Two days ago I came across an article with the words “Wish .
. . Had Never Been Born” in the title. I immediately flashed back to my preteen
years, hearing these words shouted at me an incalculable number of my times by
my strung out, mentally ill older sister. She wishes I’d never been born.
Ingrained in me. Wrestled through. Words that stuck.
More than twenty years later, The New Yorker releases an article with a similar statement from
Adam Lanza’s father regarding his son. Peter wishes Adam, his son, had never
been born.
And while the sight of those words pierced me to my core, I
can attest to how heartrending it is to be related to someone with a destructive
mental illness. The embarrassing arrests. The suicide attempts. The lashing out
I feared would or could one day lead to murder. As shocking as they sound, I
will not judge Peter for his words.
The Newtown tragedy hit close to home for me for other
reasons. It occurred in my native state the year all three of my girls were attending
elementary school. Adam murdered twenty-six people.
Just as with the shootings at Columbine, everyone scuttles
about what the parents did wrong. What could have been done to prevent these
heinous acts? Good questions to ask. But sometimes more problematic to answer
than it might originally seem.
A year or so ago I read an article listing all the ways a
troubled actress had been acting out. Toward the end of the article the
reporter wrote she just wished the actress’s family would be more involved,
would help her straighten up. When I set the magazine down, I was overcome with
a mixture of anger and guilt.
Don’t people get it? Don’t they see that we’ve done
everything we possibly can? This is an illness! There are some situations that
don’t have simplistic remedies. Some causes that can’t be pinpointed adequately
enough—satisfying the need for someone to blame.
This brings to mind Defending
Jacob, an excellent book club choice, portraying a father having to come to
terms with what he believes about his own son’s guilt in a local murder case.
And it challenges my thoughts about how we as a culture need
to continue to get more honest about mental illness. We need to be mindful
enough to know that most people struggling with mental illnesses won’t walk
into a school and mow down dozens of children. However, also be conscious
enough to realize how haunting and disturbing it can be to live with someone
whose mind is sick.
We need to stop blaming, work harder to understand, engage
in honest dialogue, seek help when or perhaps even before necessary, and
empathize more than we judge.
One of my book groups recently discussed Still Alice, a novel about a successful
Harvard professor who begins to demonstrate early onset signs of Alzheimer’s.
In one scene Alice expresses her shame about what she’s dealing with, how if
she had cancer people wouldn’t be afraid to sit next to her as though it were
contagious.
I wish I could fix my sister’s illness. Wish I could bring
her back to the vibrant young teenager I remember her as before all kinds of
chaos infiltrated and shattered her mental understanding of the world.
Sometimes I wish I could slide into her shoes to fight her
demons off for her. But I can’t. And there is no easy fix, no easy cure for
her. This breaks my heart every second I’m alive.
It is with unending gratitude that I can say I’m thankful I
was born. And I’m grateful my sister was born, too.
I may not understand
why our roads are paved so differently. But I don’t have to understand.
I just have to do as Bono My Bono sings, “Walk on, walk on.”
*I realize Alzheimer’s disease isn’t a mental illness, but
included the Still Alice point
because people often treat anything influencing the brain, as opposed to the
body, differently.
