mental illness stigma Archives - Paolina Milana

Life Lessons From One Celebrated Lone Wolf

February 12, 2018 By Paolina Milana Leave a Comment

Today is my birthday. I’ve lived five-plus decades on this planet. At times, it feels like ten times that. At other times, it feels as if I’m just getting started and don’t know much at all. I have learned a lot of life lessons — some good, some bad, some I seem to have to repeat over and over again, and I still haven’t gotten them right!

One notable mention I’m addressing here has to do with what some call a trigger. For many of us, when someone says something about us that we perceive as negative, we may spend a lot of our limited time on earth fighting it, negating it, worrying if it’s true, fearful of it and its implications. I’m not immune to placing importance on what outsiders say, even if the source isn’t one I value. (That’s one of the things I’m still working on learning to navigate in this life…)

The phrase that’s recently become a trigger for me is that of being called a “lone wolf”; it’s right up there with being told to “tone it down” and being asked “who do you think you are?” (not in a positive sort of way).

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Normal or Nuts?: Fine Lines When Crazy Calls

January 17, 2018 By Paolina Milana Leave a Comment

I was raised by a mom diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Back then, in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, not even the so-called Ph.D’d professionals knew what was going on or how to deal with “crazy.” And if they didn’t know, we – my immigrant English second language family – couldn’t possibly have known. It’s part of why mamma went without any kind of treatment, hearing voices and seeing things that really weren’t there, for far too long, making her a danger to herself and to us.
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I still can’t shake memories of a 14-year old me in 1979 helping my papà commit mamma to a hospital psych ward. Part of me exhaled in relief, knowing we were rid of her, even if only for a little while. Another part of me became consumed with guilt over what I then didn’t fully understand had to be done.
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For much of my life, I tried to separate my parts, doing my best to distance those genes of insanity that I had inherited through no fault of my own. I kept my mamma at arms-length, afraid of the demons she battled and the parts of her she could not control. And I kept our family’s schizophrenia a secret from the outside world, lest I be subjected to the stigma and discrimination by association.
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Mental Illness and Mamma

May 4, 2016 By Paolina Milana Leave a Comment

Mother’s Day is hard for me. The fact that it falls in the very same time frame as Mental Health Awareness month makes it even harder.

As fresh-off-the-boat Sicilians, my parents practiced their own form of Cosa Nostra, and we were taught that what happened within the family, stayed inside the family. It was “Our Thing” and nobody else’s business. As a result, I became a master at keeping secrets, making it all the way to the 8th grade before anyone discovered ours.

Then came Christmas morning 1979.

Like all good Catholics, my father, my siblings and I were racing to leave the house and get to our local church for ten a.m. mass. The church was notorious for being “standing room only” on this one day of the year. Mamma hadn’t joined us for years, so when she appeared at the top of our staircase, dressed from head to toe in Scarlet O’Hara red (the very color she never wore and didn’t approve of her girls wearing), I knew we were in trouble. My father, on the other hand, chose to believe it was a Christmas miracle, gifted to him by God after years of prayer, asking for an end to the demons that tormented his wife.

Mamma spent her nights sitting in the dark on the sofa, screaming profanities in Italian, swearing that she would murder us all, plotting and pleading with voices only she could hear. She stashed sharp kitchen knives and my brother’s wooden baseball bats under the bed she shared with Papá, promising to use them if he dared to close his eyes or step one foot into the bedroom. Papá ignored the potential danger, always choosing to sleep in their bed, while I rarely did in mine, trying to stay awake and keep vigil for fear of Mamma following through on her threats. [Read more…]

Screw RIP: Rock it out, Vinster

January 17, 2016 By Paolina Milana Leave a Comment

“I wrote this,” my sister Viny whispered to me once when I visited her in a locked down psychiatric facility where she was a patient, as she handed me a thick, leather-bound book, the words “Holy Bible” glistening in gold on its cover.

“Catchy title,” I remember responding, one of my usual flippant answers when my youngest sister was off her meds and crazy came calling.

The baby of our family, two years my junior, was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia at the age of 24. And so, in a weird deja vu that I wish on no one, a dozen years after having watched my own Papa sign Mamma’s commitment papers, I watched my own hand, as if not belonging to me, sign my own name, taking the lead role this time in locking my younger sister away.

For reasons I still don’t understand, my sister’s repeated going off her meds and descending into madness always seemed to happen just in time for the holidays. More often than not, in January, we would be dealing with her in some facility or just having been released from some facility.

Oddly enough, what I wouldn’t give to have that be the case today. But it stopped on January 17, 2014. Because she stopped, or her heart did. That big heart that always fought for the underdog and loved without judgement and never could be filled with whatever she needed to be at peace, because what she sought could never come from the outside.

I had taken those calls countless times. “Your sister’s fallen out of bed.” “Viny’s been in a fight.” “Viny had to be taken by ambulance to get her meds checked.” It made my life hell. And at the same time, it gave me some bizarre sense of purpose. The last call I took was one I expected to end the same way, with the nurse and I agreeing to some tried and true course of action: upping her meds, bribing with incentives to take her meds, threatening to take away privileges if she didn’t take her meds… Only this last call offered no course of action.

I miss my little sister. More than I ever would have imagined. And I delude myself into hoping that the girl whose dream it was was to be a rock star is now up in heaven jamming with David Bowie.

Screw “rest in peace” – hope you’re “rockin’ it out” Vincenzina – the Vinster – Milana. What a huge hole you have left for those you’ve left behind.

Misunderstanding Mental Illness: How Often It Must Lead to Discounting Physical Ailments & to Keeping Them Secret

August 23, 2015 By Paolina Milana Leave a Comment

“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…]