A paper I wrote about my bi-polar mom

(Editor: delete stuff about my siblings...I don't want them to be mad at me) Mary Kay Martin
CP&P Feb 2008
RP#8
http://www.ccef.org/basics-about-bipolar-0 (check this out)

I read “An Unquiet Mind” in one day. I enjoyed the book because I have personal experience with Manic-Depression.
I was around 8 years old in the late 60’s the day I recall hearing the term Manic- Depression. I didn’t like it because it sounded like maniac and the Psychiatrist was talking about my mom. Dr. Brookes had called us all into his office, all 8 of us, to explain the episodes my mom had been having for the last 30 years. He thought the 6 of us kids should know why my mom had been carted off to the hospital several times, sometimes by the police, why she talked fast sometimes, stayed up all night writing novels on whatever paper she could find, and often sat at the dinner table fast asleep with a lit cigarette. He drew a line on a graph to show us my mom’s ups and downs that made up her condition.
By this time my mom was on lithium and thorazine and life for my family had improved a lot over what they had gone through. I admire my dad so much for all he persevered through. Well, he actually jumped ship after my mom jumped in a lake with their first born baby. She was hospitalized and my dad just left, in shock I guess. Two years later my dad having a bout of conscience came back and had to explain to my mom’s dad and uncle “his intentions”. I guess he convinced them he was committed because they accepted him back in my mom’s life and my dad proceeded to stick around for the rest of her life, through many ups and downs and in the process made 5 more babies, me being the 5th. My brother was cared for, for those two years by my aunt. He is now a psychiatrist himself, and bi-polar. The rest of us seem slightly crazy but in my opinion we get less crazy as we go down the line. I feel pretty sane as the 2nd to youngest. My mom was somewhat stable during most of my life. I hear she got bad after my birth and my little brother’s birth. My grandma had to take care of the newborns as she kept finding my mom asleep with a baby and cigarette in hand. My sister claims I was all but abandoned when my brother was born one and a half years after me. She says she took care of me which explains our mother-daughter-like dysfunction.
I remember my mom coming home a couple times from the hospital and my older sibs warning the younger ones to be quiet so as not to make mom “nervous”. At that time it was called a “nervous condition”. She always came home from these stays with crafts which confused me. I later figured out that making clowns out of scraps of cloth was “therapeutic” for the patients. My mom also received shock treatment which was thought to be “therapeutic”.
I was spared the memories of seeing my mom taken by the police which my 3 older sisters and eldest brother remember. In fact she did so well during my youth that when I was 15 I was quite perplexed when she went through a manic phase. It was bad and I was the oldest kid home now so I pretty much took charge. My dad coped by way of denial. (I wondered why in the world he let my mom work in our catholic school cafeteria while she looked like she could fall asleep any minute. Now I realize it was the denial/passiveness. I was embarrassed when my 4th grade crush, Matt Werthmann asked me why my mom looked so sleepy.) Anyway, during her episode my sophomore year, I did all the laundry, cooked the meals and hopped out of bed in the middle of the night to try to coax my mom back to bed, or at least to put the cigarette out so we wouldn’t burn in our beds. All the thanks I got from her was that she called me a brat. Of course I knew she would never have talked to me that way if she were not hyper. Hyper is the word my mom preferred we used when referring to her manic episodes because she also thought it sounded like maniac and she tended to be in denial about things just like my dad. Like when she insisted the name of her clothing store was Fashions Unlimited, when it was actually Fashions-at –Large. She denied her weight problem.
After that big episode my sophomore year my mom continued with small ups and downs until her death at age 62. I was 24. I always felt that her mental condition was what led to such an early death. In order to keep calm and avoid hyperness my mom smoked and overate and limited her activity to reading the paper and watching Wheel of Fortune. She died of congestive heart failure.
Even though I see myself as one of the emotionally more healthy offsprings I can totally relate to bi-polar mood swings. I can relate to the feeling described in the book that “I can do anything” and the opposite feeling that “I don’t want to do anything”. These cycles are usually short and not drastic in intensity. I’d say 2 weeks of the month I am inert and 2 weeks I am super mom. Over the past few years these moods have dramatically evened out. I believe this is due to my increasing reliance on the gospel for justification. I notice that if I am down and feeling worthless, a reminder that I am perfect in Christ prevents me from going even further into the pit. When I am energized I don’t over do it because my worth is no longer dependant on how much I accomplish. It rests on Jesus’ work. I’ve learned to take my moods in stride and to remember than they do not last forever. Jesus loves me no matter how motivated I am and in fact my moods are quite separate from who God sees me to be.
I often wonder how these truths would have helped my mom to weather her serious mood swings. She became a Christian before her death and I look forward to seeing her in heaven, as she was meant to be, without the drugs, violent mood swings and the cigarettes.