Coping with a Bipolar, Schizophrenic Mother as a Young Woman

A few months ago, I saw my bipolar, schizophrenic mother in Wal-Mart. The details of her face were different, but I knew by the expression that it was her. Her daughter, about ten, was walking beside her as she pushed her cart, looking distant and forlorn. I felt myself regress to that age, becoming so small and meek in her presence. I knew the look on her face, the one that meant I had been bad, that I was in trouble, that everything was terribly wrong. I felt my blood turn to ice as she passed me, fuming, her words cutting my heart like razors. Her face was twisted and contorted in rage, an expression that immobilized me with fear.

"Bitch, she spat out." Where did you have it last? That had ALL my money in it. You bitch. You're so stupid."

I tried to ignore it, but I could feel myself gazing over out of the corner of my eye, awestruck, full of terror. I froze, not knowing what to do, what to say, but wanting so much to act. My son babbled quietly, pulling me back to reality--reminding me that this was not really my mother, that the little girl was not me, and that I was a grown woman with a child of my own. Nevertheless, I still felt like a ten year-old little girl again, staring my raging mother in the face. Paralyzed, I could only listen and watch--trying not to be too obvious. Memories rushed over me of the torment of my childhood.

The little girl was trying to explain. She insisted that she did not lose it, apologizing, pleading in her angelic voice. The mother's reply was uncompassionate. I heard her voice again and was pulled out of my thoughts. I winced each time she spoke, my soul crying out to make it stop. The memories were too much; the pain was too real, though I was not the one being admonished. Again, and again, she attacked.

"You're so stupid."

"You bitch!"

"Bitch. Stupid bitch."

Silence.

And then I heard it. I saw it out of the corner of my eye. The slap. The little girl had been standing there, not speaking, just looking miserable. The woman slapped her across the face. It echoed through the aisles, and I was sure everyone in the store had to have heard it. I felt the stinging in my cheek as the handprint burned into the little girl's face. Her eyes clouded with tears, but she didn't scream. Instead she gazed back defiantly, biting her tongue.

Tears sprang to my eyes, and I longed to intervene. Should I call 911? Should I speak to the mother or the child? What would I say? How would she respond? Would she hit me? Would I be endangering my son? Would I just fuel her fire? Maybe I could search the store and find that wallet, I thought. Would that save this little girl from Hell, if only for one night? Torn, I stood there until they passed--and for a few moments after, as her scathing words continued to reach me across the aisles. At long last, I began pushing my shopping cart, slowly and quietly through the store again.

As I kept shopping, I mulled over the events of my childhood and teenage years. I remembered all of the abuses I endured, how I was called a bitch, a tramp, a whore. She bet me $50 that I'd be pregnant by my fifteenth birthday; she lost the bet, but never paid. I remembered how I began cutting myself to cope with the pain and was reminded of the ugly, hateful scars still adorning my body. All of those therapy sessions came back to me. A sea of sad, lonely moments and feelings of worthlessness swept over me as I dove into the ocean of my memories.

I remembered how my mother was committed to a mental institution while my father was at sea. She had been hearing doorbells ringing every night, and she would wake and set off the alarm to summon the police--waking us all. She set up a video camera to catch the perpetrator--and recorded her own reflection in the window, coming towards the camera to rewind the film. We all knew it was her on the tape, but she couldn't see that. This went on for several weeks before they took her away, and my father had to come home from sea. She even heard the doorbell ringing in the mental institution, but this time she swore it was a relapse from truly hearing the doorbell ringing so often in the weeks prior to that.

That wasn't the only time. Once she needed to switch medications, and they had to hospitalize her again. We went to see her everyday, and she begged us to take her home. She told us they were treating her so cruelly, but we knew it wasn't true. It was one of the nicest, most luxurious mental hospitals around. She was so paranoid. Even then I could recognize it, as a thirteen year-old girl. It was around then that I started realizing just how sick she was. I began to understand, but that didn't make living with it any easier or any less painful. I knew that she had something called "psychotic bipolar disorder with paranoid schizophrenia," but I didn't really understand it. Most people don't. I don't think even the psychaitrists fully get it.

My parents split when I was 14, and when I was 15, I had to go visit my mother in the summer. I dreaded those visits as much as I looked forward to them. I ended up spending that first summer with my grandmother. My mother and I could not get along. It was like she bottled up all of her anger and frustration so that she could take it out on me upon my arrival. She threw a dirty diaper at me and chased me out of her home with one of those large, heavy cordless phones from the 90s--calling me a bitch and a whore. I ran across the street to call my grandmother. I visited my mother several times a week, but most of the time it ended in argument. She would end up insulting me, kicking me out, and trying to do me harm. My brother would, as usual, be treated like a prince.

I had to visit again when I was 16, and this time I spent more of the visit at my mother's house. My stepsisters were visiting, too, hence the reason I was able to survive my mother's company. She took everything out on my oldest stepsister, Shari, who was two years younger than me. I found myself sympathizing with her so much, but feeling grateful that it wasn't me in her shoes anymore. She would make fun of her for no reason, lunge at her for the smallest thing. I couldn't take it for very long. I called my stepsisters' mother to tell her how my mother had been treating them. I began to stand up for Shari, refusing to let my mother do to her as she once did to me. That was when my mother would turn on me as well. Shari and I ended up both going to my grandmother's house several times that summer. Our time there was so much more pleasant.

I didn't go visit her the summer after I turned 17. By then I had graduated high school and was working. Right after I turned 18, I moved out of my father's place and into my own apartment. I supported myself on my own, despite how difficult it was to survive on my meager earnings from Blockbuster. That whole year, my mother and I got along so much better. Occasionally we had an argument on the phone, but as long as I walked on egg shells when talking to her, we could have pleasant conversations. She actually sympathized with me, knowing how little I had to live on. By then my brother was living with her and her new son, and he was the one dealing with her temper and her rage instead of me.

I felt awful for him. For years he had been the baby, her favorite. Now that she had a new son, he experienced what I had to go through for all of those years. She accused him of so many things, from drug use to thievery. He eventually did both, and I think she drove him to it. She called his girlfriends sluts and whores, accused them of having had abortions. Once she threw a large, family-size glass jar of pickles down the stars at him. Had it hit him, it could have hurt him very badly. It was so hard for him to deal with all of this, after having been immune to her disease for so long. He changed as a person after it began, and he hasn't been the same since.

I got married when I was 18 1/2. I was a virgin on our wedding night. My mother knows that I waited, but she doesn't know why. I was too terrified that everything she said would be true if I did anything with a man. I was afraid to have any kind of sex. I didn't want to be a whore. I didn't want her to use it against me. I didn't want her words to ring true. Sometimes, just to hurt me, she'll tell me that I'm a whore even today. When I point out that I waited until I was married to have sex, she says that I must be lying. She accuses me of having sex before marrying my husband, and says she knows that I did. That stings so much given the fact that waiting until marriage is something I am so proud of--and being that I did it, in part, because of her.

At my wedding, my husband showed up late. We had to drive from Alabama to Mississippi to get married because of their laws. Corey forgot his military ID with his social security number on it, and I told him he should turn back for it. My mother began to badmouth him, the man with whom I was so in love, complaining about having to wait. She ended up making me cry--on my wedding day, and not out of joy. Corey's aunt was trying to console me, telling me to breathe. My mother came over and was angry with her for interfering. She said something mean to Corey's aunt, though I don't remember what, and was about ready to hit her--simply for trying to calm me down! I refused to allow her to ruin my wedding, though.

To this day I am still enduring her abuse. When we visit her, she badmouths me to Corey when I am out of the room, and he doesn't know how to respond. She lies to me, telling me that relatives have said horrible things about me--that they never really said. I have to listen to her talk badly about all of my family members, and if I ask her to stop, if I disagree with anything she says, she tells me that I'm a bad daughter. She says that I put up a wall between us--even though she refuses to hear anything I have to say and hangs up on me all the time. She accuses me of being the reason she and I can't get along. She says I have no respect for her or anyone else and that I don't care about her, even when I'm trying to help her. When I bring up the abuse, she denies all of it. Her story is that I was misbehaving and that she always disciplined me properly. Sometimes she admits it, but says I deserved it all. I have to be very careful when talking to her, because she can still explode at any moment. Having a mother with schizophrenia is an emotional roller coaster.

I'm afraid to leave my son alone with her. She calls me to brag about her son and tell me how much better he is than my child. She rarely wants to hear about my son: how he's doing, what new things he's learned. She gets angry with my relatives when they mention him. She is extremely jealous and believes that they all love my child more than hers and do more for him. My grandmother told her about a high chair she had bought to use when I visit with my son, and my mother bit her head off and hung up on her. She has threatened to take him away from me, both jokingly and seriously. I don't know how she feels about him or what she is capable of doing. I don't doubt that she would do him harm to get at me. I lie and tell her that, because I think her house is haunted, I cannot spend the night there or leave Corbin with her. The truth is that I'm afraid she might hurt my child, even kill him--and that I don't want him being poisoned by her venom without me there to counteract it.

I know now that everything she does to me is wrong and that it isn't my fault. I was so angry with her for so long, and even now, I don't like her as a person. Sometimes, I feel so sure that all of this is because she is sick--everything. Sometimes, I don't know, and I feel like I don't understand at all and never will. I tell myself that she is in denial and doesn't remember it as I do. Part of her illness is seeing herself as the victim--even being uncooperative with treatment, lying, omitting details. I want her to still be held responsible for her actions, but I don't know how responsible she is. She uses her illness as an excuse to do harm at times. You never can tell when she is being genuine or not. She imagines things and makes her own reality. That's all part of being bipolar and schizophrenic. It took me a long time to understand that.

It can be so hard to cope with a loved one who has bipolar disorder, especially when they take it out on you. Bipolar people are known to be most hateful to the people they love the most, but that's no comfort to a ten year-old with a bruised heart. Many people find it hard to accept having a bipolar loved one. They notice that they can never admit the harm they've done, and they are angry when they don't admit that something is wrong with them or cooperate with treatment. Denial is part of bipolar disorder for many people, especially when the person has schizophrenia as well. They are capable of creating entire alternate worlds for themselves to live in. Anyone with an bipolar, schizophrenic parent needs to understand that their erratic behavior is all related to the illness. Some people may use it as an excuse to avoid responsibility--and feel they can do whatever they want because of it. That, too, is part of the disease. These people are very sick, and they aren't right and don't think as a normal person does.

I could tell that woman in Wal-Mart had the same disease, because of the tone of her voice and the look on her face. The way she spat out the words and the rageful expression reminded me so much of my own mother. As I listened to her fading voice, growing farther and farther away, I remained still. I did nothing, afraid I would just make things worse for that little girl--or that she would turn on me and my son. I feared so much that an even more terrible punishment was waiting for her at home. I wished I could stop it--but there is no stopping bipolar disorder, especially when someone is manic.

When we got to the check-out, I was still in a daze. I hugged my son as we stood in line--and nearly forgot my bags because I was so distracted. I nearly cried several times before arriving home. My husband called, and as I spilled out the story, I burst into tears--letting it all out. I watched my son play, thinking how adorable he is, how much I love him, how I would die for him. I thought about how that little girl was once an innocent baby, just like him, and began to weep again. I was so sad that any child would have to endure such hurtful words, such wrath like I did--from their own mother. I don't know if it stings me more as a parent or as an abused child. How could anyone have a child and not love them as I love my own?

On my way out of the store, I hoped I would see them again. I wanted another chance to act. I didn't get it. I should have called someone or said something to the mother. What kind of person, especially a mother, does noting in a situation like that? The words that speak most to me are quotes about motherhood, our duties, how we should fight fiercely for all children. I've always believed that a mother should protect all children. I just stood there in silence. I abandoned her, and in a sense, I abandoned myself as well. So what if there was a confrontation? So what if she'd hit me? At least it wouldn't have been that child. And what example was I setting for my son by not standing up for someone in need, for not being strong or courageous enough to speak, for abandoning that girl to her mother's rage? That's not reflective of the values I want to instill in him.

I wanted to break that woman's face. I wanted to smash her head in. I wanted to shatter it and watch the pieces scatter like shards of glass on the floor. I wanted to see her in jail. Then I realized...that's just continuing the cycle of abuse and violence. I wanted her to get help. I wanted her to love her daughter and treat her well. I wished so much that there was something I could have said to make her understand the damage she was doing and to rekindle the love in her heart. I wished I could have called social services, so that family could get help. I don't know if it would make a difference though. We can treat people with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, but we cannot cure them--not people like her or my mother.

I long to reach out to anyone with an abusive, bipolar and/or schizophrenic parent. As they passed by me, moving onto another aisle, the little girl was so close. I wanted so much to grab that child and cling to her desperately. I wanted to tell her how beautiful and smart she is, how her mother was wrong to talk to her that way. I wished I could take her home with me and just love her, treat her as she deserves. If I could go back, I would hold that poor, frightened, sorrowful, lonely little girl in my arms. I would tell her "It's not your fault. There's nothing wrong with you. She does love you, but not like most mommies. She's sick."