Mothers::Come Here  

Take a minute and read. I know how much you need to hear from another mother who has lived through the mental illness of a child, has shitty, toxic teenagers, or wants to jump off a wine cliff every night. Who understands that you love them so completely, so ridiculously, you’d dance in fire at the hope of helping them. I know your need because it is mine, also.

I had a son. A perfect, and beautiful and shiny boy. All the fingers, and all the toes. They laid him on my belly. I really didn’t believe there was an actual human being inside of me until I saw him. Serious, dark composure (like a judge) his brown eyes pummeled me with questions. Oh my god, the love. The semi-truck slamming into my soul, laden with unfathomable love. In a second, the earth pivoted on its axis and I was a mother.

Twenty years later he left me. Some kind of unknowable shift occurred in his brain and he was no longer with us. Schizophrenia. First: anxiety. Then: depression. Then: bipolar. Finally: goodbye, Nick boy, you have been swallowed by the rancid swamp water of the worst mental illness diagnosable. I’m at the shore; scrappy, wild-eyed, flailing arms. Why can’t I save you? Why am I suddenly irrelevant? I have a stick! I have a rope! I have a college degree, and yet you float away from me. I glance back over my shoulder and see your sisters, all three, glaring at me with the fury of injustice. “Save him, Mother.”

I would do anything to release him from insanity’s grip. Hey, God, take me! Please. Pour cancer all over me, it’s fine.  But there are no deals like that. You stand at the shore and wail, into a vast and relentless wind. No one hears you.

Holy, moly, that sounds sad. And it is. But it is other things, too. It’s profound. It’s shockingly beautiful, sometimes. I know this isn’t politically correct, but it’s also really funny. Crazy is funny a lot of the time. 

So here I am, internet world. It took me a long time to get here. I am battered and shaken and changed forever. But I have learned things. I have endured and accepted and learned. I am happy, yeah, I am.  

Let’s help each other. Mothers, come here.