I explained once to my counselor how my aunt died when I was young. That she’d taken her own life and it was the first - but not the last - time suicide touched our family. For me, this seemed the beginning of my story. My kind, young counselor stopped typing notes into her laptop, switching her intense gaze instead to me, and said, “Did your parents think it was appropriate for you to know those details at five years old?” Her shock was evident, but I was many years beyond being flattened by the truth of my family. I told her I didn’t know the actual details, only that she’d taken her own life. I didn’t know about the gun she held between her knees while in her boyfriend’s apartment until I was a pre-teen. I didn’t read the note she left behind until I was in my thirties, sorting through boxes left behind by my mother.

Did my parents think it was appropriate? I can’t answer that except to say: they did tell me.

I can’t remember a time I didn’t know about addiction, mental illness, and suicide.

These were the norms of my childhood, starting with the death of my aunt.

Maybe that would have been the end of the sadness if it weren’t for my brother’s struggles with mental illness, my mother’s dependence on alcohol, or my remaining family’s insistence on cultivating drama. Maybe my brother would have been different if it weren’t for abuse and neglect. Maybe my mother would have stayed sober if she hadn’t suffered the trauma of grief so many times. Maybe my family would be loving it weren’t for the contributing factors from their own parents and families. Maybe is a silly, useless word, as nothing can change what came to be.

My brother was nearly three years older than me, and I’ve heard he was a sweet child before I came along. (And, yes, I am aware of the implications of the wording of that statement, and yes, that’s how it was said to me growing up). The boy I remember cut the tails off lizards, held a flame to moths wings, and tortured me in unspeakable ways. As a kid, he was labeled as difficult, as oppositional-defiant, and he was shuffled from one boys’ home to another. He spent years running away, living on the streets, and ultimately landing in prison. As a young adult, released back into the world, he came to live with us. By that time he’d been diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Tourette's, and Bipolar Depression.

At seventeen, I wanted nothing more than to disappear from our house. To escape any reach my brother had into my life. I lived terrified of what he would do or say next, never trusting his mood one moment to the next, and hiding behind my locked door as often as possible.

In the end, my brother took his own life. Those of us left behind experienced a sort of relieved-grief. Grief for obvious reasons, and relief because he’d finally completed the task he’d attempted more than a dozen times in the year after his release from prison.

It took ten years - after his death - for me to stop feeling anger toward my brother. Nightmares plagued me in the first few years, slowly dwindling as my fear of his coming back waned. Then one day as I sat in mediation, I remembered my brother teaching me how to ride my bike, and I realized not all my memories of him were horrific. This revelation enabled me to forgive him. More than that, I wished his life had been different because he must have been miserable. I wished the systems meant to help him hadn’t failed him, and that his family meant to love him hadn’t hurt him.

I don’t blame our parents. I think what I mean is: they tried their best, and I know they loved us, so I don’t think it’s their fault. I don’t think the way things turned out is what anyone wanted.

Not too long ago I found letters from my dad (in that box of my mom’s belongings), and it told a different story than the one I remembered. My perspective as a young child didn’t include the adult conversations between my parents, of course, so I had no idea all the efforts he made at helping my brother, and at trying to stay in touch with me. When I looked back, I saw him moving away when I was ten, and I remembered the last time we spoke when I was sixteen. I somehow forgot all the letters he wrote to me the many years in-between.

My biggest memory from my parents’ divorce was having to choose between them. My mom broke the news to me, then asked me to pick who I wanted to live with when they separated. As a people-pleasing, peace-keeper child, having to hurt one of them tore me apart. It didn’t matter to me who I wanted to live with, it only mattered that I would not be choosing the other one. As years passed, I resented having been put in that position.

I lived with my mom. Because we were close and because my brother chose our dad. It made sense in some way for them each to have one of us. In many ways, it improved my life, as my brother could no longer hurt me. My dad called every weekend, and we all got together once a year. Mostly. Until we didn’t.

After spending the summer with one of my aunts, I came home to a single-parent home. We didn’t have much stuff, much space, or any money. My mom had dropped out of college to have my brother, then she’d been staying at home with us ever since. She didn’t have work experience, but my mom took on several jobs to make ends meet, and we survived.

There were times we had a roommate in the house, which meant I gave up my bedroom to a stranger and shared a room with my mom.

There were times my mom worked nights, and I put myself to bed, then got myself up and ready for the school the next day.

I didn’t see in those days how alcohol played a part in our lives. My mom drank, but so did other adults, and it didn’t seem strange to me. Hearing her puke in the night became a lesson in not drinking too much. One she wouldn’t learn, but I took to heart just the same.

It wasn’t until my adulthood, after having moved away with my own new family, I learned the depths of my mom’s addiction. Her partner called me one night and let me in on the severity of the problem. My mom fought the process but eventually signed herself into a treatment facility. What I didn’t know was that she had to quit her job to have the time off, and she took out a loan against her mortgage to pay for the rehab. Those two factors would end up hurting her tenfold in later years, but how could she have known?

Almost two years ago, I drove across the country with my kids in tow, to spend a week with my mom. My first book would be published, and I had several signings and events planned. It was meant to be a happy occasion. When we arrived, she was unexpectedly not home, and we let ourselves in with the spare key. Walking into the house, an eerie reality faced us - one of filth, illness, and addiction.

Nearly two years have passed, and I have come no closer to recovering from coming to terms with my mother’s imminent death. When she got back home that day, she stumbled in, holding on to furniture to prevent falling. Her skin was waxy and yellowed. Her words slurred and her mind was nearly gone.

How?

I’d spoken with her on the phone every few days and had no clue she’d been drinking herself to death.

I’d seen her six months prior - when she’d come up to visit us over the winter holidays - and I remembered a capable woman. We talked. We went shopping. She was okay.

After leaving her in the hospital, needing to drive back home for a few days before returning to help her, she called out to me and said, “This isn’t how I pictured the end.”

I don’t know how she pictured the end.

I know she brought alcohol with her to the hospital. Her addiction so complete she showed up to the ER in liver failure while still drinking.

My mom denied drinking up to the end. Swore she rarely had a drink. She lied to herself more than she lied to everyone else.

Where did that leave me?

An adult who ached for her mother like a child. A sister with no sibling. A daughter with no mother. A daughter with no father. A branch on a tree with no roots. How could I weather the storm?

I don’t know what makes me different than them. My cousin told me once how proud she was I could stop the cycle and become such a grounded and healthy person - that I could raise my children without passing on my trauma to them.

Why am I strong enough to suffer a lifetime of pain without succumbing?

Maybe it’s brain chemistry. Maybe it’s sheer will-power. Maybe it’s luck. Maybe it doesn’t matter, and I’ll never have the answers.

All I know is I have spent my life standing in the eye of a storm, watching those I love torn to shreds, and left with only mental scars.

But aren’t mental scars the ones that haunt us and cause the most harm?

Getting over the things from my upbringing isn’t an option. I’ve chosen instead to accept them, embrace them up close and personal, and to write about them. I write fiction books about characters who suffer from the same traumas as me, each project a deeper exploration into myself. I tell stories about women who overcome their struggles and find happiness in their flawed lives. I write the endings the way I wish they could’ve been in real life.

I can’t seem to ever fully explain what my life was like, or what it must have been like for my family around me. I try to put it all into words, but I can rarely fully express my emotions, my experiences, or my second-guessing.

Even if my mother sat here with me today, I wouldn’t ask her if she thought it was appropriate to tell her children about suicide so young. She did her best, and it would have only caused her pain for me to ask. I’ll never get answers to the questions I didn’t think to ask until it was too late, but it turns out I don’t need the answers. I need only stay in the relative calm in the eye of the storm.

Standing in the Eye: A life surrounded by the storm of mental illness

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