After work today, I was at a used book store in the Market. On the table was a copy of Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen about her two years of treatment at McLean, the famous mental health hospital in Massachusetts. The book was later made into a movie starring Winona Ryder and Angelia Jolie.
I owned a copy of the book years ago, when I was reading everything I could find on mental illness after my brother's breakdown.
I started to cry today when I saw the book, as so much had happened when I read the book in 2007 and now. When I read the story, I had no idea my son would spend time in treatment, and that I would be the one who would ship him off.
I remember reading the story, and feeling like the parents were the villains, the ones whose shitty, distant, or unaccepting behavior drove their kids nuts. Or, maybe the kids weren't the crazy ones, but the parents were, but because the parents had the power and the means, the kids were the ones shipped off, even if the parents were just as fucked up, or maybe more so.
When I look back to when I first read the book, I saw my own naïveté, my own innocence for what was yet to come.
I could blame myself, but I won't. I can, however, take responsibility for my own behavior and how it impacted my family and those I love. I did the best I could do at the time, and I continue to grow and heal.
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