Leather and Lace

Chapter 2

What’s in your Head?

“Depression is a painfully slow, crashing death. Mania is the other extreme, a wild roller coaster run off its tracks, an eight ball of coke cut with speed. It's fun and it's frightening as hell. Some patients - bipolar type I - experience both extremes; other - bipolar type II - suffer depression almost exclusively. But the "mixed state," the mercurial churning of both high and low, is the most dangerous, the most deadly. Suicide too often results from the impulsive nature and physical speed of psychotic mania coupled with depression's paranoid self-loathing.”

― David Lovelace, Scattershot: My Bipolar Family

As a child I disliked myself, not only my looks, but my sheer existence. Fear of being so drastically different from my family on the inside made me a good actress and liar. The truth was at the age of nine I wanted to die. I hid it well, the chaos that was brewing inside of me. Everyday was a fight for survival and every laugh or smile was faked.

I wouldn’t know until I snapped at the age of 15 that I had a mental illness, and my family wouldn’t know until I was an adult how severe it was. Some of them have no idea the chaos inside my head daily, and have never tried to understand me. I don’t think they realize that my mind goes 90 to nothing, which causes severe insomnia at times.

My youngest sister is the one I can’t fool she immediately recognizes the signs, and keeps me sane from time to time. Since I was 15 I’ve tried to kill myself three times, and that isn’t something anyone knows. The first time I took a razor digging it into my wrists and arms scratching them up. I have a phobia of dying to be honest and a fear of the judgement of God.

I heard a voice in my head ask me what I was doing. I want to die I cried out, and it told me to stop. So I did, I thought it was God talking to me. I confessed to a friend, she told the teacher, and I went to my mom’s house after that. My father wanted answers, but I was afraid to tell him what was happening in my head. He didn’t talk to me for a long time after that, and the chaos continued to grow.

The time away from my dad, and him not speaking to me made things worse. I was forced into therapy because I refused to go back to school. I manipulated my therapist into thinking I was better because I didn’t want to be sent away. So they told my mother I had a manic depressive disorder, and I should keep attending therapy. I didn’t go back, the longer I was away from my dad the worse it got.

I lashed out viciously unable to control my anger, and I cried myself to sleep most nights. The mood swings were uncontrollable, and then only three weeks after my mother obtained custody I took a bottle of her pills once again trying to end it. She found me, and of course scared of my dad, didn’t take me to the hospital. She made me drink this charcoal stuff to make me throw up.

We never talked about it, and hid it from everyone. She called my dad, and he finally agreed to see me. The chaos subsided awhile, but it was always there.

After I had my daughter, it came back full force. I thought she’d be better off without me. What could someone like me give her? The depression grew over the next two years, and I had my son. For five years I was in a relationship filled with domestic violence and forced s*x. Course I never told anyone ashamed of how far I had fallen. Fate stepped in and he was removed from our lives.

The voices once again subsided, but they were still there. I found a job , got an apartment, but things fell apart quickly. We were being evicted, I had failed as a mother. My fingers were on the cool metal of the gun. The kids were sleeping. What are you doing, the voice asked again. I failed them. They’re better off without me. Call for help. And so I called a local ministry and went to a shelter. It was a safe space and I finally confessed the truth to the director.

Since then the voices are silent. Since I left the city, I am at peace.

Parenting A Parent

Sometimes I feel like she was selfish, and I was not wrong to feel this way. From the moment I left my father’s home, I experienced the freedom of being an adult. My mother was an opioid addict constantly chasing a high, and she was always running from something. I know what your thinking, but in her case she was a high functioning addict until she needed her next fix.

At the time I genuinely believed she was sick, after all I had heard it from people my entire life. I didn’t know much about my parents or their addiction when I was young. I knew my dad was a recovering alcoholic because I had been told so, but my mother was made out to be a saint my whole life. So when I moved in and she told me she was sick, I believed her.

The addiction grew worse my sophomore year in high school. I wanted to be a nurse, my grades had improved, and so had my social life. I had a boyfriend who I was infatuated with, and I started spending time away from home. Sometimes I think she did it on purpose because she was codependent on me.

When she’d come down from her high, she’d vomit violently and shake. I was left to clean up the mess while she took her medicine. Her addiction soon took over my life. I started missing school because she’d pass out randomly or vomit so much she couldn’t function. I should have gone home when my dad asked me to, but how could I leave her.

My relationship started to suffer, and I never told anyone anything, other than my mom was sick. I missed a lot of school that year, and my boyfriend brought my assignments by the house. I’ll never forget that day, it was the first time I had ever been angry with her, and the first time I decided to escape the reality that was my life.

He broke up with me, and it had more to do with her than me. I was stuck being the parent instead of a teenager, and for teenagers that’s a heavy burden to bare. I couldn’t be angry with him, I mean, I wanted to run too. I eventually quit school to care for her full time, but I saw a commercial for Job Corps. She did everything in her power to stop me from going, but eventually I left.

Of course, it wasn’t long before I got the phone call that I needed to come home. I really had to go home to be honest, I had two younger sisters with a bright future ahead of them. I was the oldest daughter, and as such I abandoned my dreams, my first love, and returned to my mother’s side so that my sisters wouldn’t have to deal with her addiction. I am the oldest so it’s my job to protect them.