Sunday, November 09, 2008

This Week in the Life of Angie (Part 2 of 3)

This week, I reached a breaking point as it pertains to my family. One of the reasons why it was so hard for me to fully splash around in the sheer excitement of President-Elect Obama's victory was because my family was acting such a fool this week. My sisters and my aunts were acting like they didn't have any sense. But this post is about my aunts.

My mother has two living sisters, and both of them suffer from mental illness. And the tripped out thing about mental illness is that usually the person with the mental illness has no clue how sick they are. Another awful thing about many folks with mental illness is they are often noncompliant. They don't like to take their medicine. So, the management of their illness is terribly difficult.

The aunt that is less sick, but certainly more annoying, feels that my sisters and I, but mainly me, should be doing more to help her with my aunt. She calls over here and curses us out, upsets my sick mother by telling her she should be doing more, and she even wishes damnation on our family for not being what she thinks of as "Godly."

It is actually in my nature to help whenever there is a need. But here's the problem. I am disabled too. And while I might be a bad sistah, I already have enough resting on my shoulders when it comes to managing my life and taking care of my very sick mother. Plus, my aunt that is calling for us to help her with the other aunt is just plain mean and awful. I refuse to put myself in the position to be abused. When I was a kid, I didn't have a choice. But now that I'm an adult, I choose.

Well, because we weren't responding to her many calls for us to let the aunt come and live with us, she started leaving crazy a$$ messages on our voice mail. And guess who she was directing the messages to? You got it. Me...

This woman left several messages telling me, her blind niece, how God was going to "allow something so bad to happen to me that I was gon' be on my back, crying out for the Lord to come and help me." She went on to say that this awful thing was going to come in a form that I was ready for, in a form that would leave me confused and messed up. And she ended her messages by saying that it is her prayer that "your demonic black ass is able to get a prayer through to God to help you through this tragedy."

What an aunt!!!

Here's what I don't get. Why in the hell would an aunt, the sister of one of your parents, wish such evil on their niece or nephew? Why would someone that swares they are a Christian, someone that holds up the banner of the Church of God in Christ, someone that believes they are filled with the Holy Spirit, think it is a Godly idea to literally try to curse the futures of anyone, let alone a family member?

At this point, I'm used to my aunt's ridiculous charges, curses, and abusive ways. However, I'm sick of it! I will be so glad when I don't have to have any contact with this woman.

I guess you might ask, why do I have contact with her now. Well, because I live with my mother. And as long as my mother is living, I will not restrict her sisters, even though they are off the chain, from calling her. At this point, as ridiculous as they are, they are the only folks that consistently call and check on her.

Well, since all of this went down earlier this week, my aunt, the one that is more sick, was admitted into the psych hospital. She's been off her meds for two months. They'll get her back on them. And she'll be fine again for two months. And I'm pretty certain she'll cycle again into her "I Don't need to take medicine." self-diagnosis.

**I told you I had a crazy week. And I'm not through yet. Check me out later today with the last installment.**

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