How I Became Crazy

My mother nearly starved me as an infant. She had postpartum depression and could not stand to hold me. She did not notice that there wasn't a hole in the nipple on the bottle and that I was not getting milk. She thought I was willful and unwilling to suckle the bottle. This event set the stage for a lifetime of conflict and desperate need.

At three I was raped by a nineteen year old boy who was a friend of my brothers. My mother was the only one who knew, since she walked in on the act in progress. She told no one. But when I had to pee and it burned, she told me "Never let a boy do that to you," giving me responsibility at three for what an adult did to me. I regressed and hid in the bathroom, the only door I could lock.

She taught me to smoke when I was five. She told me no one likes children, so I should act like a grown up. She taught me how to mix a cocktail. Though these were skills of a sort, they made me freakishly grown up and set me up to be objectified.

She ran away from my family and only took me with her, then sent me to Texas to live with relatives. I was well cared for but knew I'd been abandoned.

She married a pedophile from a very prominent family and took me back when I was six. This man adopted me and began sexually abusing me which went on in her presence until I was eleven and started menstruating. I was told I was too old for my Daddy anymore. I was then turned over to my mother who began to use me like her own personal cleaning lady. Again, this responsibility for all the housework did give me skills, but let me know that my only worth was now as servant to my mother. I was told there is no such think as unconditional love. "You have to earn love." My dad no longer found me useful, so I had to earn my mother's love by keeping the house clean and the laundry done. I was an A student but was told I wasn't living up to my potential. I was never praised for anything but the way I looked. My mother then started telling my my nose was too big. She pinched my budding breasts, she spit in my face, she goosed me at every opportunity. We were a good looking, well educated, upper middle class family. My mother always worked and my father was a psychologist. I was a ticking time bomb.

When I began to date I was told by my family that the only reason a boy would be interested in me was to "get inside (my) pants." I was told my only worth was between my legs. I began to loathe myself. I started cutting and puncturing my skin with things like an ice pick. I put cigarettes out on the back of my hand. I clawed the flesh of my face. I detested myself.

By the time I was seventeen I knew I couldn't live at home anymore. I skipped my senior year of high school so I could go to the University of Utah and live in the dorms.

Depression took me like a gentle lover. All of this is enough to drive a child crazy. By seventeen I had PTSD. But I was also bipolar and full of unfocused rage.