Posted August 9, 2010

My mother is bipolar. I don’t know if she is bipolar I or II. I don’t even know if she has been medically diagnosed. She always runs away to California. She reminds me of the movie The Soloist because she is so talented. She is a very skilled seamstress and designer. She can literally think of something in her mind and create it without a pattern. Just this year she returned from California after 6 years and told me she was bipolar and the reason she leaves to go to California is because when she “changes” she can’t be around people. Which I don’t understand because whenever she calls me she always seems to be around a group of people.

Anyhow, I have seen very strong symptoms and traits of bipolar during her time back home. She gets extremely upset if anyone ever disagrees with her. She has these grandiose ideas of how she will make millions of dollars with no “product.” She seems to think someone is going to meet her once (because she is a celebrity) and offer her millions of dollars for her ideas. And she expects the family to support her ideas financially, no questions asked.

Lately she is no longer talking to me because she thinks I am totally against her and that I want to ruin her somehow. I love my mother dearly and I don’t know how to appeal to her or get her to talk to me again. She has had arguments with almost everyone in our family and turned half the family against her. She refuses to have a place of her own and stays from place to place. She doesn’t bathe, and she kidnapped my son and my niece and brainwashed them to believe they were being abused. When we finally caught up with her at my grandmother’s house she threatened to call the police on me and my husband for abuse.

She no longer admits to being bipolar and refuses to seek any type of help or take any type of meds. She thinks everyone else is out to get her and destroy her – mainly her family. I don’t know what to do or how to help her. She says she is leaving to go to Vegas next week with some grandiose idea. She must be getting ready to “change.” I fear she will stay gone even longer this time and her mental state will be even worse. But she can’t stay here because no one in the family will let her stay at their home because of the things she does. I am just confused and sad and don’t know how to help her.