A Beautiful Heart

Today I saw my adoptive-family step-sister for the first time since the early 90's. We grew up together and there is two months difference in our age. As you can see, we were often dressed as twins(that's me on the left-we were about 4 years old) Living in the same household may be a given for most siblings, but I have a total of three siblings that I did not really know as a child. Of all my siblings, growing up, I was closest to Cindy. I was always jealous of her-she was sweeter, prettier, more popular, better behaved, etc. I was told that I was too ADHD to play a musical instrument (despite a keen interest in music), but Cindy was calm and she was allowed to learn piano. Even though I wasn't supposed to 'bang on it', Cindy taught me to read music on the side when no one was in the house. She shared her lessons with me and taught me how to play simple things like Heart and Soul. We had a pool, and in the summer, the neighborhood guys would sit on the hill next door just to watch her swim(they loved that bikini!). If that wasn't enough, she also had a way with animals. I once saw her call up a wild rabbit to pet. It was amazing and I swear she communicated with them telepathically. She was a pretty good student, too, and we always felt she would become a veterinarian or somehow work with animals. She was so perfect in so many ways, and I always fell short of that. I was the troublemaker, the one who never behaved, the black sheep of the family. I was the aesthetically challenged adoptee, unhealthily white skinned, lanky, and goofy looking with glasses AND braces. Cindy was tanned and had curves in all the right places. She was very sweet and loving; girls wanted to be her, guys wanted to marry her. Family members asked me, and I asked myself, why I couldn't be more like Cindy.

You are probably wondering why I am using the past tense so much. It is complicated. Cindy is obviously still alive, but today she is not the person I grew up with. Cindy suffers from a mental illness known as schizophrenia. If you have ever seen the movie A Beautiful Mind with Russell Crowe as the mathematician John Nash, then you will better understand how the disease crushes personality and affects family relationships. Cindy is still sweet and kind, but much of her promise and allure is gone. She never went to college and she can't hold a job. The medications she must take have put weight on her, and her hard life has taken it's toll on her appearance. She looks much older than me by all accounts. They took a picture of us together today, and as soon as I get a copy, I'll add it to the blog. Check back later if you are curious.

Cindy lives in a group home, a half-way house of sorts, in Arkansas. It is good because they make sure she gets the care and counseling she needs. They monitor her health and medication. She seems stable now, actually better than I expected or have seen her in the past few decades. It is just hard for me to come to grips with the loss of her potential and for the way things have turned out. Mental illness took her from us at the age of 19, almost 30 years ago, and before she became a ward of the state, she was hospitalized at least once a year it seemed. Schizophrenia is a disease that cruelly makes one think they are normal enough to not need anti-psychotic medication. On medication, they may seen normal, even stable enough to work or live a normal family life, but once medication is stopped, psychotic episodes begin, and very often they get into trouble with the law because of hallucinations or paranoia or something as simple as the loss of inhibition-failure to wear clothes, for example. Some schizophrenics are violent or at least capable of violence when they are unmedicated. (I was with Cindy the night she had her first psychotic break. She was obsessed with arranging the 'pretty' knives on the table and then talked about God, who was on the roof of the house telling her to kill the Devil, who was supposedly in the closet.) The disease, like Alzheimer's or other diseases of the mind, slowly robs the patient of their personality, their identity, their uniqueness, with each psychotic break or episode washing away more and more personality. Many patients have medication side effects or other issues with stabilization and simply cannot live normally without heavy sedation. Almost all patients withdraw into themselves and no longer interact with others in a normal way, and some compound their problems by drinking or have addiction issues. It is a devastating mental illness that strikes people in their prime. This page lists some famous people with the disease, including Mary Todd Lincoln and Jack Kerouac:
http://www.schizophrenia.com/famous.htm
More infamously, there is John Hinckley Jr. and Mark David Chapman. Wikipedia has a great article on schizophrenia that lists symptoms, causes, and treatment options:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia

We all do things in life that we are not proud of-things that we will one day answer for. Whether you believe that we will stand in judgment before God or stand in judgment with a soul group or simply pay a kharmic debt or something else altogether, I think most of us know when we have done wrong and know that there will be a price to pay for that wrong. For me, I have abandoned my sister for the last 30 years. Granted, we haven't lived in the same state for much of that time, but still, I should have had more contact with her over the years. I have called her at various times, usually on her birthday and on holidays, but she deserves better from me. I don't know how to explain the heartbreak of this. To her credit, she still loves me and treats me just the same as she always did, when she would have every right to hate me for not being a part of her life. Ironically, it is that core part of her being that I love the most, her kindness, her generosity even when I don't deserve it.

She may not be able to change, but perhaps I can. She will be in town through next week. I think I will go by and pick her up for lunch or something. We used to do that...before...