A Companion to Madness

You always expect telephone calls bringing horrible news to come in the middle of the night jolting you out of your sleep. So when the telephone rang midmorning on a lovely spring day, I expected at the worse a telemarketer and at the best a call from a good friend for a chat over a cup of coffee.



Mom, I am loosing it.


I could hear the desperate sound of my son’s voice on the other end reaching out to me for safety from 500 miles away. My heart started to race harder as I listened to him.
I watched JFK last night and I haven’t been able to sleep. Mom they are after me. I can see the cars surrounding the house. Mom, he pleaded, is this real? I have to go out and check.
I asked if he wanted me to stay on the phone while he went to check. He said no, that he would dial the phone when he was ready to step out the door.


I waited. Fifteen minutes passed and the telephone rang. I looked at the caller ID and it said unknown caller. I was sure it was him as he has his number blocked because of his paranoia.
This is a courtesy call from Blockbuster. This is a reminder that you have a DVD that is past due.



I slammed down the telephone and I could feel my blood pressure rising.



I finally dialed his number and the phone rang and rang and rang. I was starting to panic. Was he just hiding in a locked room terrified by fear or was he really in danger. I tried to divert my attention by going and playing a game on my computer but I could only maintain my mindless concentration for a few moments.



I could feel me being drawn into the drama that is the constant companion in a family where mental illness is diagnosis de jour. I begin to imagine that demons were trying to draw my son back into their dark talons. I begin to imagine that he is on drugs and the police really are surrounding him. I begin to loose it myself.



Madness is never convenient. It sometimes has a pattern of exacerbation and remission but it is always waiting to walk in and spoil an hour, a day, a week or months. And today was no exception. When I received the call I was preparing to go and visit my sister for the Mother’s day weekend. I had plans. I was resentful that my son took this time to go crazy. How was I going to detach?



I feel powerless because I am powerless. The only thing that I can do is to be here ready to talk if he needed me to help calm down and focus on reality. But when he was in the clutches of delusional behavior I have no power. In fact, I know by experience there is no one that I can call. He is not presenting a danger to himself or to another person. He is just flat out in numbing fear and was scurrying around like a rat trying to escape a giant predator called mental illness.



The time is passing and I haven’t packed yet. I am becoming obsessed right now with worrying about something I cannot control. Yet, how do I as a mother detach? I have trained myself for years in the art of detachment and self-calming. I try breathing in more deeply. Yet I catch myself holding my breath waiting to for the phone to ring or my mind to become clearer. I am not going through a new experience. This experience has repeated itself in one form or another for years. Not only with Donald but with my son Jimmy who is also mentally ill. Both have taken the road of self-medication through drugs and alcohol. And, so have I. Somehow, it becomes a bit more comforting to numb the pain. It doesn’t make it go away. It makes it a little less intense.
When one is in a manic state which can be anger, fear and anxiety, or just plain hooting-it-up fun, alcohol helps depress the system and one is a bit more stable. Of course, taking it to the extreme it makes the madness more intense.



When I can’t help, I hope. Being mentally ill myself and older, I know that in time with education and therapy it is possible to find stability and even enjoy the quirks and perks of madness. I focus my imagination into creative outlets. I like getting older because the only difference between being crazy and being eccentric is either age or money. We are people with an edge. We interest and entice people, but we also can create a sense of fear. We are an unpredictable lot and that is the greatest fear that others have in any relationship.



So I wait. And I hope this fugue will pass quickly and my son and I will be stabilized again and moving in a less chaotic world. And I hope that the next time will take longer to appear and will be less intense. And I hope that this is the last episode. I, too, have my delusions.