Cicada

In high school a woman read my palm to foresee my future. My lifeline said I had a “good” childhood but young adulthood was marked with a sharp change. I didn’t want to take her reading seriously, but something about the predicted change scared me. She had been right, I had a beautiful childhood, happy, loved, privileged and essentially spoiled. But sometimes my mom would act a little funny, getting overtly sad about something insignificant or extremely angry over almost nothing. But she would get out of her funk quickly and would go back to being my mommy. Sweet and selfless, I wouldn’t trade her for the world.

https://vimeo.com/88972263 

It was a sunny Sunday afternoon in March, a perfect Colorado day, and my mom called. She wanted to know if I was coming home for her favorite holiday, Easter; but there was something different in her voice, an intensity I didn’t recognize. As the week progressed she called me many times to discuses various things, but our communication was different — she was short and demanding with me; in fact it didn’t even sound like her on the phone. I called my Dad to see if he understood what was happening. He just said she had been acting odd, but I could sense an underlying uncertainty in his words.

 The next Sunday I went home for spring break, eager to be with my family for my birthday. My dad picked me up from my dorm; on the drive home to Littleton, he explained my mom wanted my room to be perfect when I arrived home, and she was stressed about my arrival. As I turned the handle of the front door, my mother confronted me. She wouldn’t allow me to enter the house until she had finished my room. I burst into tears but my mother didn’t seem to care insisting I wait on the front porch. As the sun dipped below the mountains I began to wonder if I was actually home.

The week progressed and my mother’s strange mood intensified, she would disappear for hours shopping and would return with bags and bags of things my family didn’t need. She was extremely confrontational, yelling at my dad, brother and me for hours straight.  I overheard my father talking on the phone with our family physician, deeply concerned. After the conversation he explained to my younger brother and I the depth of his fears. Our physician wanted my mother to submit to a psychological examination, but this was out of the question: she thought she was on top of the world. My father was forced to make the most painful decision of his life; he called emergency services and ten minutes later two policemen rang our doorbell, as an ambulance pulled into the driveway. My mother couldn’t understand why they were there, she felt wonderful. They politely asked her to go with the paramedics, but she refused and began to scream they were violating her constitutional rights. Her warm brown eyes had become wild and fiery. She cursed my father and pleaded with my brother and me to help her. The paramedics and police forced my mother out of her home and into the ambulance. I wept because I was powerless to help her; the tears continued for hours long after the paramedics drove away. I wish I had known something was wrong sooner.

My mother was placed under a 48-hour physiological hold, and then sent to a specialized short-term physiological health center. The doctors concluded that she was expressing all the symptoms of Manic Depressive Disorder or Bipolar. The hospital gave my family pamphlets to help my family understand, they were filled with upsetting “affirmations”. I soon learned “Bipolar disorder is a complex genetic disorder. The mood swings associated with it alternate from major, or clinical, depression to mania or extreme elation. The mood swings can range from very mild to extreme, and they can happen gradually or suddenly within a timeframe of minutes to hours”.  This usually manifests in the late teens or yearly twenties but my mother was fifty-three with no mental health problems in her history. On my 19^th birthday I went with my father to visit my mother. The facility she was being treated in terrified me; bolted doors and security guards stood between my mother and me.  A nurse led us to the visiting room, and my mother shuffled in to greet us. Her eyes were no longer on fire, but lost in haze. The anti-psychotic medication the hospital administrated calmed her down, but she was still livid with my father and me for letting this happen to her; she threatened my father with divorce. It broke my heart seeing her trapped in this place she hated more than anything, not knowing when she could return home. Three long weeks passed and the Doctors decided my mother was well enough to go home. She was another type of different, my little brother would tell me. She would lie in bed all day and hardly speak. When I came home to visit, it scared me. Her eyes appeared empty, and far away. She didn’t engage with me, but sat quietly with her mouth downturned and hands folded neatly her lap.

The past three years have been filled with manic highs and depressed lows; both forms of my mother’s personality are unrecognizable to me. I haven’t seen the mother who helped me take my first steps, and hugged me at high school graduation. I want to love her in the same way but she is a shadow of my memory. I see her like the shell of a cicada. I have lost my mother.