It’s really hard when mental illness runs in your family, but your family is not cognizant enough to get it treated or addressed in any way, even if it means simply talking about it. Even after the untimely death of my brother, still my parents refuse to acknowledge that he ended his life truly because of a mental illness as opposed to just being “too innocent and trusting” and “immature.” It really hurts to hear the references they make to this and not say anything. Because we all know if I say anything, it would pretty much be the beginning of the end of my relationship with both of them.

Mental illness runs on both sides of my family. My dad’s mother had a mental breakdown that ended up also becoming physical when my dad was just a little boy. He and his siblings had to stay with their aunt and uncle for an entire year while my grandma was hospitalized. My dad grew up in a house where he never truly learned to become an adult and was intensely criticized quite constantly, so to this day, I still look at him like he’s just a little child in an adult’s body. Sure, he was able to work, become financially stable, raise a family in terms of money and material goods, but emotionally and mentally, he’s just not quite there as an “adult.” My brother and I used to look at him as though he were like another sibling as opposed to our father. The only real difference was that when he told us to shut up or criticized us, we couldn’t criticize him back.. because when we did, we’d get screamed at by our mother. He talks to himself pretty much all day long, even in public and at the dinner table with relatives there. It’s caused me a lot of anxiety and embarrassment that I can do absolutely nothing about. And that terrible quality somehow got acquired by Ed despite all his desires to not be anything like our dad. At least Ed didn’t do it in public or at family dinners.

My mom’s family history will always remain a mystery, but the devastating effects of the Vietnam War and her poor life in Vietnam are evident in her as a person today. Over the years, while she has never been trusting, she has gotten even more distrusting of the world and especially of relatives, and is constantly paranoid that people will wrong her or rob her or take advantage of her. She’s had episodes of intense anger where she’s thrown objects all over the house and also gone into a cleaning frenzy in cleaning something that didn’t need to be cleaned. She’s threatened suicide more times than I can count and is constantly saying that pretty much everyone she knows has wronged her and does not care about her at all.. and that they wouldn’t care about me at all if it weren’t for her giving me a ‘reputation’ — whatever that means. “They” even applies to my childhood friends, Chris, and his family.

Mom is constantly making up stories of things that people have said and done to “wrong” her. She’s decided that because Chris told her he thinks I am “generous” that I must be paying everything for him and his family every time they are visiting or I am in Australia. When it came to the wedding, when I told her that Chris said he wasn’t comfortable accepting his parents’ monetary contribution, she quickly concluded it meant that he was expecting my parents to pay for the entire affair, instead of thinking it meant that he wanted the two of us to pay for it ourselves. When my friends were visiting for my bridal shower weekend, she was intensely paranoid the two days before they arrived and insisted they would steal all our valuables unless we hid them in her room. When she announced her bathroom tweezer supposedly went “missing” two days later, I held my breath until she finally told me that she found it in another spot she had placed it. And you are probably wondering, who would steal a pair of tweezers? My mom thinks people will take whatever they can get. She accuses me at least once every visit that I don’t like her, that I prefer other people (primarily Chris and his parents) over her and my dad. She’s accused Chris just yesterday of treating her and my dad “like dirt” simply because she claims he has never offered to pay for a meal for them despite having paid hotels and car rentals and other travel related expenses for them. “I will not let some punk take advantage of me!” she screamed. “I’m disabled! Who takes advantage of a disabled person and makes her pay for him all the time?!”

So I thought about all this and started reading all these psychology related websites. Borderline personality disorder seems to suit her the most based on the descriptions, combined with probably a handful of different anxiety disorders that will sadly never be known because she refuses to acknowledge she needs help. “How can I be mental?” she screamed at Ed and me years ago when one of us said she had a mental illness and needed professional help. “I raised a family with no real education and sent you to Wellesley! How can I be mental?!”

How sad that there are still so many people, including her, who believe that if you can get through these different life phases that nothing could possibly be wrong with you. It is another fight I have already lost.