Quote:
Originally Posted by Perna
I think the problem is one cannot know/separate the person from their illness.
I doubt your father knew your mother was going to or actually was chasing you around the house with a knife? We cannot predict anyone's behavior, especially someone with a mental illness? If your father was not there often, he probably did not know much of her behavior, how "bad" it could get or how it got in relation to his children, you and your sister.
Too, what would you have liked instead? We cannot cart your mother to the "mad house"/hospital, no one can afford that and doing so would have impacted you negatively too, because as a child you would not have understood. It is hard being a child, even an older teen, because our experience of the larger world is so limited. We generally only know our own family well and we have adapted to that family and its situations by default/because we have had to as that is all we've had.
I was thinking about the five year old boy who shot and killed his two year old sister and how, no matter what, both he and his parents are hosed for the rest of their lives? He can't be "taken away" and raised "better" because he'll always know what "he" did and can't possibly learn to believe, like we adults might, that it was not his "fault". He killed someone, his baby sister. Then we have the parents; the father wasn't even there but you know he feels responsible for not making sure the gun was unloaded, was put away? And his mother, it was a trailer, how much smaller/safer can a home be so the children can play and you can hear/know what is going on while doing some other chore that needs doing?
What else could your father have done? Your life went the way it did probably because it pretty much "had" to go that way. If he had burdened you with her illness, what could he have told you? If he had, somehow, put her away, what could he have told you? My mother died when I was 3, my life was forever changed and I spent 30 years in therapy, etc. Our lives can't come out "better" than they do, they come out as they come out. We could not have done something "better" or we would have? If your mother is not chasing you around the house with a knife when the police come, is calm and rational, how can they believe you? It's a he says/she says and the adult almost always has to win that. Nowadays, if a child is abused, they take the child away anyhow, that's the "joke" on kids that are angry at their parents and call to report they're being abused to get their parents in trouble. If the adults are taken away, the children have to be also because there's no one left to care for them?
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My father actually DID know that my mom frequently chased me and my little sister around with knives. When he was home, he was the one wrestling the knife out of her hand! That was pretty much a "typical" day in my house. Her trying to drown me in the pool was another "typical" day. Having her hit me every time I tried to get her to take her medicine was also "typical." That got slightly better the older I got, because when I was bigger it didn't hurt as much when she hit me. My "job" during these daily episodes was to lock my little sister in a bedroom or bathroom and to put myself between my sister and my mom so that my sister didn't get hurt. My other job was take any car keys around the house away from my mom and not let her get on the road. When I was 12, the police took her license away for reasons connected to her mental illness-- so that helped-- but there were times she got a hold of my dad's car keys or mine (when I got a license at 16), so I still had to routinely check on those keys. My dad was absolutely aware of this; he's the one who told me to keep the keys away from her! He also was well aware when she set fire to the kitchen, and when she flooded the house-- twice. He had to come home and deal with the police & then pay for the damages. My dad is also the one who found my mom each time she tried to commit suicide. If she wasn't running around manic, I didn't go looking for her; so when my dad would get home, he'd find her passed out.
I absolutely think my dad should have put my mom in a hospital/institution where she would have been safe. I genuinely mean that for HER benefit; not only so my sister and I would have been safe at home. My mom has never (in my lifetime) had the mental capacity to care for herself. She cannot go to the bathroom by herself (another fun job I had as an 11 year old!), she cannot dress herself, she cannot prepare meals for herself, she cannot understand/communicate with others, etc. This has gotten progressively worse; she's not someone who is able to be helped my medication. She has physical health problems as well. My sister and I begged my dad throughout our lives to find a safe place for her to go, but he refused. As an adult, I was given permission to talk to my mom's psychiatrist. He told me that he recommended to my dad that my mom go live in a specific facility (covered by insurance, 5 min from our house) as early as 1998-- when I was still a child, living at home. He said that he even tried to go over my dad's head because he felt my mom was not getting proper care in the home, but "the system" ultimately did not permit him to so. My dad is a lawyer and was able to fight it. I even got my mom's psychiatrist to talk to my current T, to explain to her just how bad the situation with my mom is/was, because I was afraid she wouldn't believe me if she didn't hear it from him.
Now that my little sister has moved out as well, my dad has to care for our mom by himself. Now that it's his job, he realizes how hard it is and he can't do it. He told me just yesterday (after I posted) that he is going to finally take the doctor up on his recommendation and find a place for my mom to live safely. Apparently, last night, she attacked him.
Moving out and living alone as a college student was the first time I ever knew what it was like to feel safe in a home. Being 18 and only having myself to take care of was the biggest relief I have ever felt in my life. Like others on the board, my childhood wasn't a childhood and there's nothing I can do to go back and somehow get a childhood now that I'm an adult. That's why I'm in therapy; luckily, I did not inherit my mom's mental illness, but I do need therapy to deal with how her illness has affected me and my life. I think that if my dad had put my mom in the residential hospital that her doctor recommended, I would have had at least a little bit of a childhood. I wouldn't have had to take care of her by myself. I wouldn't have had to be subjected to her abuse. I wouldn't have fought with my dad so much about being left alone with her. I could have gone out and been with my friends, or invited friends over. I wouldn't have had to lie every day to friends/teachers/doctors about what was going on in my house. And my mom wouldn't have hurt herself so much either, because hospital staff would have protected her from herself. It may not have been ideal, but I do think it would have been better.