Ok. At the risk of losing all of my friends and followers but
in the interests of ending the stigma, I am going to be brutally honest in this
what turned out to be extremely long winded post.
Mothering with a mental illness is hard for me, some days
its fucking impossible.
I love my kids to the
moon and back but sometimes, oftentimes, I can’t stand to be around them. It’s
nothing they have ‘done’, yes they fight and act up and demand attention incessantly
but that is what children do, they are no different to anyone else’s kids. No,
it’s me with the problem and while I am aware of that, I find it really, really
hard to change.
I have four kids, not a single one of them was ‘planned’. My
first child was born when I was 17 but it could have been a lot earlier, I knew
better but my insecurities and hypomanias made me careless and I am just lucky
that the guy who eventually knocked me up turned out to be my soul mate.
I am so very glad
that my babies exist as they are each wonderful little people, such different
personalities with so much to offer the world, but a big part of me often regrets
having them because I am so very worried about just how much I am fucking them
up.
At 32 I still struggle to raise myself, I wonder how the
hell I can raise four children.
On the days that my self-hatred reaches boiling point and I am
struggling to look in the mirror without punching my own reflection I just don’t
have it in me to give them what they need, yes they have a roof over their
heads, clean clothes and food on the table but they don’t have the motherly emotional
stability and support. They need that and I am not providing it. It breaks my
heart.
During a depressive episode I often resent them for making
me interact with the world, getting out of bed to take the kids to school is
only slightly less impossible than the thought of keeping them home and having
to deal with them all day. I am then forced to get dressed because that one
time I didn’t I had a flat tyre on the side of the road and had to change it in
my pyjamas, I live in a small town full of sticky beaks, stigma and questions.
During a hypomanic episode I surprise them with pancakes and
spontaneous trips to the beach, until I haven’t slept for 4 days and get over
stimulated and irritable and just yell at them for breathing.
When I look at my offspring I see myself in them, they all
have my eyes and love for animals, some have my nose, my daughter has my hair
but when I see my mannerisms, my insecurities or the volatile way I react to
situations come out in them, it scares the shit out of me.
One of my children in particular seems to be following in my
wonky footsteps, he was diagnosed with global developmental delay, anxiety and
a ‘mood disorder’ at just three years old. He is definitely my most empathetic
kid, he feels EVERYTHING to his core, he is kind to everyone except himself and
when he drops something and unleashes hell in a tirade of swear words and self-doubt,
it is like looking in a mirror.
The haunting scars on his 13yr old arms and the memories of
the time he ate washing powder because he wanted to die during his first
depressive episode at age 11, which was kicked off by my own suicide attempt
& subsequent 2month hospital stay, that’s what rocks me to my core.
I caused that. He didn’t have the same understanding and
coping abilities of his siblings, I turned his little world upside down and I wasn’t
there to pick up the pieces when he needed me.
I don’t want him to be like me, but he is and while you
would think that would put me in a great place to understand him and help him,
it doesn’t. Well I understand, but I don’t know how to help, I don’t know what
to say and I get frustrated. It all feels too close to home and I haven’t yet
learned how to cope myself let alone give advice on the matter.
I open my mouth to
comfort him and anxiety shuts me down. He is doing ok at the moment, he’s
angsty but not depressed, the psychologists say that only time will tell if he
also has bipolar, he is moody and quick to temper, sometimes gets silly and
talks too fast but he hasn’t had a definable hypomanic or manic episode. Yet.
Now days I often feel that I had no right to have children
and inflict my genes upon someone else, but I did and I can’t change that. I
have only really come to terms with the fact that I have mental illness myself
in the last 4 years, before that stigma owned me and I didn’t want to think
about it. Denial is a river in Egypt.
My biggest fear is that I am verbally abusing my children. When
I am in a mood episode I yell a lot. I yell a hell of a lot. I swear at, to and
about my kids. I am trying really hard not to, I can get in a rage suddenly and
for no reason and words just come out without a filter. I hate myself for it.
The worst thing I have ever done in my life happened five
years ago when I chased after one of my children yelling, while I had a knife
in my hand. I don’t even remember what caused it, but I was quite irritably hypomanic
and had been chopping something up in the kitchen and was holding a kitchen
knife when I lost my shit about something my son did, he ran outside so I
chased after him still yelling, I was absolutely not considering using the
knife as a weapon, I just happened to still have it in my hand so it went with
me.
Even at my angriest I don’t smack my children at all, but
the child involved freaked out and thought I was going to hurt him, in that
moment he honestly believed that his own mother would stab him with a kitchen
knife, I will never forget the look on his face. As soon as I realised what he
was thinking I immediately dropped the knife and tried to hug him, I apologised
over and over promising I would never hurt him while he just backed away
screaming and screaming in terror. No child should ever, ever have that fear. I
don’t know how badly that damaged him and I will never forgive myself.
My kids are lucky to have their father in their lives, he is
stable and loving and has done a great job of navigating them through my mental
illness. He was the person who had to tell the ones old enough to understand
that I was unwell but safe in a psychiatric hospital, then he had to tell them
I had tried to kill myself while I was in this so called safe place and was now
on life support. He was the one who had to deal with all of their fears and
questions while trying to be positive telling them that the doctors would make
mummy better while not knowing if I would wake up brain damaged or even wake up
at all. He is a true rock.
I don’t know what the future holds for my family, my moods
have already done a lot of damage and I can only hope that things improve with
time. I have support around me now, the older kids seem to understand that my mood
swings are not their fault.
Nobody asks questions when I eat a different meal to the rest of the family each night, they give me extra hugs and make me "I love you mummy" cards when they notice I am
spending more time in bed and not wanting to answer the phone, they dance with me
when I have the music pumping at 7am having baked my 6th batch of cupcakes
and give me a wide berth when I am unreasonably irritable.
Mental illness is hard, while we may not have the perfect
home life we love each other and are trying our best to make it work.
