You Can't Win an Argument with a Monster

At 60, I’ve come to understand a lot about myself. Through therapy and determination, I’ve been able to fix some of my brokenness. And I’m a writer, so I'm able to articulate the impact of childhood events. I have a pretty solid comprehension of the horrors of mental illness, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. Nonetheless, I can only imagine what it was like to be my mom, who didn’t have the access to the help we do today.

However, I still can’t adequately describe the futility and hopelessness associated with arguing with a parent who is mentally ill.

It had gone on for as long as I can recall; my first vivid memory of this sense of hopelessness was when I was nine years old. Not by accident, it coincided with my first deep depressive episode. I wouldn’t have known what to call it at the time, but I withdrew into myself, became almost mute at home, and was concurrently hypervigilant and dissociative. See, having a mentally ill parent is incredibly traumatizing; not only does it mean constant fear and anxiety, but as children we don’t have anyone to talk to and we can’t even articulate it to ourselves. And we’re ashamed. Often, because we believe we are the cause of it.

When I was 13, my mom was convinced I was selling drugs. Looking back, it was crazy, I’m just gonna say. If only she understood how ridiculous that was—I didn’t even smoke weed until the summer I was 17. At the time my biggest drug was coffee. But she would carry on imaginary telephone conversations, then hang up and confront me.

“I know what you’re doing,” she’d hiss.

I’d be confused, wondering what the heck she was talking about. I really didn’t do anything—I spent most of my childhood almost catatonic as a safety measure—so I couldn’t even guess what she was talking about.

“I just got off the phone. They told me you’re selling drugs. Selling drugs! I'm calling your father.”

“I am?” I’d ask, half-laughing at the absurdity. “Who told you that?” I thought maybe someone was playing a prank on us.

“It doesn’t matter, they told me you are. Why would they say that if it wasn't true? How can you do this to me?”

“I’m not! I’ve never even seen drugs!”

“Liar. You’re lying.” And she picked up the receiver to call my father.

There was no convincing her that it was utterly untrue. It’s impossible to fight something you can’t disprove because there’s no evidence of your innocence. It just doesn’t exist. It’s impossible to win.

I ended up believing that I was guilty despite my innocence. Maybe I wasn’t selling drugs, but there had to be something that I was doing wrong. I scoured my brain, searching for an answer. What did I do? It just didn't make sense.

Meanwhile, the next time I’d leave the house, I’d come home to my room ransacked. Everything had been ripped out of my cupboards and drawers—all my notebooks and journals and treasures, the silly little things I’d keep in my top drawer, all ‘almost’ put back into an approximation of how I’d left it. My mattress would be on its side, in the event I’d hidden something tantalizingly illegal or immoral under it.

My mother’s illness meant that I had no expectation of privacy. The only secrets I had were in my mind, and in my mind was an elaborate and complicated alternate world.

But things would get worse. The event that still burns in my memory was yet to come. And although I grew to understand the context of what happened, its impact changed my life forever.

The summer I was 14, my mom was institutionalized again, and I was sent to spend the summer at my aunt’s and uncle’s farm. They regularly took in foster kids, and I didn’t quite fit in—I was neither immediate family nor foster. I did chores like the foster kids, but I was blood related. I couldn't figure out who I was supposed to be.

Until the day my mom called.

Actually, it was my father who had called, and he told me to hold the line while he gave my mom the receiver.

“Hello?” she whispered.

“Hi…Mom," I hesitated. "How…are you feeling?” She hadn’t been well for a while, and before she was hospitalized and I was sent away for the rest of the summer, our house was one of horrors. She abused and terrified me, and I had difficulty understanding what was wrong with her. Instead, I thought her a monster, someone I couldn’t protect myself from.

“Who is this?” she asked.

“It’s me, it’s Cathie, your daughter,” I ventured, confused as to why she didn’t recognize my voice.

“You’re not Cathie,” she lilted. “You’re not my daughter.”

I was momentarily stunned into silence.

“Mom, yes I am,” I cried once I regained my voice. “I’m Cathie, you know me!”

“No, you’re not,” she insisted, raising her voice. “You are not my daughter. My daughter is a baby. I don’t know who you are but you don’t belong to me. I’m not your mother.”

I swallowed. Tears scalded my cheeks. “But I am your daughter! It’s me, Mom, it’s ME!”

To this day I remember exactly where I was sitting, on the floor in my aunt’s foyer. The phone was on the floor beside me. But I’m not sure what happened next, at least on the other end of the line, because I dropped the receiver onto the hardwood and curled up into a ball. I hugged my knees, making myself as small and insignificant as I felt.

I did not belong…anywhere. I was nobody’s daughter.

From that moment, life went on. I headed back to school in September, this time to Grade 10. None of my friends had any inkling that I was living a double life; I was a joker and a strong academic student, I played in the band, and I was incredibly inept at sports. But every day, when I alit from the school bus across from my house, anxiety would creep its way into every cell of my being.

This wasn’t because I knew what was awaiting me when I walked in the front door—rather, it was just the opposite. I had no idea whether I was going to have to face a raging monster or be welcomed by a quiet mother who was singing under her breath in the kitchen. I think this is the toughest thing for kids of a mentally ill parent to understand. The abuse, whether it be mental, emotional, or physical, is horrible enough; but it’s the unpredictability of the behavior that is most traumatizing. We never know what’s coming next. My mother was often lovely and kind; she was funny and creative, too. I tried so hard to love her. Many of my friends liked her. And so, while I was lulled into a sense of calm, perhaps for days or sometimes weeks at a time, I spent my young life awaiting the next blow. Always expecting the worst.

Decades later, I’m not surprised when my friends remark, “Wow, we never knew. We wouldn’t have thought anything like that.”

Because life as the child of a mother with mental illness turned me into a liar, a shapeshifter, a hoarder of emotions and experiences that were too traumatizing to speak aloud. I knew I could never convince my friends, because the unpredictable nature of my mom’s illness meant that she could be a perfect host during the rare times I allowed my friends into our house.

Despite everything I experienced, once it was over it never happened. At least that’s the story I told myself and others for years. It was only once I articulated these events and gave them their place that I was able to forgive and let go of my anger and sadness. I'll never forget her worst episodes, and I bear the emotional scars of her illness, but I forgave her years ago.

On her deathbed, my mom told me she loved me.

I told her I loved her too-- and I still do.