My Black Cloud

My story is over 50 years long so I will try and be brief! My first memories are recurring nightmares of being trapped and terrifed. I now know that as soon as I was born myself and my mother were taken into a mental hosptial for several months. I was always afraid as a child but was forced to grow up very quickly. I had to face my first day at school alone and late arriving and being told off, as my mother decided she was unable to take me. I was regularly removed from schools as she decided we were staying with relatives and term time would start and we would not go back to school for weeks. I often incurred the teachers wrath when I reappeared with no warning either! She attempted suicide when I was 10 or 11 by overdosing and locking herself in the bedroom. As I have grown up i have been prevented from living a normal life. Any attempt to move away and leave home was met with being locked in the house or hysterical attempts to disrupt my work by constant phone calls to my office ( every 30 mins) so i had to return home. I did eventually get married but she tried to ruin that day too! She is self pitying and the world has to revolve around her needs and no one elses. And yet, she can snap out of it at will in front of non family members. This means the condition has never been treated. No doctor would beleive this smart, intelligent confident woman before them had a problem! Now in my fifties, one husband ( my father ) is divorced. A second died, as did her parents and brother. This means she saves up all her aggression and depression and manipulation for me. I never know what each day will bring.