Getting help. Or not getting it, as the case may be...

As I have said before, one of my great desires as a child was to have someone come in and rescue me. Take me away from all the anger and pain. Remove me from the filthy house and the unwashed Mother. I wanted someone to tell my Mom that calling me names wasn’t OK. And that Dad wasn’t queer. Of course, it never happened. I did have family who seemed to be there for me as things got worse. My Aunt always seemed to be somewhat of a buffer as my Mom got sick. She spent a whole lot of time on the phone with my Mom, listening to her. My Mom would spend endless hours complaining to this Aunt…who is my Dad’s sister. I remember overhearing the conversations. My Mom spent considerable time complaining about my Dad. And about the issues that caused my Mom stress. I was stunned that my Aunt had that much patience with my Mom.

Then, I noticed that this Aunt seemed to be the only one who had any ability to get my Mom back into a more reasonable frame of mind during the discussions. My Mom valued the conversation with her, and when she became inappropriate, my Aunt would get her to behave by setting limits. It was incredible. What Dad couldn’t do, or her own daughters, my Aunt could. So, I began to rely on this Aunt to deal with my Mom and her issues. And periodically, I would escape to her house when things became overly
stressful at home. But sometimes this relationship was a double-edged sword. I remember her being tremendously supportive, and very loving. However, I remember also that she was the person that suggested to me that my behavior had an impact on my Mom’s behavior. The suggestion was that if
I was nicer to my Mom, she wouldn’t be so angry. This, in fact, really wasn’t the case. My Mom was angry whether I was there or not. My Mom was angry whether I was nice or not. I didn’t start the name-calling or outbursts. The fact was, I was responding to my Mom’s anger when I became angry.
Her name-calling and inappropriate behavior triggered me. And I knew no other way to deal with it. Her anger wasn’t coming from the outside. It was the result of faulty thinking connected to mental illness.
No logic at all. I truly wasn’t responsible for her illness. So, my behavior couldn’t change it. However, I took the suggestion from my Aunt seriously. For years, I thought that my behavior was a cause. Which resulted in a lot of guilt and shame. It took years of therapy to recognize that I wasn’t the responsible
party.

But when I look back on it, I don’t think that the family treated this like an illness. There was denial. We responded to her basically like she had control over what she was doing and saying. My Mom stopped bathing when I was about 8 years old. Many years later, one of my cousins asked me how long she
didn’t bathe…was it a couple of years or so? I was a little shocked. It was many years. And I know we had contact with my cousins during that time. What was the “couple of years” thing then? It was evidence of the denial. My Mom made many family gatherings difficult. This was true, even more so as
I got older. She seemed to get progressively worse. At family gatherings, she would sit in the kitchen of my Aunt’s house in her unbathed state. And she was hostile and resistant to socializing. Her hostility towards people seemed very evident to me. Did the family see it? Maybe it was because I was there
every day, it seemed worse to me. And my cousins didn’t see the true extent. Maybe there was a lack of understanding about how serious it was. Or maybe they believed it wasn’t serious because they didn’t understand it was illness? Families frequently have ‘strange’ family members. People who are
more difficult than others. I got the impression, from my perch as a child, that my Mom was seen as difficult. Not sick.