Bipolar From the Other Side

Our guest blogger for this week wishes to remain anonymous for protection of her identity, as she reveals an intimate firsthand account of what it is like to grow up with a parent with untreated Bipolar Disorder. 
 

My battle with Bipolar Disease began in January 1977. The day I was born! How, you might ask? Well, it's a long story! My mom has it. But in the 70's it wasn't a known illness. Those were the days of generalized mental illness and not much was known about it. Most doctors classified everyone with mental illness into one of two groups, depressed or other. Most mental illness was treated with heavy drugs and hospitalization for a short period of "rest". They put the person in the hospital and drugged them up, and after a brief stay they released them with a notebook full of drugs and a bill of clean health. Not much follow up was done. Like my mom, those plans were not followed after release and most of them either didn't take the medications or abused them. 

My mom was released with her pills and a  nice dose of drug addiction to go with it. Like other individuals with bipolar she was misdiagnosed as only depressed. No one goes to the doctor when they are happy and full of energy. Mom learned pretty quickly that the medicines she was given caused her to have "lots of energy and fun" or in other words they triggered her manic states. From her side she had all the energy in the world to do everything. She could clean house and still have energy to go party with her friends! From my side it meant a lot of 2 a.m. house scrubbing! I remember one time she woke my brother and I up at 3 a.m. to disinfect the house with bleach and ammonia. I was 8, and after a quick rescue by my aunt we were once again placed in the "comforts" of my grandmother's home. My grandmother was a hoarder but at least there we were allowed to be children! My mom went on another "vacation to get more rest"! I loved living with my grandmother, because being there I was allowed to play and it was always the same house. With my mom we moved a lot, sometimes not having our own home but instead bouncing from one of her "friends" to the next. Many times I had to hide in my closet or under the bed with my little brother while my mom's current boyfriend thundered through our ghetto apartment on a drunken rage. There were many abusive boyfriends that came and went in her life, some not even staying longer than the night. Sometimes we would be woken up late at night with her throwing what little possessions we had into a car and flying off because "someone was after us"! She took her medication and then added to them as she saw fit. Most of the time those medicines were washed down with a healthy drink of alcohol! 

As I got older I realized something was wrong with my mom other than just depression. I tried to understand what was wrong with her but came to an understanding that many of the problems she had came from improper treatments. Most of the doctors she saw just gave her pills to take and that was it. Those pills lead to drug addiction and her taking other illegal drugs on top of them. Not having proper treatment also allowed other smaller mental illnesses to become bigger ones. Her obsessive compulsive disorder became an obsession with germs and cleanliness. Instead of baths we were bleached to kill the germs we brought home from school. The manic states triggered by the misdiagnoses and treatment for depression led to her being very promiscuous and erratic behaviors. Many times there would be guys in and out of the house all day long. She became abusive when the drugs ran out or when her ever shifting moods changed. I was entered into pageants as a way for her to get easy money. She became obsessed with my weight and appearance refusing to let me eat for days sometimes because I had lost, saying it was because I was fat. I would be forced to exercise after eating to be sure I kept a slim appearance. When there was any new illness out my mom would come down with it. Many times I remember being taken to a doctor when I felt fine and being told I needed to tell the doctor I was sick. My brother was too. She became convinced things inside her body needed to be removed. 

As time went by she developed a sort of obsessive paranoia. She thought the government had sold her drugs and were now controlling her like a puppet. She thought cars were following us because they were on the same road as us, people walking down the road were spies. We lived in downtown Atlanta mind you! We moved to the country to "hide from the spies" when I was 11. After that she still thought we were being followed when we would go get groceries. Our phones were bugged so they could listen to our phone conversations. When I rebelled against her paranoia I became "one of them". I was working with the government to try to kill her. She thinks everything I do has some secret motive planned out by the spies to be carried against her. 

Today after years of drug addiction and improper treatment for mental illness my mom has failing health due to the drug abuse, multiple unwarranted surgeries, and poor self care. She thinks that her phones are still bugged but now she has a new suspicion to add to it. She thinks that she was tricked into getting satellite television service and that the "spies" took advantage of the installation to install cameras in her house to watch her. She screams at the top of her lungs at it to stop watching her when she turns it on and the blue light comes on. She has her moments when it gets so bad I wish she would just hurry up and die; other times she's perfectly normal. Those times switch without warning, sometimes as fast as a matter of a few seconds. I know it's bad to say I wish my mother would die but during those times it's impossible to reach her or even get her help. She has mood swings where she'll go from having a good time laughing one minute to where she's crying the next and suicidal. She sometimes has mood swings so drastic she goes from happy and looking forward to having a family gathering to extreme rage because in her eyes we're "all trying to hurt her and we've all been turned against her" and she wants to kill us all. She becomes violent not only towards us but to herself as well. I sometimes look forward to putting her in a nursing home and forgetting her. I want someone else to have to deal with her. I feel like I am alone in her care because both my father and brother cater to her whims to keep her from turning on them or trying to hurt herself. The rest of the family treats her like a family joke, something to be made fun of or joked about. My efforts to try to help her are met with violence from her and sometimes resistance from my family because they don't want to deal with her. She goes to many different doctors to get pills or try to make them cut on her, sometimes causing injures or infections to get them. When a doctor catches on she stops going to them and says the spies got to them. She thinks that the spies have put things in her body to cause cancer, which she claims to have but has never been diagnosed with. She had all of her teeth pulled because she thought that there were spying devices in them. A lot of the doctors are just out to make money!

I live in fear that I will turn out like her. I question everything I do and even when I am sick I don't like going to the doctor because I worry that it's all in my head. I fear that I will also get mental illnesses as bad as she does. I know I have severe O.C.D. I have a bad fear of germs that I try to hide; I have to have things specific ways or I become anxious. I know these are caused from her telling me growing up that I would die from germs. My first relationships were with men who were abusive and treated me just like those I saw her date. Because of those abusive relationships I have developed P.T.S.D. which causes the O.C.D to become worse. I am extremely detail focused to the point of scrapping entire projects to start over again due to one tiny flaw. 

This is why I am a strong advocate for proper mental health care, correct diagnosis, and strong support. Without those the mental health and well being of the individual can deteriorate to a point where it can not be helped easily. When a person has a mental illness it not only affects the person but those around them as well, especially children they may have. Mental illness needs to be properly cared for not only by the individual but also by those around them because sometimes the person isn't aware of their own actions. It's not something to be hidden or treated like a family shame. It takes the entire family to support the person and assure they take care of their own health and take their medicine properly.

-Anonymous