I went out for drinks tonight with a good friend of mine, and we discussed my drama-filled days in San Francisco with my mom, conjuring up stories of how Chris has “hurt” her and my dad. My friend says loudly, “Your mom is crazy. All moms are crazy!” The bar we are drinking at doesn’t have that many patrons, but the ones who are in there all start cheering and agreeing. The bartender agreed and said that some people have mommy issues while others have daddy issues. She said she herself had mommy issues and got along perfectly with her dad.

“I don’t want to say she is crazy,” I said to my friend. “I think it’s kind of disrespectful.” My friend defended it and said she didn’t mean to offend my mom, but that’s not the point of what I was trying to say. I honestly believe my mom has a mental illness that hasn’t and will never be addressed or diagnosed. I mean, who else insists that everyone is out to get her and hurt her and keeps secrets more than my own parents at my mother’s insistence? We can’t just write people off as crazy when we know there is something psychologically wrong with them because it doesn’t address the core problem. We become the people we hate, the ones who make generalizations about “craziness” and then don’t acknowledge how harmful and serious these problems are.