Reality Is a Tenuous Thing
Michelle on Jun 21 2008 at 2:38 am | Filed under: The Personal
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Oh God.
You carry a child in your body, birth it, and you are so happy if the child is healthy. The thing is, it’s too soon to sigh with relief and relax.
Your child could go on to develop schizophrenia. Perhaps your child triggered it himself, through the use of various and sundry hallucinagins, some of which you’ve probably never heard of.
You ask yourself questions. Questions like, “What if I had never gotten divorced and he had had a more stable life?”
You tell yourself, “Maybe then he wouldn’t have escaped into a world of drugs, a world far from reality.”
You are angry at yourself for letting him have a computer. Did you know that the compounds for hallucinagenics can be researched and then ordered on the computer?
You blame yourself.
You blame society for being generally fucked up.
You blame your kid for using.
You blame your ex for sending him those Carlos Casteneda books.
You wonder if the drugs caused it, or if it was lying in wait all along. If it would have surfaced anyway.
You hope it is a temporary thing. You are afraid to say the words. We all know the power of words.
You took it in stride when he told you about the voices he heard in the restaurant, and then you just felt crazy in the head and cried a whole lot.
You don’t know what to do.
You want to tear things up.
You think you might understand the anti-drug crusaders. Maybe they don’t want to legislate your life after all. Maybe they want to save you this pain.
You just really want it to go away. You don’t want that much “neurological diversity” in your family. You want him to achieve his full potential.
You really don’t know what to do.
I am so sorry. Hugs to you.
My Dad works in mental health and from conversations I’ve had with him, the right medication and professional care can mean it’s possible to live a normal life. He’s also said that any kind of mental illness like this often first shows up in someone’s late teens, so any number of things could be the trigger, or maybe it’s just the transition to adulthood. From what I understand a person is often predisposed to schizophrenia. Not that I’m an expert I’ve just heard a lot about this kind of stuff from my Dad (and sometimes I actually pay attention).
This may not help you right now, but there is hope, and I doubt there’s anything you could have done differently to have prevented this.
Oh, NO. This sounds horribly stressful and frightening. There are meds that can help and counseling. It’s just a question of finding the right mix. I’m so sorry that this is happening, Michelle. Much love.
The brain is a spectacularly complex thing, and I suspect it’ll be many, many years before we understand it with any kind of depth. Until then, it’s easy to blame ourselves for things like this because we can construct simple and compelling chains of cause and effect - divorce to drugs to schizophrenia - which are in reality merely superstitions, appealing because they seem better than admitting that we don’t actually know.
Plenty of mentally healthy people grew up with married parents who showed them nowhere near the love you have for your children, Michelle. People become ill, and it’s not always clear why. But the best thing for them is to look to how to help them in the future, rather than worry about what you could have done in the past.
I think I was tense during the pregnancy, crying at all my dr’s appointments. And now R is the paranoid one, checking on the baby throughout the night. I’m sending you cyber hugs.
I’m so sad to read this. What a frightening thing to deal with, and so many unknowns. Hugs to you! There is help out there, and I agree it’s best to look forward than back.
I’m not sure if you’re in to this kind of thing or not, but I’ll say a couple of prayers for you!
Wow.. I’m sorry that you’re going through this. I hope that I never have to experience this as I will be having our first baby (a boy) in late October.
I watched my mother go through the same thing with my younger sister and, truthfully, it wasn’t easy for me to watch my “baby” sister turn into a completely different person from who I grew up with.
Drugs mess people up, but I think it’s only the people that have that thing that makes them addicted. I think she got that gene (or whatever it is) from my father - he’s an addict as well. I’m thankful it passed me over.
I wish I could tell you that my mother knew (or knows) what to do about my younger sister. She doesn’t and neither do I. My sister won’t even return phone calls and she’s moved so much that we have no idea where she is living.
I hope it gets better for you. Maybe the first commenter had it right. Medications might help. I can’t say that I know from personal experience, but I know several family members that are living happier lives because they are on medication.
Being an adult is hard sometimes, isn’t it?
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