mental illness

The fall, winds of change

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Even though autumn is my second favorite season, I always feel sad to see the end of summer. I don’t feel like I enjoyed summer as much as I should’ve. The end of summer brings another change, and not just with the seasons.

Tomorrow Arabella has her last court date. After two years, she will now be off of probation. She spoke with her lawyer, and told him she has since been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. Hopefully she will be able to have her charges dismissed. Her crime was classified as domestic abuse, without consideration she was in a manic state with psychosis. She didn’t have the diagnosis at the time of her criminal offense, her mental illness was just beginning.

The first couple months out of jail was a rough ride, but once she finally got a proper diagnosis with the proper treatment she has become the daughter I’ve always wanted her to be. Perfect, no. But finally getting her life back together. She has been holding down the same job for the past two years. My son Alex recently told Arabella he forgave her for hurting us and his hatred towards her. She is a different person now, a better person who wouldn’t think of hurting anyone. This past week she started dating someone new. He seems like a nice guy.

Alex starting dating someone too. He is with Arabella’s friend, the girl who went to rehab a couple months back. This past weekend Alex was playing with his band. By the time Paul, Angel, and I got to the show his new girlfriend was wasted. She was hitting on everyone. She met Angel for the first time and it didn’t go well. Angel tried to tell her she was Alex’s sister but Angel thought his new girlfriend saw her as competition. This girl was drunk and out of control in front of Alex while he was playing. At one point, she could barely walk so we sat her down with some water.

When Alex got done playing, he was upset and wasn’t sure what to do. We thought perhaps their relationship would be over. The next day, Alex told us he gave her an ultimatum. He told her if she wanted to be with him, she had to stop drinking. He told her in return he would quit drinking too. I have been really concerned lately about my son’s alcoholism. Since he started with this new girl, both of them took drinking to a whole new level. She wanted them to do shots first thing in the morning. He has been black out drunk several nights in a row for weeks, maybe longer. I don’t always see it.

It won’t be easy to turn away from alcohol in our culture. When Alex plays, fans often buy the band drinks and shots. The last week or so his eyes were opened. While playing he had the opportunity to see what hard core alcoholism looks like, how it can destroy people and relationships. He said with or without his new girlfriend, he was going to give up drinking because he doesn’t want that to be a part of his future.

I see a lot of change in the air.

Mental health awareness month

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Many of you are probably aware that May is mental health awareness month. Maybe you already shared the cutesy memes on social media stating you are a friend that anyone can call day or night. Maybe that is enough for you to feel good to check off your awareness month, and have moved on to planning your pride party for June. Or maybe you also live in Wisconsin and are stocking up on cheese curds for June dairy month. I know, I know…cheesy..

Or maybe you are like me and found out that mental illness is not all that cute. Maybe you or your loved one has already lost the friend that you can call anytime. Mental illness is tough. I’m sure everyone who struggles with it would remove that part of their life if they had the choice. It’s so painful and malignant, that far too many remove themselves from life altogether when it refuses to leave them.

Through NAMI, and talking with other parents whose children struggle with mental illness, I was surprised to find some striking similarities. I am not the only parent whose child attempted suicide. I am not the only parent whose child was incarcerated after a psychotic episode. I am not the only parent whose child, after making abuse allegations, moved in with another family. I am not the only parent whose child hears voices commanding them to end their life and soothing voices telling them how peaceful death is. I am not the only parent whose child has lost a lot of good friends because of their mental illness. I am not the only parent whose child was bullied because they are different.

I could make a much longer list. But the point here is awareness. Don’t blame the family. Don’t blame the mentally ill. Most would choose to change it if they could. Don’t shun them out of ignorance or fear. Treat them as if they have a potentially life threatening form of cancer. Treat them with compassion while being mindful of your own mental health as well.

Be kind to the server who has cutting scars all over her arms. For today, she has successfully battled the voices in her head. She has battled the voices outside her head sending similar messages about her worth. She has many battle wounds but is still alive fighting. That girl is also my daughter. But she could be your daughter as well. Or your son, sibling, parent, partner, neighbor, friend, or yourself.

Be aware that one in five Americans struggle with mental illness.

Aloha!

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Paul and I just got back from our trip to Hawaii. Over the next several days I will be posting about our travels. I’m glad we were able to go. It was looking iffy about whether or not we would be able to go. Arabella was in crisis mode right before we left experiencing mania and psychosis. I felt like it would totally crush my spirit not being able to go. But I also felt guilty about leaving her. Some time there is not such a thing as good timing.

Paul and I worked hard to make the trip possible. We set up a meeting with a social worker who is working on getting Arabella a case manager. We had Alex and Lexi set up to watch over Arabella and our pets with Angel and Dan being the backup for them. Then we also had our best friends being backup for our adult children.

We were gone over Easter which was a different experience altogether. I felt a little bad for leaving over the holiday because I didn’t want Alex and Lexi to have nowhere to go. Arabella was spending the holiday weekend with my mom. Thankfully Angel’s in-laws invited Alex and Lexi over for dinner and even got them little baskets of candy. It warmed my heart to see them having a nice time without me.

I was worried about how things would go at home. But like most of my fears, the bad things I worried about didn’t end up happening. And the things that actually did happen were not expected. Such is life.

We ended up having a snowstorm at home while we were gone and the power was out for over a day. The power came back on in the wee hours of the morning right before we got home. Thankfully the refrigerator was pretty empty so we didn’t lose a lot of food. There are still some people without power from the storm. The yard is full of sticks and small branches from the strong winds which is really making the dogs happy.

Overall, though, everything went as good as it could. The medication is finally working and Arabella is no longer psychotic. She is doing so much better which is a great relief for us. We are slowly digging out of the pile of laundry, emails, and cleaning. The house is still standing.

We had a wonderful getaway.

Green light, red light 5

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Another crisis was averted when Arabella rescinded the release order she signed the day after her voluntary commitment. Paul and I decided it was time for us to visit Arabella.

We arrived during adult visiting hours in the evening. Once again we had to lock up all of our belongings including our cell phones and sat in the waiting room with a sad lot of people. Like in an elevator, no one looked long at each other. We all got swept by the metal detector screening us for weapons. Then with a buzz the outside door unlocked and we silently walked down the long hallway into the cafeteria where we waited for our loved ones to arrive.

It seemed like we waited a long time for Arabella to arrive. Everyone else arrived before her. We watched while the others embraced with a smile and sat down as if in a regular restaurant to have normal conversations. Arabella arrived in disarray clutching a notebook with the word password written on it. She said password was the password and if we could read it, we could look inside. She cautioned us that the hospital was bugged. First we had to bug the system to debug the system. It was strange because they were having issues with their phone system which Arabella slid comfortably into a delusion that everything was bugged so we had to go to a different algorithm.

Arabella said she was a genetic freak. She was born of one woman and two men. She had an extra chromosome. She said she was colorblind, men can only see primary colors and women can only see secondary colors. She said she liked apple juice because she ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. When she ate she knew all the answers to all the problems of the world.

She said she needed Bryan to come to the hospital because he was her soulmate, her other half. Her bloodwork wouldn’t be complete without him coming in the have his blood drawn. They were storm chasers and she could leave now because it wasn’t storming. She spoke of science, DNA, physics, time travel, and biology. The things she was saying had an iota of truth but was jumbled and didn’t make a lot of sense. She was unable to hold a conversation with us.

But the most troubling thing was that she was slurring her words off and on. We noticed that when we were talking on the phone several times but thought maybe it was from being sedated. She held her mouth funny at random times and words almost seemed to whistle through her teeth. She said she couldn’t talk because no one ever showed her how to talk right. She also said no one ever showed her how to brush her teeth and she had gingivitis.

We were very concerned about her new symptoms. Then she started singing. They said sometimes she would sing loudly in her room. When visiting time was over, the patients had to line up on one side and the visitors on the other. Arabella went her own way and started to take one of the signs off the wall. We told her she couldn’t take the signs off the wall.

We left in shock. Our daughter was still gone. Would she ever be the same again?