delusion

Hey, Mom -

Do you remember when you came to visit us in San Diego over Thanksgiving 2019? It was late afternoon and you and I were just leaving the local organic co-op with a load of groceries. As I pulled my car out of the parking spot, I put on my prescription sunglasses. I'm pretty sure I made a comment that really didn't need to be made, something conversational and boring, like, "If ever there were a place where prescription sunglasses come in handy, it's San Diego!"

Yeah, D-minus commentary.

What you said next was far more interesting. You started to tell me about your own prescription sunglasses and how he had taken them, just to make your life difficult. You said he like you expected me to know who he was.

I asked and you explained: Months before, you had written a strongly-worded letter to your landlord complaining about a trashy ex-neighbor named Aaron and you were convinced that the landlord had shared your angry letter with Aaron and that Aaron was carrying out a vendetta against you by harassing you daily.

I laughed. I said, "Mom! You sound like you're crazy!" I glanced over at you as I pulled onto Ebers Street. Your arms were crossed, your lips were set in that defiant, angry way that I know so well, and you said, "I know - why do you think I haven't told you until now?"

A chill - like a basin of cold water washing down my back in slow motion - a chill settled in my gut and I knew, for the first time, that you are crazy.

Mom, you're crazy.

That was two and a half years ago. He lost his Christian name quickly enough; do you remember when you started calling him The Invader? I won't tell you that my Dad and his wife, perhaps not meaning to be cruel, laughingly call him Darth Invader.

Writing you this letter is pointless, really, because the crazy never believe that they are crazy, do they? You won't understand how your closest friends talk about you behind your back, sometimes making excuses about why they can't come by, can't pick up the phone when you call. For now, by the grace of their goodness, they remain your friends, checking in on you and listening to your latest litany of complaints about The Invader.

You don't know that I am on a first-name basis with your minister, ever appreciative of her text updates:

We are continuing to keep an eye on her. She is still eating and caring for herself. Now that she doesn't trust any technology she is using the church computer and phone, so we are able to see her more often.

Your old self - eccentric, unpredictable, but not entirely batshit crazy - would shrivel and die of embarrassment if you knew how many times I've been on the phone with the police department in your small town, asking them to please, please let me know when you become too much of a burden on the department. Your old self would roll eyes at a woman who called the police department to report a break-in, citing as evidence for the break-in that "the coffee pot was plugged in".

It is heartbreaking. I'm watching, powerless, as you fritter away the modest inheritance that Grama left you when she died last year. You're living on Social Security, for Christ's sake, and you're bleeding money: Tech experts to come search the attic and crawl space for "devices" that are causing your laptop, phone, and television to malfunction, you say.

There are no "audio bugs". There's nothing "jamming the signals". No one is sneaking into the house, quick as lightning, while you step outside for thirty seconds to get your mail. You just don't know how to use an iPhone. The most advanced security system on the market can't catch a ghost, Mom.

I've been wanting to come see you. I've been putting it off. For my own peace, I have to make you understand me. Well, I have to try. You need to know that if you spend your entire inheritance, I won't be there to pay for your life. I'm going through my second divorce. I have five kids. I'm unemployed, and my job prospects here in the Texas sticks aren't exactly promising.

You're in purgatory for the mentally ill: Too crazy to live normally, not crazy enough for me to obtain a power of attorney and mandate psychiatric treatment. From what I've learned, it is incredibly difficult to force someone into a conservatorship. You must be a danger to yourself or others, and I'm afraid that by the time that happens you'll have suffered physical injury, your money will be gone, or both.

Do you want to know what I think? Are you still reading? Your memory has always been shit. You've always acted the victim, as if no one has given you credit for your true brilliance. You've always imagined that you are more important than you are.

You're almost eighty. I think that your memory is failing, badly, and rather than assume that you have simply misplaced your quilting scissors or that you used the pound of butter in your freezer that was "stolen", why, you prefer to blame it on The Invader.

The Invader: A clever fabrication, a man who finally - unlike all the others who have come through - is proving your importance by dedicating himself to harassing you. You complain, but I think that secretly, you like it. He fulfills you. He proves your worth.

You're all alone in your insanity. You live in a world of one. In a way, I'm no better off: There's no one to help me with this. You know as well as I do that my only brother wrote me off in 2015 over an imagined slight. I'm beginning to suspect that which ails the mother ails the son - you are both delusional, both convicted in the rightness of your own versions of reality. And so I'm left to argue with myself about moral obligation, hoping against history and genetics that my own children don't end up where I am.

But I'm worried. I'm worried because you take medication, you have a gas stove, you need to eat, and bathe, and have enough money left to pay your bills. How long will it be before The Invader robs you of the memory required to stay safe? How long will it be before I have to send you this letter?

I love you, Mom. You truly are brilliant. You really could have done amazing work in this lifetime. You could have been much more important than you even imagine you are now. But you didn't, and you aren't. Mental illness is a hell of a thing and I am sorry. I have absolutely nothing to feel sorry for and yet I am so, so sorry.

Be well, Mom.