Our Crazy Mother.

This context contains sensitive material that refers to Mental Health, Abuse and Trama.

There was a time in my life when I thought I had lost her forever; my mother Shannon was diagnosed with bipolar 2 disorder at the age of 18 right after giving birth to me. Which explains why there are five of us. Her impulsiveness led her to get pregnant four more times. I have always wondered how my life would have been if I was an only child. As an adult I have come to terms with the fact that I indeed had to share my life with four other humans,

Growing up in a home with a bipolar mother was, I want to say exciting, but traumatic is a better word for my brothers and my up bringing. We would have a few weeks of what we called the good mom, where everything was organized, and we were on time for school. Our lunches would be packed, breakfast made, there was order. We also loved good mom because she loved to take us on what she called adventures.

We would all pack in our large Astro van and drive endlessly into the night, listening to music playing car ride games and enjoying each other, never knowing where we would end up. Most of the time we would end up in the far Suburbs of Chicago. If mom was really happy, we end up in another state. What was sad is we all knew it would end soon and Sad Mom would return.

Sad mom would return overnight. We would wake up and there wouldn't be any breakfast. There wouldn't be lunches packed. Mom would be laying in her dark room crying. She was unable to pull herself out of the thought of wanting to die. She would cry about not being good enough for us. She would say she hated being sick and that we deserved better. We knew that until she got better, we would have to basically, fend for ourselves.

I was nine, my brother Anthony was 4, Mark was 3 Jeremiah was 2 and Jacobb was only a few months old. I hated that she had another baby and I hated that she married someone who didn't give a shit about us. When mom was sad mom, we would be forced to eat frozen pizzas every night of the week. We were treated like dirt. We weren't allowed to be kids. The rules and the consequences were, in my opinion, a form of abuse.

My brothers and I would stay up late at night planning our escape, but never could go through with the plans because we knew Good Mom would return and things would get better. As presumed Good Mom appeared. We had no idea how different things would be this time. At first it was back to normal. Order returned and we were happy again. This time mom was overly happy. I noticed when I woke up at 7 am and there was a couch in our tiny kitchen. Mom was packing things in boxes and chanting "if I pack, we move".

Her husband Carlos suggested she see a doctor and that was the first day I saw her have a psychotic episode. She started laughing uncontrollably and fell to the floor. My brothers were just waking up at the time. I tried to get them to go in the other room because I knew something wasn't right. They weren't listening. Carlos yelled at us to go to the other room. We went by Jacobb who was still in his crib crying. Anthony was also crying. I told them everything was going to be alright.

As my brothers and I watched my mother kicking and screaming at the paramedics and Carlos standing there crying begging her to stop we all felt our lives about to change. They finally got her to calm down and strapped her to a stretcher. She looked zombie like as she looked at us and said she loved us with all of her heart. I started to cry. I thought I was going to lose her forever.

This was the first hospitalization that we witness and sadly wasn't the last. Every episode was dramatic. If she was depressed, we dealt with suicide. If she was manic, we dealt with impulsive relationships, and relocations.

Growing up in the city of Chicago under those circumstances wasn't easy for any of us. We never built strong, healthy, long-lasting, friendships or relationships. We built a wall against the world to protect each other and our mother. Until the last Straw.

I was now 16. My mother had chosen once again to be in a relationship with someone who was detrimental if she wanted to be the good mom, she claimed she wanted to be.

This relationship got so bad she decided we were all moving to a small town called Normal. Three hours away from Chicago. I put my foot down. I was sixteen years old! No way was I moving to some hick town. My younger brothers didn't have an option. She forced them to move. My anger towards my mother was bubbling inside of me. For all the times we've been through hell because she didn't want to manage her mental health. But I couldn't tell her, instead I watched them drive away leaving me behind with my alcoholic Grandmother.

I kept in close contact with my brothers. My mother was getting worse. They were afraid she might need to go to the hospital again and being three hours away from a single soul they knew. I knew I had to do something. I had my aunt drive me too Normal. As I had thought my mom needed hospitalization. They lost everything. She had to move back with the man she left to go to Normal. I was glad they were back. It was safe for us. My mother wasn’t safe. He had been hitting her.

When my brothers and I found out we confronted him. He blamed her using all her psychotic episodes as an excuse. Maybe it was because we were all so tired of getting all the consequences from my mother's behavior or maybe it was because we saw her do some really shady things in the past, either way we sided with him. That day almost killed my mom. She got completely intoxicated. It looked like it was hospital time for her but before we had a chance to call the paramedics, she took off in a car, we had never seen before. Little did we know she was running back to Normal. She sent me a text message that said. I’m off to Normal to finally be Normal.

My mother’s ex-boyfriend took us all in and tried to raise us as his own. He showed us how to be men, he made us believe that my mother hated us. He was an ex-convict and had just gotten out of prison, so in actuality he was teaching us how to be institutionalized. He was teaching us how to hate. I know I missed my mother but was too afraid to admit that to my brothers, in fear of being “weak”.

It had been a couple of weeks when we finally heard from mom. She sounded good but we knew it wouldn’t last. Next time she contacted us she hated all of us and never wanted to talk to us again. This went on for months. We stopped answering eventually because we didn’t care to hear it and we were busy becoming engulfed in the city street way of living.

One day she showed up at our door. She looked different. She looked happy. Not her normal manic happy but a genuine look of peace or joy. I couldn’t figure it out, but I knew it was strange. My brother Jeremiah started crying, apparently, he missed her too. Anthony ignored her and Mark just sat there starring at her blankly. My mother looked at all of us and said, “boys I’m better” Anthony laughed and said, “yeah we’ve heard that before.” Jeremiah looked excited like he believed her, and Mark just walked away. I said to her that I didn’t care and even if she was better, it was too late.

Normally she would have flown off the handle but instead she said she understood. She asked Jeremiah if he would return to Normal with her and he said yes. We were all surprised by his answer but had built another wall of hate that we just made fun of him as he packed his things and left. A few months pass and my brothers and I have gotten more involved in the street life. Doing things that definitely could have got us put in prison or killed. My mom and my brother show up, this time my brother vouches for my mom. We still refuse there offer to live in fairy land. Jeremiah looked disgusted with us as he left that day.

My brothers and I started having serious problems with Mickey. My mom warned us that he was a psychopath. We never believed her because she was the one in and out of mental hospitals our whole life. Mickey got another girlfriend. He also abused her. I hated seeing it. One day I stood up for his girlfriend. He punched me in the mouth. I wanted to go back with mom. I told Anthony and Mark I was leaving expecting them to follow. Anthony who had always been self-centered said “I’m not going, Mickey hasn’t done anything to me.” Mark responded, “I can’t leave Anthony.”

I silently cried as I packed and waited for my mother.

I had only been in Normal for less than a week. So far so good, my mom was that loving good mom again but different in a good way. I was about to call Mark and tell him how I seen the difference in mom when my phone rang. It was Anthony, Mark had been shot at. My mom calmly grabbed the keys for her car and rushed us back to Chicago. Mark was hit in the leg. He was shot at because he was trying to rob an older man who obviously carried a pistole.

My mom in the calmest tone I have ever heard said. “Boys you are all coming home to Normal to finally be Normal. At this point we all had no choice but to believe in our mother once again. It was of course difficult and hostile in the beginning, but my mother remained calm. She told us all that she had found a new way to live and promised she was going to do everything right this time. She said she learned how to control her mental illness and how not to let it control her.

I am still in disbelief. My other brothers were intrigued by my mom’s new aura. Jeremiah told us about how mom would meditate for hours and listen to vibrational beats. She spent all of her time reading about religions such as Tao and Buddhism. He seemed excited about it which in return got us excited.

I’m not saying we all turned Buddha or religious in any manor, but this experienced opened up our minds spiritually.

We are all adults now and my mother is still doing amazing. We have all had our ups and downs in life and have had to unlearn so many cognitive beliefs about ourselves and life. We have struggled in our relationships and some of us struggle with social interaction. Regardless of what our life’s have become we all have learned Loyalty Perseverance and Integrity. We all have the mind set to climb a latter to greatness. We were taught to never give up. We live in light because of all we’ve been through, and all agree we can thank our beautiful crazy mother.