The Ugly Truth:What it is like to have a parent with untreated mental illness

In truth I don’tknow if anyone is even looking at this blog, but oh well, at least I will feel better typing this. Sort of therapy I suppose. The worst thing about having a parent with an untreated mental illness is it never ends. Soon I will be the ripe old age of thirty-two and my mother just gets worse, and my responsibility grows. The pain grows with it. I have given birth to four beautiful children. My mother came to the hospital for two. This really doesn’t count as two because it was the birth of the twins. The second day home from the hospital my father and mother came to visit. My mother spent the whole time complaining cause she wanted to go to the flea market, and my dad insisted on seeing the twins. Having a mother that doesn’t seem to care about you is hard; having one that doesn’t care about your children is harder. Everywhere you go you hear "oh your mother must be so happy." "Oh you must have so much help." In truth I have no help other than my husband. If one kid has to go to the doctor then they all go. If I have to go to the doctor my husband has to take off work so that he can watch the children. This is okay with us. It is better than leaving them with someone that can not handle children. My mother has never volunteered to watch my children, and I have never asked. I know she is not capable of it, and my husband and I agreed before the twins (our first) were born that she would never baby-sit for us because of the way she treated her own children. If your parent mistreated you, why take a chance with your child?
People assume that my mother and I are close or used to be close just because we are mother and daughter. We are not. She has done some pretty unbelievable things to me. When my mother and father divorced I was 27 years old. I was the proud mother of two twin boys who were less then one year old. I also had the misfortune of living next door to her. It was a very scary time. She called everyday accusing my father of horrible things like cheating and giving her STD’s. One day she called and told me she was going to tell my father’s work that he had AIDS. I told her that was a lie and she could not continue to make up lies. She hung up and never called again. Instead she called the police everyday and accused my father of beating her and making threats to harm her. She also filed for a restraining order against him. My father and I and one of my brothers had to go to court for this and it was one of the worst experiences of my life. I felt so bad for her in the halls of the court she looked so full of anger and grief and all alone. I wanted to go up and hug her but I couldn’t. This woman hated me and a week before had left all my fathers stuff on my lawn with an empty kerosene can beside it. Luckily my husband and I had taken the babies and stayed in a hotel the night before. In the courtroom my mom ranted and raved, yelling accusations but could never get her story straight and the restraining order was denied. She then decided this was a conspiracy against her because my father was a Mason. After this she switched targets. Her newest target became me. I discovered about a month after my parents’ split that I was pregnant again and to me surprise I was three months along. I was never able to tell my mother this would be my saving grace. When I was almost five months along, and showing quite a bit a sheriff knocked on the door at lunchtime. A day that would turn out to be another day burned into my memory worthy of nightmares later on; seems my mother had called and reported that I had abused her that weekend. I began to shake. I could just see me taken from my babies and put into jail waiting for my court date. The sheriff began to ask where I had been the previous Saturday. Thankfully my mother-in-law and father-in-law had been visiting from out of town which I told the sheriff. He then told me my mother had reported that I had gone up to her house claiming I wanted to patch things up and waited till her back was turned then I had knocked her to the floor and proceeded to beat her. Since she did not know I was pregnant she did not describe me accurately to the sheriff. At this point the sheriff told me that she could be prosecuted for filing false police report and if she was investigated for one they would investigate all the reports she had filed. He told me that he felt she needed treatment and didn’t feel jail was the right place for her. He began to explain how to have some one committed. I knew this had to be done but didn’t want to be the one to do it. So my father and I and the boys and my husband went out to eat and then went downtown to sign the papers. The sheriffs’ cars came up the driveway later that night. It turned out to be about ten cars because she locked herself in the house and refused to leave because she needed someone to take care of her cats. I had to go to my grandparents and tell them what was happening because they live on the other side of me and she was calling them. They told me I was wrong to commit her and that I shouldn’t have done this and that she would always be my mother. My mother was released after three days and we still live next to each other. Our relationship is very strained. We were both in the grocery store last week and she pretended she couldn’t see me. Today my house is up for sale, but we have had no one even look at it. My mother sold off the timber rights to her land. She gave them an old deed and some how or other (we still don’t know how) she sold the timber rights to our trees too. The property looks awful and since it is her property that is being foreclosed on there is nothing we can do. We are stuck unable to sell. The only way we could recoup our loses is by suing my mother.