So my mom is crazy. Not diagnosed crazy, just... well, growing up, she was across the spectrum in terms of mood. Zero consistency in how she would act one day to the next. Some weeks she would spend pretty much all day in bed, other weeks she'd be a flurry of activity, up all night cleaning and cooking and doing projects around the house. Some days she'd be a warm and nurturing person, wanting to solve all your problems, and the next she'd bite your head off for anything at all.

None of that is what makes me say she's crazy though. I'm pretty sure she is undiagnosed bipolar, and I'm pretty sure I'm cut from the same cloth.

The thing that worries me is her possible psychotic breaks that happened in her late 30s (my age now). She would 'black out' for decent amount of time, up to 30 minutes, and when she woke up, she'd think she was in 1940s New England (we lived on the west coast). She would think her husband and 1 of her children had been killed in a car accident, and would fawn all over my sister (who was the one who had been killed), and it was all just so freaking WEIRD. This state would last quite a while, and happened so frequently that I can remember my father coming home to no dinner, and me just saying oh, mom lost her memory again... I knew at the time that this was not quite right, but it has only been recently that it REALLY started bugging me. The other thing is, these episodes mysteriously stopped shortly after my baby brother, 14 years younger than I am, was born (he's special needs).

Now that I'm around the same age as she was when these things happened, I can't stop wondering - did she make them up completely? Was she just overwhelmed with kids and life and her bipolar issues and pretend this stuff? Was she testing us to see if we could function without her? Was it real? Why the heck did my dad let this go on for so long? My mom is still living, and I feel like I should ask but I cannot imagine the conversation going well. So I will bring it up to my counselor, but it all sounds so absolutely crazy when I try to describe it.

Is that kind of amnesia/false memory really a thing? At this point, I'm hoping she made the whole thing up, as rotten as that would make me feel, because at least then I could stop worrying about something similar happening to my and my kids.