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Mom is an untreated, but diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. She has caused me 10 years of emotional abuse and pain. I want to leave, but I'm afraid she may kill herself if I do.
**Forewarning: This post is very long. I have tried by best to condense it as much as possible, but only so much can be done for a problem that has been ongoing for 10 years. I have included as much relevant facts as possible, but there may be gaps that are not explained. Please just comment below and I'll do my best to respond with the facts. It's really hard to write about a 10-year problem while keeping it short and high-level enough for people to read.** Reddit, I have been stuck in an abusive relationship with a psychotic mother for the past 10 years. I really want to break the cycle, but I'm afraid to as it might push her over the edge and make her try to kill herself again. She started having mental issues about ten years ago; stating that people were following us and we needed to move. I thought it was rather odd, but I did not question her authority, as I was only about 11. My dad has no spine, so he just went along. We moved to another state to ?get away? from people. Obviously, since all the problems were inside her head, these ?people? did not go away. We moved around a few more times after the initial move, until my dad finally grew a pair and refused to play her game. During one of the moves, I attended a school where all the kids made fun of me and it absolutely ruined my self-confidence. Being that I had no friends, I learned to fall back on my mother for support (which in hindsight isn't a very smart idea being as she was mentally deteriorating by this time). It wasn't until my senior year of high school when I would realize my mother is legitimately insane. While I tried to rely on her for support, the only thing she can do was provide me with food, clothing, and shelter. I was neglected emotionally and was emotionally abused on occasions. She was too obsessed with her own paranoia. I didn't get to ask her about ?growing up? problems and when I did, it was worthless because her answers were nonsensical. For example, when I talked about dating, she stated that I couldn't date and if I did, she would literally kill the person I dated if they were of another race. One traumatizing incident that sticks out is that she always flipped shit if I got sick and needed to visit a doctor because we did not have health insurance. She did this so much that I vowed to avoid going to the doctors as much as I can. I ended up contracting a severe skin infection, during which I hoped for the best and eventually, the primary site of the infection got real ugly, drained, and healed without proper medical treatment. This lack of immediate medical care resulted in me getting recurrent chronic skin infections. It took me years before I had the courage to seek medical treatment on my own for it. I am still suffering from recurrent infections from this incident and I have some permanent disfigurement as a result of delaying treatment due to her intimidating actions. Over the years, her mental condition got exponentially worse and worse until the point where it is now: ?People? are no longer just ?following? us, but rather they are ?sneaking into our house? to steal personal belongings and that there is has to be a strict schedule that needs to be followed otherwise these ?people? will sleep deprive her as punishment for being out of line. Sometimes, she will not let me go out with friends because she thinks that they are ?in on the deal? and are trying to kill me or are causing a ruse so people can get in the house while I'm not there. The times that she does let me go, there is always a sense of passive-aggression in her ?oh ok. have fun.? response and, if I go out with friends enough times, she reaches a breaking point and yells at me, stating that I don't love her because I'm always hanging out with friends on the weekends. The situation got worse and worse and capitulated in her trying to kill herself last year. After the ER stabilized her, she got transferred to the psyc ward where they diagnosed her with paranoid schizophrenia and chronic depression and placed her on anti-psychotics and anti-depressants. During her time at the hospital, my maternal aunt told me my mother had been mentally unstable since she was a teenager, but it comes and goes. The delusion was always about people following them or trying to kill them and it pretty much resulted in my aunt (who is a few years younger than my mother) being scared throughout her childhood until her late teens/early twenties, when she realized how fucked up my mother was. When my dad wanted to move in with my mother after she got knocked up (sigh?), my aunt took this as an opportunity to excuse herself from the insanity of their household and let my dad take over her spot on the lease. Fortunately for her, she broke the cycle. Sadly, my mother decided to focus her paranoid obsession to ?taking care of me? when I was born. She became a full-time homemaker and when I was old enough, I remember her being overprotective and refusing to let me play with friends outside if she was not supervising me. It would not be until my teenage years when the paranoia would start back up again, but I feel a lot of guilt about wanting to leave when she spent her life taking care of me and, as a result of being out of work so long and her illness, she can no longer get or maintain a job. After she was discharged from the hospital, things went well for about a month or so, at which point she refused to continue through with the therapy sessions or take her medication because she says she's ?not crazy?. After she had gotten off the pills, she told me that the reason why she tried to kill herself is because there was no point in her living and that we would all be better off without her - she thinks the reason why she can't hold a job is because the ?people? that follow her botch her chances of getting a job or sabotage her job once she gets hired (when in actuality it's her untreated mental condition that makes her an unreasonable employee compounded with the fact that her last stable job was in the 1980s). Besides this, she also says that she is wasting our money, insisting that the apartment she and my dad are living in is a waste of money because my dad could save so much money by just getting a bachelor apartment if she were no longer alive. (At this point in time, I was still living on campus at a nearby college. I have since graduated and moved back home, part of the reason was to nullify this point in her argument.) Lastly, she says she hasn't gotten a good night's sleep in years because of the ?people? that are causing her sleep deprivation. So reddit, with this background information, what would you do if you were in my shoes? I would love to pack up my bags and just leave because I feel like she is not going to get better and I am being held back from living my life (e.g. dating, having fun with friends, etc.) if I am in her house playing by her crazy ?rules? and schedule. But I feel as if I have a certain obligation out of pity to stick around because she is mentally unstable and pretty much can't take care of herself, even if she has caused emotional abuse to me in my childhood and I am still recovering from it. Furthermore, I'm afraid that if I do leave, it may be a trigger and cause her to try to kill herself again. I don't know if I can live that down for the rest of my life if she were to do it and succeed. On the flip side, part of me feels like she is better off dead given all the pain she has caused me over the years. Do you think I have an ethical obligation to try to stop her from killing herself if I left? Am I legally obligated to call 911 if I end up learning of a suicide attempt? As horrible as this may sound, a part of me wants her to be gone simply because she has caused so much emotional pain in my life and that I had already gave her an opportunity for recovery after the first attempt, which she simply just threw away. If she didn't continue treatment the first time, why bother repeating this again? She would just turn down the treatment again after the hospital discharged her. This part of me thinks it would be rather silly to save a crazy person hell-bent on refusing treatment because they believe they are not crazy?especially if it ends up with me spending part of my money on her medical bills, which was what happened after the first attempt. (She was still on medication at the time and was getting better, so I agreed to pick up part of her bills as a gesture of goodwill and hope that she could continue to get better.) Miscellaneous things running in my head: -While she is my mother, it pains me to call her my mom because, in my eyes, she failed the conditions of being a mom. I see my friends and acquaintances with their moms and they have actual working relationships and their moms are actually there for them when they need help and emotional support. Part of me really wants to see her as just an egg donor as she failed to emotionally take care of me. -On the medical level, the reason why she's sleep deprived is because her paranoid schizophrenia is causing hyperactivity in her dopamine 2 receptors, which in turn causes insomnia. When she was on her anti-psychotics, she was able to sleep the whole night because the medication regulated the receptors. The reason why she thinks items are going missing is because she has the early stages of dementia. For example, she flips out when the fruit basket looks emptier, but she forgets the fact that she ate some fruit earlier and refuses to accept any evidence that points to this conclusion. tl;dr - mom is a crazy bitch. want to get away but kind of feel sorry for her. afraid she will try to kill herself again once I leave. more