When Your Mother Threatens Suicide
By: Glenna Gill
Tags: Suicide, Motherhood, Women, Mental Illness, Self

When Your Mother Threatens Suicide

Growing up with a mentally ill parent

Photo by Naomi August on Unsplash

It was raining extra hard the morning I woke my mother up to drive me to school. I normally walked eleven blocks to get there, but the huge sheets of rain coming down would have me looking like a drowned rat if I dared to try.

“You can walk,” my mother grumbled, putting her pillow over her head.

“Mom,” I whined, “it’s pouring down rain.”

“So?” My mother’s voice was muffled by the pillow.

I stood over her thinking for a minute. What was wrong with her? What kind of mother lets her daughter get soaked on her way to school? Unfortunately, I said that last part out loud.

“FINE!” my mom yelled as she jumped up and pushed me aside and went into the bathroom.

I didn’t really care that she was mad as long as I could get to school fairly dry. I already knew at the tender age of fourteen that my mother would try to make me feel guilty about asking for a ride. Once we were in the car, she was dead silent. I don’t know if she was waiting for an apology from me.

Once we pulled up to the school, my mother turned to me with angry tears in her eyes.

“I just can’t take it anymore,” she cried. “You have no respect for me at all. I want to go home and kill myself, and I’m going to write ‘YOUR FAULT’ on the floor with my own blood.”

I looked at her completely stunned. Would my mother really try to kill herself? Well, there was that one night she drove into a lake on purpose. What about the time when her married boyfriend broke up with her and she lightly cut a wrist to win him back? As I walked into my first class, my eyes were hot and wet. When I got to my desk, I put my head down so nobody would see me cry.

“What’s wrong?” One of my classmates appeared by my side. I shook my head as if it was nothing. Even though my mother could be killing herself right that minute, I said nothing. I knew better than to tell anyone about my mother’s personal business.

I glanced across the classroom and saw Sean Cardwell trying not to look at me, and I remembered the real reason I’d wanted to go to school so bad that morning. The night before, Sean had called me and asked me to go out with him. I liked him. He was smart and funny and kind of cute, but I didn’t know if I was old enough for a boyfriend yet. I told him I’d give him an answer the next morning at school in person.

I felt embarrassed that he saw me crying at school. Maybe he thought I was crying over him and that I didn’t have the bravery to reject him in person. None of that was true. My answer to Sean would have been yes, and then I would have had my first boyfriend. Instead, I cried and worried over my mother the entire day.

When I got home from school and my mom got home from work, she acted like nothing ever happened, so I did the same.

I never knew what to expect from my mom from day to day. Her moods shifted with the wind, sometimes happy but more often sad and mean. Everyone in our family was so proud of her getting her life together and being a single mom to a teenager. I wanted to laugh in the face of everyone who said that.

My mother spun her story for anyone who would listen, and in it, she was always the victim of a daughter who constantly mouthed off and ignored her. Only I knew the truth about what was going on in our little apartment, but I also knew nobody would have believed me.

I was the black sheep, the truth-teller, and such a thing wasn’t allowed in our family. My grandparents’ alcoholism, my mother’s mental illness, and the fact that I was technically a bastard were all swept under the rug. Those things weren’t talked about until I began to speak up and lay our secrets bare. For my trouble, nobody in the family has spoken to me since my mother died in 2018. I tell myself good riddance so it doesn’t hurt so much, but it’s hard not to have an extended family sometimes.

I’ve come to a place of forgiveness for my mother. It took me time to realize that she likely did the best she could raising me in the shadow of mental illness. I’ve made mistakes with my children during episodes of severe depression, although I work hard to repair any damage right away, and those times are few and far between.

When I think of my mother now, I try to remember the good times. Once she kept me out of school to see the movie Cinderella in a theater. I get my love of reading from her, and it has helped get me through my darkest days. It still makes me cry whenever I hear her favorite song by Earth, Wind, and Fire. We were so similar and yet so different, and it makes me feel somewhat sad yet proud to be connected to her.

I think of her now being at peace and happy. It’s what I always wanted for her, although I had a hard time expressing it when she was here. She’s my mother, and I love her.