Borderline Families

I haven’t painted a very thorough picture of my daughter. To anyone who doesn’t get invited into her hellish inter sanctum, she looks and behaves like a typical twenty-something. Her friends know that she spent years hospitalized but they think it is weird.

“Why? What’s wrong with you?” They are incredulous.

There are no signs of her mental illness – unless she is symptomatic. Like last week. Then, she shuts her friends out. Both to protect them from her rages and bizarre behavior and to shield them from the truth. Through her tears she wailed that no one understands her. She was so alone. Now, she is back in their fold. Pieced together again. She was an “incredible friend” yesterday. She buried her friend’s pet rat at sea in a bamboo casket with a rose. A bit odd but this is her life. Eventful and bizarre but who is to judge what is worthy.

The cycle is shifting gears. So, maybe I will not have to rush to her aid anytime soon. Last fall I went five times. Each time was worst than the time before.  I stopped going in January and wasn’t called into action again until the end of May.

I feel that commitment is an extreme measure. She has a semblance of a life. If she didn’t, I would agree that she needs to be living in a psychiatric community or a hospital or nearby where I could better monitor her moods. In between the hellacious crises, she is living her life.

She needs the city to absorb her energy. She needs her friends who have accepted her as she is. She needs someone to piece her together when she falls apart. And, then, she needs that someone to go away.

She also needs what Social Security Disability can offer – the financial net and social services. I am sure that there is a way to make this happen without commitment. I spent last fall trying to get this done. After a couple of failed/thwarted attempts on the Social Security internet site, we hired a lawyer to do the paperwork. At our first meeting, he placed a phone in the middle of the conference room table and made a call to a fast-talking guy in Staten Island who, over the speaker, told my daughter to apply for SSD on her own, get rejected and when she has the rejection in hand, he will find someone to take the case. My daughter was in a very iffy state and it seemed senseless; get rejected to start the process felt even less linear than most things in her life.

My daughter is very intelligent. If mental illness hadn’t attacked her mind, she would be using her analytical skills in a literary endeavor. Instead, stacks of books sit by her bed – classics and thin volumes of obscure South American poets are in the tower with major American authors. She reads them when her mind allows clarity. Her memory and concentration are always at risk.

I write about her sickness. It crushes me. But, the illness is not all that defines her. She lives everyday the best that she can. She needs her freedom to do this. She is a shell of this person when she is hospitalized. She reacts violently to locked doors and authority. She said living in the mid-west felt like she had shackles on her lifestyle. I cannot ask her to move. I feel like I cannot take away what few pleasures she gets from life.

Basically, right now I feel that I cannot impose my needs on her. Maybe it is my lot in life; that I have to be available to glue her back together. Maybe I have to learn skills that will make it less difficult. I don’t know. What I do know is that I am privy to the worst moments of her life and that there are many more that comprise the bulk of her life.

I feel like the friend who is getting a divorce and constantly needs to rehash the same thing over and over again. You want to be supportive, but in the end, she just has to work it out on her own.

Kris Uncategorized Hospitalization