When I was a little girl living with my mother in our row house within the inner city I didn't know what Schizophrenia was.  I can't recall the first time I heard the term.  Sure I knew my mother was different from other mothers.  She would laugh and talk to herself.  But she always had some sort of explanation which made sense to my young mind.  My mother had her "spirits" she would tell things to.  I accepted this for the longest time as part of normal living.  As a matter of fact, I felt like the odd one because I couldn't hear the voices.

I remember going to the library to check out books about ghosts and the supernatural.  I wanted to talk to spirits too.  The voice that my mother would hear the most was from my dead father.  Her face would light up as she giggled to whatever humor my father was imparting from the other side.  Sometimes she would share these "conversations" with me and sometimes she would  keep them to herself as she smiled secretively.  I wanted to believe it was all true.  After my father died, I think both my mother and I had a hard time letting go.  My mother's visions allowed us to keep my father alive and with us. 

Other than visions and voices, I also came to appreciate my mother's many moods.  One day she would wake up cheerful and singing.  She would put on some records on the stereo and would invite me to dance with her.  We would spend whole afternoons dancing and singing together.  But then something dark would take over and her paranoia would set in.  My mother would grow stern and even angry.  She would forbid me to talk to certain people and even my friends.  The reasons never made sense to me but I understood that it was imperative that I listen to her.  It was when I tried to reason with her during these times that she would become increasingly agitated and anxious.  Then there were the severe depressions where she could hardly get out of bed and sometimes she couldn't.  I go to school and she would still be lying in bed, cigarette glowing in the dim morning light.  When I came home, she quite often would still be there, as though no time had passed at all.

It was due to my mother's ever changing moods that I developed a gift of sorts of being able to read people.  I soon learned to be able to predict when she would go into her different mental states.  This skill was critical for my own mental well being.  In order to survive I had to adapt to the manifestations of my mother's mental illness.  As a child I had no power except to maintain my co-existence in her world...a world I most often did not understand.  I suppose that my greatest wish back then was to be able to understand the world through my mother's eyes.  I am forty four years old now and I still don't understand.  But I am always still open to learning.