It’s been forever since I’ve updated. I’ve been dealing with a lot of family drama. (On a happier note, I’ve also moved!)

A few months ago, I wrote a small post about my mother’s suicide attempt. What I didn’t share was the events leading up to that day. After talking to my sisters, I realized that growing up, we all had the same mentality about keeping family affairs quiet. I wish we didn’t. I wish that we would have opened up to other adults in our life. Maybe, we could have found some peace.

I am sharing my story with you today in hopes that it will open your eyes to what some children deal with on a daily basis. No one truly knows what goes on behind closed doors. Today, I invite you through the door to my past.

I have two older sisters who tried to shield me from the majority of my mother’s episodes when I was younger. However, they both moved out before I became a teenager.

I don’t have any good memories of my mother from childhood. What I remember isn’t good.

I remember being told that my father didn’t love me enough to want to see me (in reality, she made it impossible for that to happen).

I remember her shuffling me around from one home to another because she couldn’t hold down a job. When I was in 4th grade, I went to three different schools, in two different states, in three different homes. Overall, I was in 9 different school districts. I know military families who moved less than we did.

I remember her not being able to keep enough food in the house due to her prescription pill addiction (that would later lead to a suicide attempt).

I remember being forced to sit beside her in church and pretend we were such a happy family when our home life was a nightmare.

I remember being told to “hide and don’t make any noise” when the local Rent-A-Center people knocked on the door wanting payment.

I remember so many things from my childhood that make my skin crawl now as an adult.

But for me, the real nightmare began when I started high school.

The summer before 9th grade, my mother made the decision to move back to her hometown. At that point in time, we were living 12 hours away. Things were good for about a month and then the mental breaks began happening again. One night, she woke me up, convinced I was on drugs. After threatening to kill me if she found any, I tried to leave the house. At that point,  she called the police. I was drug tested (negative result if anyone cares) and was promptly placed into a group home facility for a month to wait for a court date. When I read the police report, I was shocked and hurt by the lies my mother had told. This was when I began to realize just how abnormal my home life truly was.

After that incident, I missed a lot of school. There were so many nights she would keep me up for hours on end ranting about “the people coming to get her” or how “my friends were all going to kill her one night”. Pretty much every conspiracy theory under the sun, I heard about. It was a living nightmare to be home with her.

When I was 16 years old, she began acting more bizarre. We would be going to the grocery store and she would suddenly head a different way. She began to insist on her previous involvement in the occult or the involvement of her family members. There were countless nights she wouldn’t come home from work until the middle of the night. Looking back, I believe she was under the influence of drugs but I didn’t realize that then.

One night, she came home, telling me she crashed the car into a statue in town. She then promptly left again only to return hours later banging on the neighbor’s doors. We lived in an apartment building and it was around 2 in the morning. I finally gained the courage to call the police on her when I found her screaming in the hallway because no one would answer. The officer that night was truly an angel. He stayed with me and walked me through how to call a mental health caseworker, helped me write the report and gave me a ride home after admitting her to a psychiatric center.

After that, I moved that night in with my eldest sister 4 hours away. As soon as my mother was released , she moved to the same town. It has been utter hell, to say the least. I’ve personally have had to have her committed 6 different times. The police picked her up multiple times and her psychiatrist committed her once as well.

After all of this, she refused to continue treatment. Instead, relying on drugs. There are countless horror stories I could tell you about. That time she left the gas on with my newborn baby around, that time she pulled a knife on my sister or that time she told my other sister how she wished she’d have had an abortion with her. But, I don’t have enough time to type it all out.

When I found her in April, she was completely unconscious, pills strewn about. After going to the hospital, it took 15 hours for her to be stabilized. My family and I then realized we were not only dealing with mental illness and a perioral problem, we were also dealing with a drug addiction.

Rehab and psychiatric care have not helped her in any way. There has been constant drama. To the point where I had to leave work earlier and call off to handle it. Threats against children were made. At one point, she woke up 2 of my nieces and had them cleaning at 3 in the morning. I remember her pulling stuff like that when I was growing up.

It made me sick.

It got to the point where I had to say “ENOUGH”. I made the decision to estrange myself from her. And thankfully, my sisters seem to have as well. We are all trying to sort through the nightmares of our childhood together and figure out how much to share with and shield from our children.

I CANNOT deal with it anymore. It is not healthy for me or my family to be a part of the manipulation and drama. Therefore, I’ve made the decision to completely cut myself and my family out of the drama. It is healthier for us to handle it this way than to deal with the constant manipulation.

Please know this, if you have a family member that is completely unstable, you can choose to help yourself and walk away. I see it all the time, people stay in abusive relationships or friendships because it’s what’s normal for them. Don’t do that. Choose a healthier life for yourself.

I know that you might want to help your family, but sometimes, people just don’t want to be helped.

There are so many people who have shared their stories of abuse as a child. I hope I’ve opened your eyes to another type of abuse. One that can continue on even after children are grown.