I am having a good start today, sometimes I wake up ready to conquer the world other times I want to stay in bed and overdose on Netflix and pop a Seroquel to knock me out. I have always been and done the extreme. I have never had an in-between life, if I want something I will do whatever I can to get it. If I don’t want to do something I just won’t; I just have my scale high or low. I can sometimes be leveled if possible, but that is something I am cautiously optimistic about...being “normal”. Welcome to the mind of a Bipolar me.
I often hear people say to get over things that I have been through, to “let it go”. I often hear people say “What I went through has made me a stronger person”. The first idea of letting something go is shit; everyone knows it is hard if not impossible to let something traumatic go. My mind can literally show me the traumatic situations as if I am there; the smells, the weather, the location, the people and of course the pain and emotion. If I had the mind to get over something, even little things in my life I would be at peace, but that’s not my life. My flashbacks aren’t something I can look at and say, “I think I’ll let these memories go now!” I wish to God that is something I can do. But the flashbacks of my madness, mania, psychotic episodes and suicide attempts are not the only traumatic flashbacks I’ve had before.
Some people would say not to dwell on the past and say that the past shouldn’t have a hold on your life today. I strongly disagree. The most crucial age for a child’s development and true introduction into the world is between the ages of 3-6. At that age I witnessed and felt so much negativity that I was nourished into the pain and confusion.
I look at my parents and see how difficult they lived, things they have done and the broken innocence being torn apart. I witnessed so much that I have vivid memories of specific situations and violent explosions.
Although I may speak quite a bit about how I grew up in such a screwed up environment, I must first tell you of all the amazing things my parents have done. My parents sacrificed so much for us; my mom would go without her necessities like socks, in order to provide for us. We were less than poor but more than abandoned. My dad made sure we always had food, even if it meant getting food put into the trash behind an old school market called Alpha Beta. If we needed clothes my dad wouldn’t hesitate to snag some clothes from other peoples’ clothesline. I’m sure there were people thinking, “Where the hell did all of our clothes go?” My mom made sure we were ALWAYS clean and bathed; she always dressed us well and combed our hair, even tamed my wildly-curly.
My dad basically grew up on the streets of Victorville, California; he ran the streets with a group of other kids. Everyone knew my dad, even the police who would always “warn him” rather than arrest him; I think it was because they knew he was just a kid. He was just a kid who had a difficult upbringing.
My dad originally came from Bakersfield, California; he was only about 12 when he moved into “his town”. He grew up in violence, one of his mom’s husbands used to beat up on him and his mom. When my dad heard the dirt-bag come home he would run and hide in the bushes out back, he could hear his stepfather yelling for him to come out. Someone amazing was placed in his life to rescue him from such torment, his neighbor, when he heard my dad in the back he would call my dad over to his house. My dad’s neighbor fed him and let my dad sleep on the couch or just hide out until his step dad passed out. At one point all my dad’s family was over at the house and my dad stood up to his wasted stepfather who pulled out his gun. The gun was usually empty and my dad knew it, he shot the gun and my dad laughed at him and his bullet-less gun. Everyone was freaked out but my dad fought with him all the way out the door until the police picked the bastard up. It wasn’t until my dad went inside that he realized that the drunken shooter was actually trying to kill him, there was a hole in the plastered wall and the bullet was on the other side.
My dad experienced many situations that made his life a challenge, school was difficult, he has dyslexia and no one knew it when he was a child. He was always frustrated and instead of getting help from the school he rebelled and left school. How could he know how important school was when his parents didn’t know it either? I’m sure his parents did the best they knew how but I believe my dad learned how to try to be a good father. He had his first job at 16 and got his own place, which he continuously had people coming and going, partying. One of my dad’s cousins showed up with my mom and she immediately caught my dad’s eye. He wanted to know her name and her “chola” appearance was enough to get them together. My mom was a teenage runaway who searched for something away from the life she had back home.
My mom grew up without a mother and can only remember when her mother abandoned her and her other siblings. Her mother already had two other children from another man when she left my mom behind. She tried to cause some type of fiasco but my grandfather wouldn’t have it, he took care of the kids with help of his parents (my great-grandparents).
My mom went through a lot but rarely talks about her life before my dad. It’s okay with me, my mom is an amazing mom and she did and does the best she could for not ever having what I have, a mother to confide in. She has always been strong and her mother missed out on having a relationship with a daughter that would have amazed her. Her mother abandoned seven kids altogether before she started another life with her two new kids and new husband. She jumped from place to place, from man to man, leaving so much pain behind. It is now clear why my grandmother was so extremely unsettled, when I was diagnosed with Bipolar I found out that she was Bipolar with Borderline Personality Disorder (which I will talk about another time).
My parents got married, and began having kids, my older sister and my two older brothers, and then me the “baby”. My parents built good relationships with his family and her family. My sister, brothers and I were able to have our aunts, uncles and grandparents around.
For my parents it was a matter of survival. I can remember so many fights my parents have gotten into with other people, not arguments, fights. My mom told me of an incident that happened at the fair, which made her mama bear come out. I was climbing on a carousel horse, all of the other animals and benches were all filled up, my siblings and cousins were already in their places. I put my foot in the straddle and all of a sudden some lady put her little girl on the horse moving me downward. Yep, you get the idea right! My mom threw down when she needed to and at that point she needed to. When it came to protecting us kids my parents never held back, even now, but in a different ways.
So you can see my parents didn’t have it easy either, they sought out love, life and protection wherever they could find it. And I knew and know that their love for my siblings and I is something no one could mess with. When I talk about the dark side of my parents I want everyone to remember the difficulty of my mom and dad’s lives before they judge my parents actions. I love my parents and I would not ever change that for the world. They did their best and they still do so.The negativity is just a domino effect of pain, abuse and death...
