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Loving Someone with Mental Illness

Part 1

By Emily LPublished 5 years ago 4 min read
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photo cred: Jesse Singal

Loving someone with a mental illness has got to be one of the hardest parts of life. To see someone you love with all your heart suffer so much and not be able to do anything to alleviate that pain is heartbreaking.

I’m the second oldest in a family of four kids. Often times, in a family where at least one parent is an alcoholic, one of the children takes on the caretaker role. It just so happens that my mom was the alcoholic parent, and I was (am) the caretaker child.

My mom has since gotten sober, but the underlying cause of her alcoholism – bipolar disorder – is still extremely present.

When I was younger and my mom was still drinking, I did everything I could to make her happy. I washed dish after dish, swept floor after floor, looked after my younger siblings, did well in school, and behaved well. Now, I realize these should be normal behaviors of well-behaved teenagers, however, my intentions behind doing them weren’t to gain responsibility or be helpful to my parents, it was to make my mom put down the vodka bottle and pay attention to me. To make her happy enough that she didn’t need that drink, or two, or three. To make her really look at me and say I was enough to make her happy. Enough to conquer the desire to numb everything with alcohol.

When all of these attempts weren’t good enough, didn’t achieve their singular goal, I began to feed my mom this rhetoric that I was going to be a doctor. I felt, in my 16-year-old mind, that if I could just achieve being a doctor, my mom would be proud and love me enough to stop drinking.

I worked my ass off in high school. I took AP science courses and joined the National Honor Society. I was dead set on going to college, majoring in biology, going to medical school. Achieving this dream I thought was my own, but was really a ploy to get my mom to be happy.

Once I got accepted into university and decided on a biology major, it began to feel more real. I realized what I was starting to get myself into, with my calculus course and my chemistry class. I let my mom know about how excited I was about becoming a doctor.

Within the first two weeks of starting university, I got a call.

My mom had almost drowned. She was out late at night, drunk, swimming in our pool. She had trouble getting out of the pool because she was so drunk. She kept tripping underwater and hitting her head on the pool steps. I came home that weekend to find her nose broken and cheeks bruised. She dismissively told me a painting had fallen on her, but my dad had told me the truth.

Before this happened, I had felt it was my responsibility to make my mom happy. If I could just do this one thing, then she’ll smile and laugh and not feel the need to drink. But when my ultimate plan of being a doctor had failed to get my mom sober, I realized that no matter what I did, I could never make her happy. I can’t fix her. I can’t help her. Nothing I can do will change her.

At first this realization shattered me. I was so depressed, I couldn’t even get out of bed. I became anxious, withdrawn, despondent. I couldn’t focus on my studies. I gave up going to classes. I needed attention, validation, love. So I sought after it through random hookups. I just wanted to be held.

After a semester of this, I realized I had to start living my life for myself and doing what I wanted to do.

I finished out the year, barely passing my science courses. I withdrew from university and moved to the other side of the country.

I kept my contact with my mom to a minimal. I had to for my mental health. And I did what I had to do. I worked, made friends, learned to be independent. It was one of the best times of my life. I felt I could finally breathe again.

It took a while to feel better. I had to put in a lot of work, so I don’t want it to come across that moving was this huge solution. It just helped to literally distance myself from the problem in order to focus on myself.

My advice for people in a similar situation as me is to remember who you are living this life for. Yourself! You have to set boundaries with the mentally ill people in life and cut them out if absolutely necessary. I know, much easier said than done.

But, I assure you, it’s worth it for your own mental health.

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About the Creator

Emily L

Too broke to afford therapy so I write.

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