“Please, God, don’t make me like Mamma.”
That’s the prayer that became my mantra as a little girl. Morning, noon, and night, it’s what I wished for most.
When I turned 30, I celebrated the fact that my mother’s schizophrenic genes had bypassed me. I thanked God for granting me my freedom from what I feared most: mental illness.
In February of this year, I turned 50. In May, I published The S Word, the first part of my memoir that shares secrets kept while coming of age surrounded by crazy. In June, I returned to my childhood stomping grounds and reconnected with so many grammar school friends, most of whom had no idea what was going on with me and my family back then, but who came to my book signing party as a show of support.
All of these milestones were known to me and planned for. But what I didn’t anticipate was that in July of this year, I would be given a taste of what my mother must have been going through, as my own head began to betray me – not with voices or paranoid thoughts – but with constant debilitating pain, headaches, and a skull that still today is one-half numb. [Read more…]
