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My daughter is obsessed with death.

As well am I. For good reason-it’s so tied in with our lives. Births we celebrate, we talk about over and over, we glorify. Death, well….we remember it’s there, but we ignore it, do our best to pretend it doesn’t really exist, until it’s too late.

But what about when birth and death come together in the most awful of ways?

As I write this, a young mother took her own life and the lives of her young daughters. Only one survived. And I ache for them. I positively ache. So much potential. So much beauty. 4 views of our world lost forever into a dark and crowded closet. 4 girls, 4 women to be.

The mother was 25 years old.

You can read the full article here.

And I’m angry. I’m angry at a world that creates 25 year old mothers of four, stuck alone in a cramped trailer, depressed and confused, so much so that death seems to be the only way out. I’m angry at a world that refuses to see suffering when it is in the mind. I’m angry, hell I’m pissed off at a world that calls our mothers, our sisters and friends, less than worthy of our compassion and mercy. I’m angry at a world who says that there is no sickness, that these women are merely selfish or blinded or at worst, full of evil intent.

I’m tired, and sick of explaining, of trying to make it all make sense. Of making my world, my illness and suffering fit into a box so that perhaps someone might understand it. Feel in your heart a mother who hates her children. Feel in your heart the knowledge that she could indeed kill them. Feel in your heart the lack of love her illness brings. Then judge. Then cast stones at the women who wander alone and aloof from the things women should so desperately want. Then cast your judgments towards all of us, all women.

I never anticipated I would get sick, not like I did. Did Andrea? Did Gilberta? Does anyone? Does anyone wake up one day with the knowledge that they will someday feel a crack form in their mind, and suddenly everything will split and the love they feel will turn black and sour in their hands. For that matter, does anyone wake up one morning knowing they have cancer?

This is not an excuse. This is not a lie. Those of us who are ill are suffering. Suffering in ways you cannot imagine, ultimately manifesting in women who murder the fruit of their very bodies. This is not a way out, unless we let it be the only one possible. WE let this happen, by blindly accepting judgment, by blindly believing that these women can control it, that these women are not at the mercy of a sickness they cannot overcome or destroy. WE let it happen by refusing to watch for it, refusing to help prevent it, or staunch the flow. WE let this happen by turning the other way, and refusing to look.

I don’t want this for my daughters. I don’t want my sickness in their veins; I do not want my suffering in their hearts. So they know death-they speak of it almost as a parlor trick. They know that things end, that death is real. They know that I am sick.

When they are old enough, they will understand why I am sick. They will understand what happens to some of us when births come too quickly, when our bodies cease to listen to the demands of our hearts and minds. They will understand what it means to want your child dead, to listen to their breathing in the hopes that it will shudder and stop. They will understand how easy it is to be judged for this.

They will understand. But who will say this to the world? I make the assumption that Gilberta was ill because it’s all that makes sense. But more, I react to all the assumptions that women ill from childbearing are terrible mothers, the worst. If an organ is failing, we treat it. Why is the brain not such an organ? Why are mother’s judged so harshly in a world that has taken away all her support, all her fellow women who should stand by her?

I stand by, and behind. As should we all.

[tags]bipolar, suicide, mental illness, Gilberta Estrada, parenting[/tags]