We are all always trying to put a good face on it. We don't want to complain, we are embarrassed, the ugly details will scare everyone away. We are the mothers and it is our job to fix this. We can all be philosophical and brave, but I know how much you need to hear from a mother who is completely honest about the missiles and darts of motherhood, mental illness, shitty, toxic teenagers, and the fact that, at night time, all that holds true is that you love them so completely, so ridiculously, you’d jump off the sharpest edge of the Grand Canyon in the hope of helping one of them. I know your need because it is mine as well.
I had a son. A perfect and beautiful and shiny boy. All the fingers, and all the toes, wild mouth like a rubber band, they laid him on my belly. I really didn’t believe there was an actual human being inside of me until I saw him. Serious, dark composure (like a judge) — his brown eyes pummeled me with questions. Oh my god, the love. The semi-truck slamming into my soul, laden with unfathomable love. In a second, the earth pivoted on its axis and I was a mother.
Twenty years later he left me. Some kind of unknowable shift occurred in his brain and he was no longer with us. Schizophrenia. First: anxiety. Then: depression. Then: bipolar. Finally: goodbye, Nick boy, you have been swallowed by the rancid swamp water of the worst mental illness diagnosable. I’m at the shore; scrappy, wild-eyed, flailing arms. Why can’t I save you? Why am I suddenly irrelevant? I have a stick. I have a rope. I have a college degree, and yet you float away from me. I glance back over my shoulder and see your sisters, all three, glaring at me with the fury of injustice. “Save him, Mother.” I would do anything to release him from insanity’s grip. Hey, God, take me. Please. Pour cancer all over me. It’s fine. But there are no deals like that. You stand at the shore and wail. Into a vast and relentless wind. No one hears you.
Holy, moly, that sounds sad. And it is. But it is other things, too. It’s profound. It’s shockingly beautiful, sometimes. I know this isn’t politically correct, but it’s also really funny sometimes. If sorrow is the underbelly, then laughter is the smooth, glistening pelt above.
So here I am, ready to talk about it. It took me a long time to get here. I am wiser now. I remember everything. I am battered and shaken and changed forever. But I know things. I have endured and accepted and learned. I am happy. Yeah, I am. There is still happiness.
So I talk about it. I call it by its name, I don't hide. I tell people the truth. I wrote a book in the hopes that putting the story into the world would make room for others to do the same.
He Came In With It by Miriam Feldman will be available on Amazon July 21, 2020.