Dear Mother,

My dad tells me of a time when you weren’t consumed by your illness. I look back at wedding photos and cry, because I see the woman I should have had as a mom. She looks radiant and happy, something I have never once seen in all my years of knowing you. I always wanted a mother, someone to hold me when I cry, not to be the cause of my sobbing. I hated you for a long time. For all the invisible people you listened to instead of me. For all the times you dragged me kicking and screaming away from my dad, away from love and into the darkness you thought was your sanctuary. You taught me how to be quiet, so quiet that not even your paranoia could hear me. You taught me how to hold in the pain of my body breaking against walls, push it farther and farther down until I no longer felt anything. My ears learned when to anticipate the end to your screaming nights. I thought I hated you, my tormentor, the hulking monster always pacing back and forth behind my door. I realized I don’t, I hate the disease that took my mother from me, I hate the voices that you can’t drive out of your head, and most of all I hate how preventable all our agony was.

I understand now that Schizophrenia is hard to anticipate, but yours shouldn’t have been. You should have received more help after your first episode, maybe then you would have gotten better. I understand now why you hate the medication you have to take, I see how it slows your mind, how it balloons your body, making you feel worse and worse.

I have been trying to piece together your life, what was the trigger? What events unfolded to turn your life so completely upside-down? I try to track your spiral downwards, to understand you better, but also so I don’t end up falling into that bottomless chasm. After years of trying to peace your life together, I have come to the peak. I will never know the series of events that led you down this rabbit-hole. And I also cannot forgot the things you did to me, the things that broke me so many times.

From my research, I have gleaned some information. The longer a person with Schizophrenia goes without treatment, the higher the chance they will become violent. I also found that most people with your disorder do not become violent, you are a part of a small percentage. With all this knowledge and more I still end up at the same spot: knowing that I can never love you as a child loves their parent. I can and do love you as a fellow human being, and wish you a better life, one free from the voices that drove you to insanity. One where your paranoia does not dictate your life and one were you are happy again.

Sincerely,

Gray