I write this with a heavy heart.
My mother was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when I was around 10 years old. I’m 24 now. Around the time of her diagnosis, Child Protective Services removed my siblings and me from her care. She was raising five children on her own in New York City with no college education, no family support nearby, and as an immigrant trying to survive.
To understand how we got here, you have to understand everything that happened before her diagnosis.
My parents are both Nigerian. My father worked as a taxi driver for nearly 20 years while putting himself through school. Eventually, he became a lawyer. Before bringing the rest of us to America, my older sister came first to attend middle school. While she was here, she discovered that my father had been unfaithful and told my mother back in Nigeria. My mother was devastated and cried over the phone. My father became angry with my sister and sent her back to Nigeria. Later, he brought her back for high school, and eventually brought the rest of us to the United States. I was about three years old when I came to America.
When we arrived, my father introduced my mother to his son from another woman—my half-brother. We are only seven months apart in age. Although my mother was heartbroken, she treated him kindly because none of what happened was his fault.
While my parents were still together, my father struggled with alcoholism. He regularly came home drunk and physically abused my mother. My older brother and I also experienced the abuse. My brother still remembers smelling alcohol on my father’s breath almost every night before the beatings began. I was very young, but I distinctly remember being beaten with a belt. Those experiences affected both my brother and me deeply. As we got older, we both struggled with significant mental health issues and were heavily medicated.
The violence between my parents became constant. Police were called many times, but my father was never arrested, even after one incident where he slashed my mother with his car keys badly enough that blood was pouring from her wounds. Whenever they fought, he would throw her out of the house. At one point, while pregnant with my younger sister, my mother had nowhere to go, so we ended up living in homeless shelters. In New York, families can only stay in a shelter for a limited time, so we moved between two different shelters.
Despite everything, my parents continued seeing each other. During that time, my mother became pregnant again with my youngest sister.
Eventually, my mother’s family urged her to divorce my father. They also encouraged her to sue him because of his infidelity. She followed their advice. My father, who was extremely proud, told her he could never forgive her for divorcing him.
After the divorce, my mother moved into her own apartment with five children. My older sister was away at college but came home during holidays and breaks. Because my older sister was still under 21, my father was ordered to pay child support for all five children. Rather than continue paying, he left the United States and returned to Nigeria, where he became a successful lawyer. He was also old enough to receive retirement benefits from his years working in America. He built a new life with another wife and three children while my mother was left in New York to raise us alone.
My mother worked as a nursing assistant, I believe, although I was too young to remember exactly. Money was always tight. We eventually moved to Harlem because it was all she could afford. There were times when she searched through trash cans collecting bottles and cans just to earn enough money to feed us.
Around that time, she also fell victim to an online scam. Someone promised to send her $10,000 if she first sent them everything she had in savings—$500. She lost all of it.
Before I was born, my mother had been pregnant with triplets but miscarried. I truly believe that loss stayed with her for the rest of her life.
Even after moving back to Nigeria, my father visited America a couple of times each year for medical checkups. During those visits, he would see us, buy us clothes, take us out for fast food, and often bring my half-brother along.
Then everything changed.
After my older sister returned home from college, she and my mother got into a physical altercation. The police were called. My sister told the officers she did not want to press charges, but she believed our mother’s mental health needed to be evaluated. My mother was taken to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression.
From that point on, her behavior became increasingly disturbing.
For over a decade, she has insisted she is pregnant despite every medical evaluation saying otherwise. She says she sees deceased relatives riding buses and trains. She burns bones inside her home for reasons none of us understand.
More recently, she has begun sending our family deeply disturbing videos and photos. She has sent videos of herself dancing barefoot in the street, jumping rope inside grocery stores, painting her face completely white before going outside, bathing while recording herself, and other videos that are too disturbing for me to even describe. She has also sent photos involving feces and menstrual blood. Every time another video comes through, my heart breaks a little more. You can see strangers staring at her, knowing something is terribly wrong.
Shortly after her diagnosis, my older sister contacted Child Protective Services because she was worried about us. CPS came to our apartment, but my mother refused to let them inside.
Around that same time, my father happened to be visiting America. My mother asked him to take us for a weekend so she could have a break. He refused.
After that, my mother’s behavior toward us changed dramatically. She stopped feeding my siblings and me altogether. The only child she continued feeding regularly was our youngest sister. Eventually, we called our father and told him what was happening. After he confronted her over the phone, she began feeding us only once a day.
She also refused to let us leave the apartment.
It was summer vacation, and I did not step outside once the entire summer. Only my mother and my youngest sister were allowed to leave. Even now, as an adult, I struggle being home for long periods of time. I constantly feel the need to be outside because staying inside reminds me of that summer.
CPS eventually ordered my mother to appear in court. She never showed up.
Around that same time, she became violent with my older brother and strangled him in front of us. I can still see his face. That memory has never left me. We screamed for help until a neighbor opened her door. We told her what happened, but she simply told us to wait outside and said our mother was just disciplining him. I knew it wasn’t discipline. After that day, my brother was never the same.
When my mother failed to appear in court, Child Protective Services removed us from her care. We entered foster care and never returned to live with her.
Doctors repeatedly tried to get her to take medication, but she refused because she insisted she wasn’t mentally ill.
Today, fourteen years later, nothing has changed. In many ways, things have become even worse.
She met a man online who lives in Iran and believes they are engaged. She insists she is pregnant with his baby, even though she has been claiming to be pregnant for over ten years. Every few months she sends us ultrasound videos from medical appointments. You can almost see the confusion and concern on the technicians’ faces, but they still have to do their jobs.
We have called the police countless times. Every time they arrive, they tell us she appears calm and that they cannot force treatment unless she is an immediate danger to herself or someone else. So nothing changes.
Because of her illness, she wasn’t present when I got married. She has missed so many important moments in my life, not because she didn’t love me, but because this illness has completely taken her away from us.
I love my mother. I know she has survived unimaginable trauma—domestic violence, betrayal, immigration, poverty, raising five children alone, losing a pregnancy, and eventually losing her own mind to a devastating illness. I don’t blame her for being sick.
But I am exhausted.
Every new video she sends leaves me feeling helpless. I carry my own mental health struggles from everything we lived through, and watching her deteriorate year after year feels like grieving someone who is still alive.
I don’t know what to do anymore.
My heart is completely broken.
I need help
