Dear Mom:

Brother and I owe you an apology– we have been indulging in a months-long fantasy that you’ve been OK, ever since you left here in November. We should have known that two breaks in two months was too much, and come out to visit earlier. But we’ve been hoping and wishing that you’d be compliant, and take your meds, and go to your shrink, and behave like a rational adult. Why we engaged in this mutual delusion, when you never took responsibility before you were diagnosed, I don’t know. But I’m sorry we let you slide for so long.

Instead, when you stopped answering your phone this week and disconnected the answering machine “because God told you to,” I had a sense of dread that This Was It. And then I got the call from Shrink that you’d missed a second appointment in a row. When Aunt got over there to check on you at Brother’s request, it wasn’t pretty. You answered the door stark naked. The toilet had overflowed, and there was a more than dubious puddle out into the hallway and into your bedroom. The management company had to tear it up.

To be fair to us, even after we discovered that your mania had allowed you to lie about med compliance in a calm and even tone, there were long periods where you seemed really lucid. You had normal conversations, recalled things from past calls, had no trouble recalling words or nouns, and didn’t drift off, mid-sentence. Your intelligence masked how far off the deep end you were—it was only seeing you in person that would allow the observer to see all the things you’d thrown away, and read all the stacks of gibberish God had told you to write.

When Brother got there, he was able to observe those things. He was also able to see how suggestible you were. We’re both worried for what this means to your bank account. And you refused to go for inpatient treatment. Well, your shrink doesn’t want you back as a patient, so if Brother can’t find you a new one next week with the help of the county social services agency I’ll be calling, we may be committing you anyway.

You see, we need you stable enough so that you don’t act up on the plane ride home. Because you can’t stay out there anymore. You can’t be trusted to take your medications or attend your appointments, and we can’t fly out to the West Coast to frog march you into every appointment. Once we get you qualified for Disability, there’ll be a supplement to your income, too, and hopefully we can get you into a nice Assisted Living facility where you can take some of your stuff.

We’re not looking forward to the fight in getting you home. We’re hoping that physically watching you take your meds every day for two weeks will get you stabilized enough that you won’t fight about it. But if we have to have you declared incompetent over your objections, so be it. It might almost be better if you stayed as you are, docile and agreeable, while we pack your things, change all your financial papers, and deal with your current landlord.

If you do regain some lucidity, I know you’re going to think we’re just trying to take over your life, but that’s the furthest thing from the truth. See, I can’t speak for Brother, but I really want very little to do with you. I want you to be happy and safe—I don’t hate you—but I don’t want you in my life, really, except at the outskirts. Bringing you back means weekly visits and caretaking and tolerance of your narcissistic bullshit, when all the while I really want to slap you for being so selfish.

At the same time, Brother and I are happy for you, if not us, inasmuch as your separation from reality seems to have stabilized at a happy point. You’re not paranoid or angry or violent, and you know who and where you are. While a nice scary psychotic break would have at least landed you in the hospital, giving us some leeway in getting them to keep you longer to try out a better medication regimen, I don’t wish you the scary visions and voices that would have required.

We don’t know what’s going to happen—we’ve been worried you were undermedicated anyway, and on the wrong mood stabilizer to boot, so we’re hoping we can get you something back to normal. But it’s been a while now that you’ve been fluctuating in this narrow band of crazy, and that does real damage to your brain, even though you didn’t believe me when I tried to talk to you about the need to take your meds, back when this whole thing started. So, if you remain the precocious and delusional three year old that you are right now, well, it could be worse.

You may never read this letter. Even if you do, your bipolar and your narcissism may prevent you from appreciating the best intentions that Brother and I have in setting you up someplace where you can have some independence, and yet still be taken care of. Despite all your faults, despite all the damage you did, you did instill in us a sense of responsibility, of caring for those not capable. I’m sorry, too, that I can’t end this letter by saying that I forgive you. I don’t, and I may not be able to. But I won’t hold it against you, either, and that’s to your credit, no matter everything else.