Part one: Just Another Manic Monday
For those of you who have ever had to live with a parent, relative or friend with bipolar affective disorder (or ironacally abbrieviated as BAD), you will probably know all too well that survival is for the fittest, the weak shall only perish and the pain will forever live on.
I have lived and coexisted for 27 years, 11 months and almost 30 days with a mother who has BAD and has no intention of admitting or believing that she even has an illness much less the desire to own her own life, take full responsibility and remain on medication and off illegal drugs and alcohol.
Like so many others in the same boat, here is my story...
1: Life is like a bowl of cherries
I was nievely born on the 28th of March in the year 1977. My mother was 17 just and my father only 19. I believe my mother was content to play happy families, ignoring the warning signs that my father was becoming a raging alcoholic. I am told that she was first addmitted to a hospial in Sydney for unreasonable behaviour when she was 21 and by my fathers account it was to do with her own fathers death, which had happened sometime after my birth.
Many skeletons in the closet and rumours galore surfaced from that time on and sorting the truth from the lies is still an ongoing hobby for me. I think the real truth shall die within the aging generations before me before I find it, but one thing that is certain, my mother had in some way been subjected to sexual abuse and her own mother refused to accept it or help her when it was needed the most. The stories that have plagued and floated around our family tree are like black clouds that are cold,cruel and calculated, but only a select few will ever know for sure if it is true and they will no doubt take it to their graves rather than admit their faults and shed light on an ongoing unsteadiness among immediate family members, who all in some aspect now have a mental illness.
So anyway, it can be noted that for my mother the onset of her BAD was probably due to childhood abuse and definately hereditary factors, but it was not diagnosed until after my father began to beat her.
I don't know how or when all the drinking and fighting started, but I strongly believe they both contributed in the beginning by being young and dumb, but my father had no right to hit my mother just because she was showing cracks in her stability. He did not help the fragile situation and sent it into diabolical mayhem.
I also believe that life is what you make of it, they married young, had a baby, realised life was too short, dad drank, mum argued, dad hit mum, mum breaks, children suffer a life time. Pretty common story back in those days. Eventually she did leave him but it was too late, the damage was already done. I was 6 years old by then, I had a 2 yr old brother named Daniel John and mum was diagnosed with Manic Depression.
2: Life on our own
We were always moving around after that. One moment we could be in a nice country house and the next we would be burdening our Grandmother while mum was recooperating in the local hospital. Occasionally our moves were a bit further away, but the illness always caught up with us and sent us packing back to Nanny's.
Mum always tried so damn hard to create a good life for us, and in dribs and drabs it was perfect. Besides that, the only one we knew.
I remember being in Yamba for a while and life was good. I went to school, and mum and Dan would walk me there and be waiting at the gates when I was finished. She had and still does have the most dedicated adoration for both us kids, it breaks my heart that there had to be bad times at all.
But she hung out with one to many strange men and I remember one trying to touch me while she was fixing him a drink. I was very young but I knew what he was trying to do was wrong. When mum came in she totally freaked out when she registered what was almost about to take place. She flew into a rage, threw his coffee at his head which he only narrowly ducked and it smashed into the wall and sprayed brown liquid everywhere. Then she threw him and his gear down the stairwell outside our front door. We were on the third floor, so he was lucky to get his footing before doing some really major damage, which is a bit of a shame.
So Yamba didn't turn out and we were eventually back at nanny's for a while and then eventually taken from mum and put into foster care. We didn't understand why any of the things that happened did at this stage, but we were beginning to get the feeling that life could be cruel.
3. Foster home number one
I don't remember us getting there, but I do remember that I got my very own double bed, in my own room. Daniel got the bottom bunk under their legally adopted son, who was the same age as Daniel but was uncontrollably spoilt and undisciplined.
I also remember overhearing that they dearly wanted a daughter to complete their dream of having a perfect family. From the moment I stepped foot in their house I knew for certain that there was something not altogether right about these people or there intentions. They were too nice to me for no perticular reason and acted as if Daniel didn't even exist.
I have always had an uncanny intuition that has never failed me to this day yet, and I use it to my advantage all the time.
Cracks started appearing in the perfect family by day two when Daniel and I discovered that their son had an entire set of drawers with nothing but neatly folded white socks, jocks, and singlets. All white! No colour what so ever. Even at our young age we felt this was strange and unusual.
To be continued...
Photos: yet to come, stay tuned...
