As a child, Ruby spent most of her days alone in her room smoking, giggling one minute and then crying in despair the next. Even though her main diagnoses was Schizophrenia, I can’t help but feel that depression was another illness that affected her. Also, I had never heard of the term “comorbidity”- that is, to be diagnosed with more than one mental illness. So Schizophrenia was all I knew. I didn’t know how ignorant I was until I spoke with a friend of mine whose mother was also diagnosed with Schizophrenia.

His mother would get dressed, leave the house, and be social despite her illness. I wondered about that when he told me. Was she that woman? You know, the one who walked the streets mumbling to herself, crazed look in her eyes? Did she have moments of clarity where she interacted with people out there on the streets? I never asked.

One reason that Ruby was so antisocial is she hated her appearance. After four children she went from a brickhouse to a mini-mansion. Her skin was pocked with acne. Her wardrobe consisted of house dresses/muumuus that she wore day in and out. She never bothered to fix her hair and instead wore it under a scarf.

I know now that some psychotropic medications can have side effects such as making you gain weight and other effects. This is truer with the medications of the past forty years.

Nevertheless, her self-hatred led to isolation that was unbroken. If I wanted to see my mother, I had to walk into her world; that room that was so filled with smoke that the walls were covered in tar. I would sit with her breathing it all in. Sometimes she would talk or ask me to sit on her belly to flatten it and I would comply. That was as close as she would come to a hug or any type of affection.
In reflecting on these memories, I can you that serious mental illness affect everyone in the family and when you’re a child that does not understand “mommy’s strangeness,” you tend to blame yourself.