PAULA NIXON’S STORY

“WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN”

“You stole my children, you fucking Bitch!… I am going to kill you!” Blinded by her rage? She is unable to see that she indeed was killing me… smashing my heart into little bits, like shards of glass.

Facing her, I lurched back, pulling her two children (my grandchildren) toward me as she sprang forward, determined to strike a deadly blow on the object of her rage.

As we stood on this Harlem street corner Mother and Daughter, the ravages of her bi-polar disorder rendered us both helpless, yet once again. We have danced this dance before, since she was a teen.

As an unwed teenage mother, I was too naive, afraid, immature to embrace and meet the moment of what my child was suffering from. I was looking for the quick fix… if only she would… try harder, eat better, work at it, ANYTHING so that she could snap out of it and overcome her paranoia, delusions, depression. It wasn’t until she became an adult was I able to fully comprehend her diagnosis and what that portends for her life

My daughter, my only child, has suffered with b i-polar disease all of her adult life. Four decades and counting. Correction; we have suffered from her mental illness. I say this because it is the unseen force that colors everything that we were, are and will become to and for each other. It is a weight that we all must bear / never really able to find relief by setting it aside for good. It is the wound that never heals but the scars spread and touches everyone you love and is loved by you.

Even during the “good” times, when the meds are working and I can see glimpses of the loving, beautiful person my daughter is – there is the underlying sense that this too shall past and we can be back at ground zero. My daughter (but not my daughter) transposed to a raging psychotic, unable to make sense of her world and my role in it, except as the repository for all of her grievances, shortcomings, misgivings…

I do wonder if there was something I missed earlier that had it been detected that could have spared her this life. I do wonder if I was only more aware, more monied, more mature… I could somehow change the trajectory of her/our life. I do miss all of the mother/daughter experiences I dreamed about when she was a child. The big stuff: I will never see her graduate from college, I will never shop for that wedding dress for her, I will never be a grandmother to her children, as I had to be their mom.

And all of the precious little moments that bind mothers and daughters together is lost to us forever.

I wonder if she feels the same.

I miss that, I miss what could’ve been, I miss her.