The Sweet Husband

Sheryl's Illness

Someone messaged me and expressed concern that I might be encouraging my daughter's mental illness.

Let me tell you about schizophrenia from a mothers perspective. I am not a doctor, I have had very, very
little contact with Doctors because of the Hippa Laws. She is an adult and she has rights.

I could not accept that Sheryl was actually mentally ill for a very long time. I wanted her to just stop acting that way, stop talking to people who weren't there, stop talking about 50 foot snakes biting you, stop talking about having skin grafts on your back when I could clearly see no scars anywhere on your body. Just please fricking stop with the bulls*it.

I had her picked up 5 different times on a mental health warrant to try to get her some help, and she would be out before I could get home. She could hold it together because she was  not a danger to herself or others and that is the only requirement the legal system cares about.

All this time, she was living on the streets, on the few occasions when I could talk her into coming home, I made it impossible for her to stay by trying to change her reality.

My granddaughter Heavan was 3 or 4 when Sheryl first got sick, and when she was about 5 or 6 I had a kind of emotional breakdown and Heavan heard it. I was crying and telling Randy that I just couldn't understand why Sheryl wouldn't admit she was sick and go to the doctor and get on medication. Sheryl was seeing people that weren't there. and she needed to just stop and get on medication that would make all that go away.

That evening, Heavan crawled into bed beside me and said Grannie, can you see me? I said sure I can dumbo, do you think I am blind?
She said, if the doctor gave you some medicine that made you not be able to see me would you take it?

So I tried to explain, babe you are real, that is the reason I can see you. The people Sheryl sees are not real, so medicine would help her.

Heavan said, but to Aunt Sheryl those people are real, just like me. Maybe she thinks you are crazy and need medicine because you can't see them.

It all made sense to me. I had  this all wrong. Since I have been able to accept Sheryl's illness and accept that what she sees and hears is real to her, a lot has changed. Before, the people that came to see her were scary, she was being raped and beaten by at least one of the invisible people. After my husband told her that he would sit outside her door and not let him hurt her again, he has not been back. She was bitten by a 50 foot long snake, and since I told her that at least living inside there was no danger of that happening again, the fear of the snake has gone, and also the talk of leaving is much, much less.

I'm not saying we never get irritated, or that we never make mistakes, but she is safe, she can even joke sometimes, not very often, but sometimes, and I'll live with that. She is safe.