door was impassable so I told them how to get to the back door. I walked up with the doctor to try to talk Mom into going to the hospital; she immediately began screaming at me, so I melted into the background, out of sight. Our neighbor was still home, so drove me to the ER as Mom did decide to go peacefully.

As usual, when confronted by authority, she pretended nothing was wrong and explained she was "spring cleaning" by throwing the sewing machine into the back yard and destroying everything we owned. They didn't buy it.

In the ER, I went into the examining room as directed, and immediately Mom began accusing me, told me I was the one who should be there, I was the sick one, I was crazy, etc. I turned around and left. And so they brought the hold order out to me and I signed where directed, on the line labeled "legal Guardian".

My first act as an adult.

Mom did actually agree to be hospitalized, and went to a hospital to which she had not previously been sent. And we actually had to have them take away her phone privileges because she made threatening calls to me. My brother would wake me up in the morning, early hours, because "The devil is on the phone" or "Aunt Nutsy is calling", and Mom would sit there, speaking low so as not to be heard, "You're the one who's crazy. You need to be locked up. You can't get away with this. This is all your fault. There's nothing wrong with me...you're crazy, not me."

I would actually hang up on her. Then my brother and I would set about cleaning the house...it took nearly two weeks, and he did most of the work.

Mom was hospitalized for three months, and then spent another six months in a half way house. We lost our apartment, so there I was, my first year in college...homeless. I lived in the dorms, when when it was timem to go "home" for Thanksgiving and Christmas, I had nowhere to go, so my friends and relatives took my brother and I in. I changed my driver's license and other documents to my friend's address, knowing it wasn't really home.

Mom is doing well now, but the drugs have take their toll. She doesn't have a quick mind, she doesn't understand a lot of things, and she has a hard time speaking due to a combination of having a dry mouth and likely some neurological side effects, all drug related.

The neighbor who had spent so much time talking to Mom that night worked in a local psych facility, a residential hospital for teens and children. A year later, I actually accepted a position there as well, and did well, perhaps because nothing those kids could do was shocking to me; I'd grown up on the battlefield, but now it was different because I didn't have to live on it anymore. And when I did have to deal with Mom, I used techniques I'd learned on the job. When she went off on me for some small infraction, I treated her like an acting-out teenager and didn't engage in the argument. She, being treated at that point, would realize her irrationality, calm down, apologize, and we'd have a discussion about what infraction had or had not occurred.

Life has never been rosy. For years, Mom would call me for advice, and when I was starting out in life, when I really needed a Mom, I didn't have one. I was too busy being her Mom and giving her advice and taking the role of the wise adult.

I hated it, because I knew it was wrong. I couldn't keep my own life together....how could I give her advice? But yet, if I didn't give her advice, people were going to take advantage of her.

To this day, I do not have a great relationship with my Mom; it's a struggle every time. Yes, I dearly love her, and the woman is a Saint. She really is; she has suffered greatly, and her faith has ALWAYS remained intact. But I can't confide in her because that trust has never been able to be restored. I don't know when her faculties will go. Yes, her disease is under control and she is doing well, but she is not capable of understanding anything but the simplest things, usually.

This disease is horrible, and it affects far more than just the one suffering directly; it disrupts entire families, and can do so for generations.

I am terrified of being a Mother; because this disease robbed me of my mother. Bipolar has so disrupted my own life, it has made me terrified that the effects will be passed down to my own children, if I ever marry.

My brother is not married, nor am I, my brother doesn't want children at all. I suspect he suffers the same fears as I.

I will never have this discussion with Mom, because she already feels enough guilt. She does not need to know about how this has affected me because it was not a behavioral choice. As it is, she spent years apologizing for things she could not control.

Most of those who suffer from bipolar realize that they are not the only victims, but I wonder if they really understand the havoc wreaked on those around them, and if they don't, it's a mercy to them. It is better that they don't know. They suffer enough.