I feel like rain today.....

I had to shut my window because the rain was coming in.
Big fat cold heavy drops.
Hurry shut the window,
My books might get wet.
The words would smear together making a big mass of letters,
uncomprehensible yet pretty
in a way that only words can be.
And rain makes books smell funny,
like grandma's basement
or the garage that's been submerged too many times
from the river coming up.
September rain
is so much colder
than July rain.
Cold and heavy
like autumn bearing down
brown and gold
instead of green and blue
like rain really should be.
I don't like the rain
when it's cold and heavy
it reminds me too much of snow
and what is yet to come
as the dark unknown chill of winter
waits in the air
just around the corner
seeping into my nights
and before you know it frost will be
spilling over the flowers
that used to wake me in the morning
with their fresh scent.
I had to shut my window because the rain was coming in.
It made me so cold.

Mental Illness....

I am talking about mental illness because I have 2 teenagers with mental illness... my oldest daughter and my son are both bipolar and my son also has obsessive compulsive disorder. The teen years are especially turbulant for those with bipolar because the mix of the disease and teenage hormones makes life almost unbearable.... Not just for the teen themselves, but for all those who have the unfortunate experience of being around them when something doesn't go quite right. As a parent of two bipolar teens, this makes my life at times quite formidable. I can't tell you the number of times recently that I have just wanted to get into the car and drive away and never come back. Never look back. Never turn back. It's painful and frustrating.

Some friends and I were talking about mental illness and studies about it. Some studies suggest it might be hereditary while others say it shows no pattern. This got me looking on my ancestry and what it all included. Could it be hereditary?

I do have a brother who is schizophrenic, but they believe his was caused from excessive drug use. I wouldn't doubt it, either, as he has been "on" everything from alcohol to heroin, to marjuana, to who knows what. I can't recall many times in my life where I have seen him where he wasn't high on something.

My great grandmother and an uncle both died in mental institutions, though I don't have full records of what they were there for. Sometimes mom says my great grandmother was there because she went crazy from having so many children. LOL. Insanity is hereditary.... you get it from your children!! (tell me about it... I'm well on my way.)

My mom has "something", too, although she has never seen a psychiatrist and/or been properly diagnosed. She is all "there" otherwise mentally.... her mind is as sharp as a tack, which for her age is pretty rare. (she is almost 80) But she is a VERY paranoid and selfish person. She is constantly obsessed with the idea that people are trying to steal things from her. It is beyond the normal rational fear of protecting your own property. She always swears someone has a key to her house and sneaks in while she is sleeping and steals her food!
Sometimes she calls me up and has me drive down to her house, because she swears she hears "someone in the basement stealing my antiques."
She has even accused the neighbors of hooking their telephone up to her box to make phone calls, or hooking their hose up to her faucet to steal water!!
My and my husband and children have even been accused on several occasions of stealing from her! It's beyond ludicrous at times, and so frustrating.
It has even gone to where there were times where I have been estranged from her for over 6 months. When it's me I just brush it off... I know I didn't do it and she can't hurt my feelings by accusing me. But when she does it, she is NOT nice about it at all, the screaming and ranting and raving and on it goes... and so when she starts accusing the children and makes them all upset being accused of something they didn't do, well obviously, we leave.
Don't mess with my kids. That's sacred territory. It's even worse when she accuses one of the bipolar ones... then I have two messes to clean up.

I don't return to see my mother until she calls and apologizes...
which usually happens after she figures out where she misplaced the item she accused someone of stealing. (or sometimes it just happens when she can't stand being alone anymore)
It's sad because there are so few of my relatives now who will even visit her at all.
They all got sick of being accused of taking her stuff. They all don't realize this is a mental illness and just think she is a heartless bitch!

I don't think her illness ends there... her other endearing quality, which I also believe is driven by some form of a mental disorder, is that she is also very possesive of the stuff she has there in front of her. (see line above about heartless bitch) She is very, very stingy and selfish. She might have 3 gallons of orange juice in her fridge, but NO you can't have any, it's HERS and she is going to keep it, probably until it SPOILS rotten, but you, my friend, you aren't having one damn glass!!!! She hoards large quantities of things but will not share them. Like I said, it's beyond normal. It might have come from living through the great depression and not getting enough to eat (many of her freakouts are very food oriented, and she is a morbidly obese woman) or not having enough of anything, but still. I grew up with that my whole life and I totally can not stand selfishness. Everything I have, God gave it to me, and not to play pig with it, but to share it. I try to share freely of every single thing he gave me. (except my man, obviously. LOL) And so there is a war going on inside my head over this thing. One side of me says "it's just a mental illness" and "she's not a terrible person" but the other person can't get over the selfishness of it all.

Ok, back to the herditary threads of mental illness....

I have had an episode of depression myself in the past...

It began in 2001. The year my youngest little beauty was 2, and everything seemed to happen at once....
It started with 9/11, which gave me incredibly terrible nightmares.... nightmares of dead bony bodies running away from huge red bombs. Nightmares of concentration camp looking figures sinking into the earth, but reaching out to grab me yelling "HELP ME! HELP ME!" in terrible screeching voices. But how can I help them?? My nightmares were all in red... blood... gore... I still shudder when I think about them. And then my husband got terribly sick. It was symptoms like malaria, shivering and then sweating and then shivering again, but they did not know what it was. He was hospitalized for over a week. I felt like a single parent. It was hard explaining his illness to the children when no one even knew what it was or what caused it. And then there were the questions, "is daddy going to die?" How do you tell the truth when you don't know yourself?? All you can do is pray. Then he finally got better. "Mosquito borne illness" was all they could call it. And we breathed a sigh of relief for a few weeks. And then the ultimate terror... the nightmare above all nightmares that every parent fears... my youngest got terribly sick, and had to go through several surgeries. When you read those papers about all the risks involved with surgery, and it's your precious cherished little soul laying there that they are talking about, that just does something to every fiber of your being. Everytime they put her under I prayed for God to take me instead because I swore she would not come out of it. She was and still is the apple of my eye and I can't imagine life without her.

There was also a lot of smaller stuff interstrewn within all those terrible big stresses. And small stuff makes hard stuff even more unbearable. I broke down at my yearly exam with my doctor and she realized how hard life was for me and I wasn't coping well. I was on antidepresants for about 2 years after that, but eventually I found that exercise made me feel even better than the antidepressants, and so I gradually stopped taking them. I haven't needed them since, although I don't exercise nearly enough as I should.

That said, I don't know of anyone on my side of the family that had bi-polar illness.
On the other side though, there could be someone in my hubby's family... that is something we will never know...
they just don't talk about those sort of things in his family....
everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) is hidden and secret and hush hush, and probably if you could open the closets over there, there'd be more bones than a cemetary. LOL.

Later I'll talk more about the stigma involved with mental illness. It's really been bugging me A LOT lately, because I have been having so much trouble getting help for my kids.