Pay back is
a bitch. My parents used to tell me this would happen, “just wait until you
have children of your own, then you’ll know what we’re going through.” I didn’t
believe them. If I had, or if I’d had any real clue as to how difficult I was
to raise, I would have had my lady parts discarded as soon as I turned 18.
But I didn’t
and so now I am reaping my karma. I am raising a child just like me. It’s a
wonder my parents didn’t kill me. Again, my elementary principal, whose name I
can’t remember but who must have been a very astute man, told my parents I
needed to see a psychiatrist. Apparently he knew I was not right in the head.
He’d also had my manic-depressive sister before me and she had struggled in
school as well. She struggled with academics. Academics were the only thing I
was good at.
I’m not sure
how normal my insides were while growing up. How much of the chaos and
confusion was due to being a child, an adolescent, a young adult and how much
was being bi-polar. I know I felt anchorless. I was desperate for some way to
stop my ever-changing and intense emotions. But no one talked about these
things then and my parents, out of shame or pride or fear, never did take me to
a psychiatrist. Instead they sent me off to a distant relative the summer
before I started high school to “babysit.”
I was in a
deep, deep depression that summer having coming off two wildly unsuccessful
junior high years. Those years were absolute torture. I had no friends, boys
made fun of me constantly, we moved from my childhood home to a snotty
neighborhood and Tom Stratico shot himself.
Tom Stratico
had his locker right below mine –since my name then was Servies – otherwise I
would have never known him. He was also in my homeroom but we ran in very
different East Whittier Jr. high circles. Tom was tall, the cutest boy in
school, captain of the basketball team, dating the cutest girl in school (she
later became homecoming queen in High School) and had friends, followers and
worshippers. I was in the last category. He deigned to tease me but it was mild
teasing and I’ve come to think we had more in common than I ever thought.
Certainly it takes some deep psychological problem for a 7th grade
boy to take a shotgun, lie down in his bathtub and shoot half his head off.
I’d never
known that kids could die. I had been lucky and no one I knew had died except
my grandfather. It was acceptable to me that my grandfather died. He was old
and I never really liked him much. Although he was my mother’s father he was an
older version of my own father; critical, perfectionistic, and alcoholic. He
may have even been worse but that’s another blog.
When Tom
killed himself, the rumors swirled. He had been heartbroken because his
girlfriend had dumped him, he was being sent to military school, his parents
were getting a divorce, he was dared to do it. But no one really knew. Just as
no one knows what goes on inside most people’s inner world. Tom looked good on
the outside but he wasn’t. No one takes their life if they are mentally well,
it is the instinct of our species to survive, after all.
I think we
were all affected by the tragedy, though I remember my mother talking about how
shameful it was that one girl wore a purple dress to his funeral. I remember clearly
thinking that was the absolute most evil thing I’d ever heard. What I don’t
remember was any counseling. No one talked to us –well, not to me –about how we
were feeling, what we were thinking, what were we going to do with this new
information. The information that children not only die but take their own
lives. My Dad had a gun. I knew where it was. No one talked to me.
I’ve taught
at three High Schools in my short teaching career and in each one a teen took
their life. Not only were the kids given extensive counseling, we teachers were
too. There was a lot of concern about copycat’s and how we as teachers should
handle each incident. How we were to model sane behavior to our students. We’ve
come a long way and for that I am grateful.
If I had to
guess what Tom and I had in common was that we were both bi-polar. I remember his
ups clearly and obviously his downs were above the average adolescent angst.
What made it even worse, if that is possible, he had spent the day telling
everyone he was going to do it. Only one girl and our homeroom teacher believed
him enough to contact his parents. Apparently they didn’t believe him. Still,
the rest of us wrestled with the guilt that we had done nothing, some had even
laughed at him. I’ve never forgotten it, obviously.
Now my son
is struggling, really, deeply struggling with his disease. He’s off his meds
and spinning out of control. I know bipolars are more likely to commit suicide
and he’s talked about it several times. I’ve taken him to hospital emergency
rooms, psychiatrists and counselors but in the end I’m not in charge of whether
he lives or dies. He’s 22 and it is his decision. He can stay on the meds, but
he doesn’t like how they make him feel. Like a lot of creatives he likes the
mania. It feels like he gets a lot done then and he is inspired. But then, an
abnormal amount of creatives die young. Read . Darkness Visible by William Styron about his lifelong struggle with
mental illness. He wrote the brilliant Sophie’s
Choice, won the Pulitzer for The
Confessions of Nat Turner and then committed himself to a mental hospital
for electro-shock. He chronicles, in this slim volume, the heavy weight that
mental illness has on writers especially. He speaks the names of all those he
lost to the struggle. It is a daunting loss.
Still, I get it. I really do. Art is the most
important thing in my life after him and I have had to learn other ways to
become inspired but I sure do miss those manic days sometimes. My medication makes me a little sluggish and
lazy and is a great excuse for my poor housekeeping. I want to clean but my meds say I don’t have to today.
But just
like I did after Tom Stratico’s suicide, I keep wondering and searching for
things I can do to stop another person’s slide into madness. For that’s what it
is. I lived with the madness in my head my whole life. I clung to anything or
anyone I thought would stabilize the vertigo. I made bad decisions because I
didn’t know of any good ones.
So, I wonder
– did my parents suffer watching me? Did they feel helpless and hopeless like I
do now? Did they ship me off to relatives because they thought it would do me good
or because they couldn’t stand having me around anymore, making them feel inadequate
as parents? Have I been horribly unfair to them?
God knows I
wasn’t easy. Neither was my sister. God knows it was hard to like me let alone
love me, I’m just getting around to it at 60. But if they suffered then they
must have loved me because it is only the deep love I have for my child that
causes the kind of pain I am feeling.
I called my
oldest Al-Anon friend last night. I told her I just needed to talk to someone
who loved me and she does. She was honest though, telling me I needed to
prepare for my son’s slide into the darkness because it is happening and the
only one who can help him – isn’t me.
She also
reminded me that he has his own Higher Power and that he is on his own journey.
True. All he has to do is ask and his God will come through for him.
Just… what
if he doesn’t want to ask?
