Looking back at genetics and mental illness in my family paints a harrowing picture. I don't think I would have chosen to have children if i would've understood the genetic legacy I was passing on to them. We never talked about mental illness in our family. When my father was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, my mother told us we were never to speak about it to anyone. It was treated like a shameful weakness of his, a family secret that must be protected at all costs.

IN part this may be due to them being a product of an earlier age when mental illness was poorly understood, but I think a large part was due to the way my mother handled life in general. Everything had to appear to be perfect, regardless of how it actually was. The same urge that made her hide my father's diagnosis (and refuse to seek any help for her own issues) is the same urge that made her remove me from school every time they suggested I might need testing. It's the same reason that I wasn't allowed to talk about being beaten with a belt, or that I'd seen my mother and father fight physically. It was the same reason that I was encouraged NOT to have friends over, that we did not throw parties, that we did not really have family friends.

This is what I know about mental illness and suspected mental illness in my family, as far back as I know of. Names omitted for privacy.


(Maternal Grandmother) - has been described to me as shy, had difficulty learning english. Quit school. Did not talk to many people outside her family. Easily manipulated by her sister. She was brilliant with crochet and knitting and cooking, could make anything wihtout a pattern. I highly suspect she was autistic.

(Maternal Grandfather) - I heard he drank a lot, but was that alcoholism? Unknown
(Maternal Great Aunt) - narcissistic personality disorder (undiagnosed)
(Mother) - narcissistic personality disorder (undaignosed), OCD (undiagnosed), phobias
(Mother's Brother) - alcoholism (at least one of her brothers)
(Mother's Cousin) - possible pedophile, anxiety, 'odd behaviors'


(Paternal Grandmother) - Not sure. She was described as loud, belligerent, and neglectful of her children. Mentally ill?
(Paternal Grandfather) - I know very little about him to be honest, other than he was divorced from my dad's mother.
(Father) - bipolar disorder, alcoholism
(Father's Older Sister) - molested my father, sexually promiscuous, described as 'wild' (mentally ill almost certainly - no idea with what though)
(Father's Younger Sister) - uncertain


(Myself) - autism, c-ptsd (environmental), depression
(My brother) - drug addiction, drinking (alcoholism?), depression
(My second brother) - none
(Niece)- schizophrenia

(My son)- drug addiction, bipolar, possible schitzoaffective disorder, depression, autism (suspected)
(My daughter) - drug addiction, OCD (undiagnosed), narcissistic personality disorder (undiagnosed)
(My daughter) - drug use (addiction?), anxiety, depression


My daughters have children of their own and as I have no contact with them, and they are quite young, it's impossible to tell what they have inherited. But the odds don't look good for them. This makes me feel very guilty some times, for my part in continuing genetics that should've died with me. They could have died with me. Yet they will continue on for gods knows how many generations, causing pain to those who have to live with the illnesses that are their genetic legacy and the circumstances of being raised by a mentally ill parent.

We cannot change the past, nor the present. I had kids. They have kids now. There is nothing that can be done about that.

But I can talk about mental illness, and refuse to sweep it under the family rug. I can leave these writings that future generations might find and know more about what genealogy won't tell them. It won't speak about the family history of breakdowns, suicide attempts, drug rehabilitations and all - those records will all be lost to time. We see our family tree and we like to imagine our ancestors as better versions of ourselves, as a romanticized past.


We never get the apology for their contribution to our genetic cocktail.

But here is mine.

Future generations, I'm sorry.


* the title comes from a saying my mother used way too often any time she felt I was 'acting crazy like my father', or my kids were 'acting crazy like me'

I can remember being very small, and living in a yellow house with a brown roof. The walls of my bedroom too, were bright and sunny. The living room furniture was colonial, the couch velvety and covered in various country scenes. I could stare at it for hours, making up stories to myself about the tiny people in their carriages and barns and houses. I was the significantly younger child in the family, my brothers being some 15 years older than I am. About the time they left home is about the time the colors started to drain from the house.

Let me explain that this is not entirely metaphorical. As a person on the spectrum, I have always felt a great affinity for color and texture. I can remember the texture of that first couch in my life as surely as if i was sitting on it right now, and the color of my first set of 'big girl' sheets (and the wood of my crib before that, for that matter). My bedroom furniture was bright white and kelly green. Before you think my memory phenomenal, I can't recall what I looked like. I can't remember my mother or father's face. People don't stick the way textures and colors do.

Anyhow I was about 6 or 7 when my brothers moved out, and my grandmother moved in. She had dementia, and often looked up at the blue sky and the white clouds and talked to my grandfather who'd gone up to the sky not long ago. Her clothes were mostly dark, but on her head she wore silky scarves that had color. In her hands she held her knitting, white and purple and green, no longer any pattern but down, down, down. She died in the room that had been my brothers. The EMTs brought her out, stiff as a board, her hands clutched over her chest, colorless as the sheet they pulled up over her.

i suppose it took us all a while to get over it, though no one ever talked about it much in front of me as I was a child. And I kept the nightmares to myself, because I wasn't really that great about communicating. Somewhere around here is the time I was put into Children's Hospital a while, for 'tests' was all my mother would tell me. The only memories I have of that are smells, flashes of light, a clear oxygen tent and white, white sheets.

They decided they would only need one bedroom now, and they could expand the living room now by knocking my bedroom completely out of existence and moving me into my brother's old room. Wouldn't that be great? they said, in that tone that implied I hadn't much of a choice. The new room was bigger after all, and it had A Closet, which my room lacked. Wouldn't that be great? All I knew was they were going to take away the only room I'd ever had, the space I considered my own safe space, and place me into the area where someone had died.

IN the room I went, with a green carpet to match my furniture's green being installed. Isn't this nice? I saw, or hallucinated I saw in my hysteria, the ghost of my grandmother in that room. I can't as an adult tell you one way or the other, but I know as I child I firmly believed I saw it. There, on the dresser, a transparent lady couldn't they see it? Her smile was kind but I was afraid she'd come to take me up into the sky the moment I fell asleep. My mother (and a visiting brother) told me that there was nothing there, I needed to stop being dramatic and just go to bed. So I lay there in the darkness, too terrified to sleep, the sheets up to my neck (I didn't dare pull them over my head because I had to keep an eye on her).

I never saw anything distinct after that night but I do recall a lot of lights and sounds and shapes in the darkness that disturbed me.

I don't recall how many years later it was, when everything started to turn to brown and gray. Wood paneling was in, and my mother had the most wonderful idea (she said) - we'd cover all the walls in paneling and never have to paint inside again. She chose the darkest paneling she could to hide stains. A deep, dark, fake wood brown. I ran my hands over the texture- it didn't feel a bit like wood, being all laminated and slick. And it was so dark. The walls in kitchen, living room, and dining area were covered in it. The windowsills and frames were painted brown to match. The door became brown, heavy steel. I begged them not to do it to my room, but they insisted it had to be paneled. They at least allowed me to choose a color that wasn't brown- but they wouldn't go for anything wild. Gray, pale gray.

The furniture set to match this was shades of brown, and the carpet was dark (orange, I think?). Dark wood china cabinet. Dark orange counters. Brown table, with brown vinyl seat cushions. The couch felt scratchy and fibrous. The dining room chairs stuck to your skin if you dared sit on them in shorts. For a long while, they even drove a brown car.

I became profoundly, but silently, unhappy. I had no way of expressing the depression I'd been spiraling into - this is also about the time I started playing musical schools. Every time a school tried to diagnose me with something (emotionally disturbed, in need of counseling, etc) - my mother moved me to another school with a caution to act more normal this time, and not tell anyone anything as it was none of their business.

The outside of the house too, had to eventually lose its colors. Gone was the bright yellow wood, replaced by somber beige plastic siding and a brown deck. The only refuge of color could be found in the screened porch around back. You could look up and see yellow paint, the same paint that had been used on the exterior of the house. There was a riotous carpet, orange and red, that was a hand-me-down from my aunt I believe. I spent a lot of time in there.

The orange counter surfaces became colorless ecru. The table became black.

I can't look back on my childhood home with any degree of fondness because the walls soaked up all the unhappiness. The colors bled out like any hope of being a happy functional family bled out over the years.

At the end of the sidewalk, by the mailbox, my tiny feet were pressed in cement shortly after I was born. About a year old, and I got set in gray concrete - my name and the date recorded along with those footprints. When my mother dies, I hope they tear down that place.I can't see it ever bringing anything but misery to anyone. But at the very least, I hope that someone will be kind enough to take a sledge hammer to that slab of stone and finally free me from that awful ground.