I was wondering if there is anybody else who grew up with mentally ill parents and how are you coping, and how does that still affect your relationships.
In the last week I "broke up" with my codependent mother, who hopefully, after 20 years of dragging in loneliness trying to live my life, is now more motivated to seek help and get a life, and yesterday I was absent-minded and I started reading a freshly arrived letter from my ex-bipolar father now schizophrenic paranoiac (never treated, because nobody was around except my mother (codependents are not big on helping others), and I was too small to be able to do anything) who still accuses me that it was all my fault, back then when I was 8, 9, 10, 12 years old (after that, thank god he left, but all the family said it was my fault that he left).
He writes these letters since 1987, once or twice a year, and they are all the same, many handwritten pages of how I destroyed his life because I threw him out (! I was 9 and completely abandoned, I even had a serious illness and nobody noticed for years) and random delirium.
After reading some sentences I broke down so completely, and at the moment I have nobody to talk with about this, and I am an adult and usually I cope well with this burden I have to carry, but now (and also the days before with my mother weren't a day at the beach either) and I feel that this is the reason why of the loneliness, this burden, this horrible secret that separates me from the rest of humanity who doesn't know evil.
I have been striving for balance since I was small and most of the time I think I am doing OK; still, I wonder if there is something visible from the outside, and "normal" people can feel it and are afraid.
Sometimes I feel I should just give up and go crazy myself, or take up alcohol and drugs, or die, because I will never ever be a normal person with normal emotions.
I think to talk about mental illness is even more difficult that to talk about sexual abuse or things like that - the shame, and the fear that it is hereditary.
Tonight I didn't sleep, now I ll go get professional support, only it is going to take days or even weeks, because the health system where i live is crap.
Forgive the over-sharing.
In the last week I "broke up" with my codependent mother, who hopefully, after 20 years of dragging in loneliness trying to live my life, is now more motivated to seek help and get a life, and yesterday I was absent-minded and I started reading a freshly arrived letter from my ex-bipolar father now schizophrenic paranoiac (never treated, because nobody was around except my mother (codependents are not big on helping others), and I was too small to be able to do anything) who still accuses me that it was all my fault, back then when I was 8, 9, 10, 12 years old (after that, thank god he left, but all the family said it was my fault that he left).
He writes these letters since 1987, once or twice a year, and they are all the same, many handwritten pages of how I destroyed his life because I threw him out (! I was 9 and completely abandoned, I even had a serious illness and nobody noticed for years) and random delirium.
After reading some sentences I broke down so completely, and at the moment I have nobody to talk with about this, and I am an adult and usually I cope well with this burden I have to carry, but now (and also the days before with my mother weren't a day at the beach either) and I feel that this is the reason why of the loneliness, this burden, this horrible secret that separates me from the rest of humanity who doesn't know evil.
I have been striving for balance since I was small and most of the time I think I am doing OK; still, I wonder if there is something visible from the outside, and "normal" people can feel it and are afraid.
Sometimes I feel I should just give up and go crazy myself, or take up alcohol and drugs, or die, because I will never ever be a normal person with normal emotions.
I think to talk about mental illness is even more difficult that to talk about sexual abuse or things like that - the shame, and the fear that it is hereditary.
Tonight I didn't sleep, now I ll go get professional support, only it is going to take days or even weeks, because the health system where i live is crap.
Forgive the over-sharing.
