mental illness

My mother had her first psychotic episode on her 40th birthday. As her birthday bash extended into its fourth day of drunken celebrations, it became apparent that something wasn’t right. I was 11 years old at the time and from then on, our lives were ruled by my mother’s rapid-cycling bipolar I disorder.

My brother, Frederick, was eight when I was born. I don't know if he was happy to have a sister or resented me being born, as it was difficult to get any kind of reading on what he was thinking or feeling. I never felt any love or affection from him — unless his way of showing it was through emotional and physical abuse.

Depression isn't just about being unhappy about something or feeling blue; it's a legitimate and very serious medical condition with many emotional, physical, behavioral and cognitive symptoms. It isn't inevitable for anyone living in the modern world, and it also doesn't mean that you're a bad or weak person if you suffer from depression.

I worry so much with every mood episode, with every burst of rage, every down day, every fit of tears that I am scarring my children. I worry that I am causing them irreparable emotional harm. You see, my children are young. They do not fully comprehend that their mother has a chronic mental illness.

A part of me gets it. If you’ve never had any mental illness, who wants to date a crazy person? Many people think of mental illness in extremes and stereotypes, i.e., depressed people never get out of bed or those with OCD will never leave the bathroom.

I was incapable of feeling. I could not show all the love and promise my heart held for those boys. Once I returned and started feeling better, we had to cope with a new challenge: mania and the onset of bipolar disorder.

Let’s just be real with each other, we all have bad days.

For the last six years, I have been living with depression. Despite the fact that I have extremely low moments when there is an inexplicable and unreachable pain inside me that demotes me into a sobbing, self-harming, low self-esteemed shell of the person that I actually am, there are a number of ways that living with (not suffering from) depression has improved my life and made me a better human being.