I'm going to get personal, I may even make some people mad. But right now I have a lot to say. I'm usually a really nice person, loving and kind. I love to help others, its why I work at a child crisis shelter. Its why I cant sit by silently and not speak out why someone so precious to me is suffering.
I have a cousin, a sweet, funny, caring man who suffers from bi polar, Schizoaffective disorder, drug addiction and severe brain damage from a violent attack in his teens and a tragic accident as a toddler.
On his medication he's not himself, he's spacey and quiet. He hates it, has told me that its like everything inside him is suffocating into nothingness. This causes him to stop taking his meds..
Off his meds he's himself after a few days. Joking and laughing, telling stories, playing video games and cooking. Till something triggers him. And he becomes violent. Or the voices in his head tell him to hurt someone. Think I'm lying? Ask my aunt why she is missing the tip of her right ring finger. Or my younger cousin why she still has nightmares.
Living with someone with mental illness is hard, is heartbreaking to watch them suffer. Not everyone who is mental ill is like this. His condition is severe, he's supposed to be on a strict supervised diet of medication and see therapist as well.
But because he refuses to consider it my aunt wont do it, he's her baby. As a mom I get that. Its a heart wrenching thing to make your child do what they dont want. But as a mother you have to put their needs before their desires.
You have to step up.
You have to make the hard choices, you have to shatter your heart and be the mom. Moms don't get to take the easy way out. I am alive, my sister is alive, my niece is alive because my mother stepped up each time she was given the choice between aborting me, and saving my sister or saving her unborn child. She didn't just sit back and do nothing. She did everything she had to. Like I'm sorry for over sharing but I really just want people to see and understand the seriousness of mental disorders. Of the very serious conditions that can afflict anyone, some organic, some enviromental, and some emotional.
When you find yourself faced with trying to help someone with mental illness or doing nothing you will think of my cousin. Think of how he's suffering and why..and maybe you'll choose to help. To say something, do something, tell someone, donate to a mental hospital.I dont know. But hopefully you will.
