How Deep Does It Run by Kelly

Mental illness runs in the family, on my mother’s side.

Through the generations there’s that aunt or uncle that was just a little off. The cousin that lived at home as an adult and never married or had kids. It’s not something we ever really talked about through the years.

My uncle is a paranoid schizophrenic. He was small for his age. He was genius smart but always just a tad bit off.

Back in the 50s, they didn’t have names for these things like they do now. He was just different. My mom spent her childhood following after him, making sure he had lunch money, paper and his shoes were tied.

As he got older, things changed. He started using drugs; hallucinations, violent outbursts, hospitalizations and shock therapy. It was the 70s; things were a bit different then.

I can remember being very small, maybe not even in school yet and going to visit him at the hospital. We ate outside at a picnic table. My grandmother made a cherry cheesecake– his favorite. He had on blue scrub pants, a white t-shirt and blue slip on shoes. Every time I see a pair of slip-on Vans, it reminds me of those shoes. That was his wardrobe for years. He took different medications; Haldol and Lithium, they helped a little. And then they didn’t.

For most of my childhood, he was unmedicated. Fully psychotic, he hallucinated and talked to the air, making wild hand gestures. He paced constantly. He would wear the soles off shoes.

He went several months without bathing. He was superhuman strong. My grandmother had to keep his cigarettes locked up or he’d smoke a whole carton in a day. I remember him most sitting out on the patio, chain smoking and drinking coffee, wearing those scrubs and t-shirt and shoes, having conversations with people that weren’t there.

He was always kind and gentle with me. "Always stay in school. Don’t ever do drugs." Those two things he drilled into my head. To this day, I never have. Not even pot.

He used to paint. He loves birds. He would draw and create oil paintings of gorgeous birds and owls. I remember one of two American Kestrels. He would draw and erase and redraw. It was never perfect. Paint and whitewash the canvas and start over. Never quite right.

Most of his art he destroyed over the years. Only a few pieces remain. An incredible pencil sketch of praying hands that my Godmother has framed on her wall. Two sketches I have of Thor and Captain America. For years he would still ask for art supplies but he stopped painting before my grandmother passed away and has never drawn again. He said he can’t anymore.

He had a drum set. He was an amazing drummer. He gave that away, said he couldn’t play anymore. He LOVED The Beatles and had all their albums. The White Album, an original copy; who knows how much that would be worth these days. He would listen to music a lot. Until he would start hearing secret messages in the songs. And then he would smash the records and throw them away.

My grandfather is one of the kindest, gentlest men I have ever known. But he also didn’t take any shit. He would never yell, he would just sit you down and talk to you in that quiet voice of his and tell you how disappointed he was in what you’d done. My mom used to say that she would sit there and just wish he’d beat her – it would have been better than the feelings you would feel after that talk.

My uncle was good around my grandfather. Once my grandfather left for work, my uncle would start in on my grandmother. He treated her terribly but she never once considered putting him away somewhere.

I can remember more than one time where she locked us in the utility room with the phone and tried to wait out an episode. She only called my grandfather at work when she absolutely had to. It wasn’t often.

My uncle told her once that he decided he would have to kill my grandfather first because if he killed her first, my grandfather would wake up and kill him.

They slept with their door locked. I slept with my door locked. Yet I was never really scared of him.

He pushes my mother’s buttons like no one else. Some of it is just his disease. Some of it is just him being the obnoxious little brother and trying to aggravate the shit out of her. She’s never been able to let it go, to not react and he knows it. He provokes her all the time.

Now that my Grandfather is declining the future is uncertain. My mother has always known that she would be his guardian eventually. Just as I have always known that at some point I will have both of them to take care of. But the two of them in a house together fulltime might make us all crazy.

Once when I was about 9 or so, she came to get me after work. My uncle had been piled up in his bed all day, smelling like a stinky goat because he wouldn’t bathe. It had been a difficult day and I guess my grandmother said something to my mom about it.

She went there to jerk a knot in his tail about it. He had this habit of pulling the covers up right to his nose and then chewing on the blanket. He would chew holes into them. He was doing that and she told him to stop. He glared and chewed more ferociously. To irritate her and to make her mad. She saw his belt lying over the chair and grabbed it, flicked it at the foot of the bed. To get his attention and to aggravate him back.

Quick as a flash he grabbed that belt and tried to jerk it from her. He's super strong. She had the buckle and she knew that if he got it, he’d probably beat the shit out of her. So she wrapped the belt around her hand once, really quickly as he tried to pull it away. He stood up and the wrestled around the room a bit for the belt.

Crashing into the bookshelves, bouncing off of the furniture. My grandmother sent me outside. I remember pacing back and forth around the carport, waiting to hear it was okay to come back inside. That Mom was okay, that it was all okay. I wasn’t scared, just worried.

I don’t know how it ended exactly but he let go and she got away. He pulled the belt so tight around her hand it broke two of her fingers.

Mom called my grandfather at work and told him what had happened, and that he needed to come home to deal with my uncle. Mom is the one that started it. He knew that really without her even having to answer the question. My uncle had always been able to aggravate her and push her buttons like that. My grandfather knows that. They make me nuts with their bickering.

The summer before I started high school, I took a trip with my grandparents across the Northwest. We were gone for three weeks. This was in the late 80s, so it was all mom and pop motels and checking in from pay phones- very old school which was awesome. I loved trips with them.

We saw the Arch in St. Louis. Wall Drugs and The Corn Palace. The Rockies, Mt. Rushmore, Yosemite, Yellowstone, Old Faithful- so many awesome things.

Then one day we called to check in and the phone just rang and rang. Finally, a few hours later we got through to my mom. Her aunt, my grandmother’s sister, had been staying with my uncle. All was good, then suddenly he decided he didn’t want her there anymore.

He scared her, ran her out of the house. Locked her out and wouldn’t let her in. She called my mom.

He barricaded himself in his room. She had to call the police. They came and took him into custody and to a psychiatric hospital. We left in a rush to get home. It took a couple of weeks to get him stabilized but they had new medicines and had found one that worked.

He still takes it today. He is as normal as he will ever be. He’s seriously OCD and he still has his behaviors. But he no longer hallucinates. He cooks simple meals, he shops for groceries with a list, he helps take care of my grandfather.

His medicine costs about $1500 a month. He gets less than a thousand a month from Social Security but his insurance covers the rest. Except the insurance is my grandfather’s. Once he passes, we don’t know what will happen. He will be my mother’s dependent but her insurance is not as comprehensive as my grandfather’s. He also has military coverage as a backup from his years in the service. We have daily worries about what will happen and how this will all work once the inevitable occurs.

My mother isn’t genius smart but she liked school and got good grades. She married right out of high school but once my parents divorced, she went to school. All honors, graduated Summa Cum Laude, all the good stuff. She has always prided herself on being the smart one, the one who can plan, organize and control.

Lord she does love to control. I am 40 years old and she is still listed on my bank accounts. Initially it was because I was young and in college. Then it was just easy to leave it because it wasn’t a big deal.

Then I got married but we kept all our finances separate because the husband was terrible with finances.

Then I had a kid and she still controls with money. To this day she looks at my bank balance regularly and will let me know exactly what she thinks if my balance is too low or if she feels like I am spending my money on frivolous things.

To me this is normal. I never knew otherwise until someone pointed out most mothers don’t do that.

She’s had lots of health problems. She’s sick a lot. She just says that’s the way it is and makes minimal effort to find a resolution. It makes me crazy. She stays awake for 2-3 days at a time playing computer games, then has to sleep. She’s missed scheduled plans with my kid, even holidays because she needed to sleep. She says she can’t help it, she cries and gets mad then refuses to discuss it any further.

Her doctor says she has depression. She takes medications that don’t really seem to help. She expects everyone to accommodate her fucked up schedule and deal with it, she is selfish.

She would rather spend several hundred dollars on Legos for a kid than have to make the effort to spend time with him. She is not a "warm hugs accompanied with milk and cookies" kind of grandmother. She’s more of a "buy you lots of expensive shit you don’t need and don’t have room in your house for instead of spending actual time with you" kind of grandma. It’s a constant source of anger and disappointment to me.

So my uncle is schizophrenic, my mom is depressed and who knows what else. What am I? Is there something wrong with me? I don’t think I am depressed. Sometimes I feel defeated or like I am on an endless cycle, a rut and nothing changes. This isn’t how I imagined my life would be. I didn’t expect to struggle financially but I’ve never been unable to get out of bed because of it. I don’t like crowds. I have some social anxiety but that’s not too bad.

What about my kid? Is there something lurking in his DNA, waiting to go off? Any time he does something exceedingly smart, Mom will comment on what the genius he is. Then she usually makes a comment about how smart my uncle was as a kid and how I need to watch him. Or if he does something totally and completely normal for a boy – like want to blow up the train or house or whatever in the video game – then she comments on how that behavior isn’t normal and I should watch him. It’s like she’s just looking for the tiniest clue that he’s crazy. I get paranoid and I look. I overanalyze every move my kid makes.

Does that mean he has no conscious, that he’s a sociopath? Is he depressed, does he hate himself? Does he really feel like we don’t love him? Does he have violent tendencies or is he just being a 5 year old boy? Is that normal or is he going to end up on the news as a prolific serial killer? Do I need to have him tested? Does he need some sort of medication?

All the fucking time I worry, and that makes me mad. She has taken so much of the joy out of otherwise happy moments with her negative comments and her hyper vigilant assessments that something is wrong with him.

I know that’s just her. Part of her disease- whatever the hell that might be. I know it’s more than depression. She has some of the markers of more severe mental illness, but she would never hear of that. She’s always been the smart one, the planner and organizer and the one IN CONTROL.

I don’t know what I will do when both she and my uncle are elderly and need care. I don’t know how I will handle it or if I can handle it. If I even have a choice because I surely can’t afford a nursing home for both of them. I wonder if maybe I DO need to be medicated for *something*. I overanalyze and try to plan for every possible contingency and plan and worry and stress; about the future, about what’s to come and about my own mental health.

I don’t have any answers, but I do know that I made it through yesterday and I can make it through today. Sometimes that’s enough. It has to be.

Kelly is a wife and mom and somewhat responsible adult. She lives in Tennessee, has a troubling affection for glam metal and uses sarcasm liberally. You can find her tales of adventure and intrigue as The Queen of Evil on Facebook , on the blog she often forgets she has , and on Twitter were she never tweets because she still can't get past her passive aggressive feelings about it (https://twitter.com/Queen__of__Evil).