Thursday, June 6, 1996
Daughter deals with a parent’s mental illness
I’m going to let you inside of me. You can laugh at my
experiences if you want, but don’t bother crying or feeling pity.
The damage has been done and I will survive.
You know how uncomfortable we feel when we see people who appear
to be "off their rocker" walking the streets. Sometimes you’ll see
a woman literally talking to herself  even getting angry
enough to shout at some invisible person. Her hair is disheveled,
her clothes too small, too big, never matching and you are
surprised to see make-up streaked on her face. You wonder, should I
walk past casually, give eye contact, offer her money or move to
the other side of the street? You look up and see her talking to
the air and think, what a shame  doesn’t she have any family
or friends to help her out?
Yes, she has several brothers and sisters with jobs and homes,
old friends and business associates, members of her old church and
a daughter named Shauna who goes to UCLA.
When I was born, my mother was a very together, stunning woman.
She was a Black Panther, professional singer, business partner,
wife and preacher’s daughter. Now she’s a thrice-divorced vagrant
vagabond wandering through streets. As far as I know, she’s not
completely homeless; there is always a man willing to give her
shelter in exchange for her body. How does my mother, or anyone,
get from there to here? Well, my mother became a drug addict and a
paranoid schizophrenic.
For over 10 years, she’s been on the streets. Not dead, but not
fully alive. Just out of my reach, like a shadow  always with
me, but untouchable.
According to my family, my mother was beautiful, down to earth
and talented. Sometimes, they will compare me to her, "God Â
you look just like your mother today," or "You know, your mother
used to write." They obviously can’t understand the sheer terror
they send through me when they remind me how much like my mom I am.
My first name Shauna is a derivative of her middle name Shaun, and
I’m scared to death that somewhere in the middle of my life, I’ll
turn into a shadow.
In lay person’s terms, paranoid-schizophrenia means that my
mother’s concept of reality is severely warped. She is delusional
and believes that almost everyone from the grocery store clerk to
her brother is in on a conspiracy to ruin her life.
If she’s so crazy, how did she raise me? First, let me preface
everything by stating that my mother is a con genius. If you met
her today, she could hold a 20-minute conversation with you about
politics and you would never know that she was suffering from a
mental illness. This ability to con is what enabled her to have
custody of me until I was 10. With that in mind, please continue to
come inside my life.
Like most mental illnesses, hers did not set in until later in
life. I learned in Psychology 10 that most women who suffer from
schizophrenia are diagnosed in their 20s. My mother gradually
turned into a shadow. When she and my father met, she was a normal,
intelligent woman. As the years passed and she became more
engrossed in the music industry, she began to dabble in drugs and
became strung-out.
Psychologists don’t know too much about what exactly makes a
person become schizophrenic (it is a chemical imbalance in the
brain), but the general conclusion is that it is both environmental
and genetic. My mother’s parents and several of her siblings suffer
from different types and degrees of mental problems.
So now you are probably wondering, does this mean I will slip
into a shadow sometime in my 20s? There is a very real possibility
that I could get married, have a baby and 10 years later, be
roaming the streets as a prostitute. But it won’t happen because
I’m conscious of the fact that I am predisposed. Therefore, I don’t
dabble in drugs. People who stress me out leave my life. And when I
get stressed, I back-up. But the thought still haunts me. What if I
slip …
My mother raised me by herself from the ages of 2 to 10. During
that time, I was taught that the FBI was chasing her because she
had information on a child pornography ring that the U.S.
government operated. Among other things, I was also taught that my
father and grandmother were in a conspiracy to kidnap me: "We have
to move  they’ll catch up with us soon if we don’t." From the
third to sixth grade, I was never in one school more than six
consecutive months. I never learned geography because it was taught
in the semester of fourth grade that I missed.
As a child, I always had a clue that something wasn’t right. But
I never knew what. When she would form the lines of cocaine on the
little mirror she kept on the bathroom sink, I would ask her to
stop because I knew drugs were bad. When she would explain these
lengthy plots of conspiracy about her brothers and sisters, I would
find holes and ask her questions to which she answered, "You are so
naive. That’s why I’m the mommy."
Sometimes, I would get angry and think but never say, "No you’re
not. If you were the mommy, we wouldn’t be using men for money,
sleeping in cars and moving from city to city five times a year.
You wouldn’t be snorting cocaine and having sex while I’m in the
room. You would get a job to secure a daily meal instead of chili
con carne five nights a week. You would stop running from the enemy
that doesn’t exist and just take care of me."
But most of the time, I wasn’t angry, just trying to maintain
control. She treated me like her best-friend because I was the only
one who trusted her (at the time). I had my first sex education
lesson when I was 4 years old. When I began grammar school, my
friends called me "granny" because I acted so grown. They didn’t
know how much it hurt to be reminded that I wasn’t like them, that
when I went home, I had no idea what mess I’d have to clean up,
what con I’d have to participate in, what meal I would have to
steal and how I couldn’t get comfortable because I knew we would
soon be running from the invisible enemy.
Well she’s still running. The only difference is that she is
running without me.
When I was 10, my mother and I were running one of our usual
scams  she was the expert and I was the protegee. We were
scamming for food at a diner that we thought was open 24 hours.
After eating, we began our usual routine. She tried to leave to go
to the car and "get something." I was to leave a few minutes later
to go to the restroom. But, I never got a chance to play my part
because the manager stopped my mother at the door and told her he
wasn’t letting me leave until she paid the bill; my mother went off
to find some money. By the time she came back (a couple of hours
later after the restaurant had closed), I was in a small room in
some L.A. County jail waiting to be transferred to the first of
three foster homes.
After that night, I never lived with my mother again. After 11
months in foster homes, my father (whom my mother had kept me from
seeing) received custody and he and my grandmother raised me. Since
then, my mother’s been in and out of living situations and mostly
on the streets. My dad didn’t let me keep in touch with her
probably because it is too painful for him and me.
When I turned 18, I thought I would be able to finally do
something about her. But, she doesn’t want any help. She’s in
denial and unwillingly to see a doctor or take any medication. I
tried to form a relationship with her when I came to college, but
communicating with her tests my sanity. Once, she got my phone
number when I was in the Freshman Summer Program and called me
nearly 10 times a day repeating the same stuff, "you know your
father is … you know the police did … you know Mohammed Ali is
going to help me …" Yes, I know that the more things change, the
more they stay the same.
Why am I telling you all of this? I am not sure. Part of it is
to educate the general public about the reality of mental illnesses
and its affect on families. But, the other part is therapy to
release my rage, and ease the pain. My graduation is approaching
rapidly and I am forced to deal with the fact that I’m passing
through another milestone without her; that she’s here, but not;
that as much as I want to, it’s impossible to change, remove or
even bury my shadow.
Robinson is a fourth-year African American studies student.