My Thoughts on "Tarnation"

"Tarnation" was disturbing to me for more than one reason. As a viewer it was disturbing for me to watch Jonathan trying to make sense of his life and where it all went wrong for his mentally disabled mother and himself but it was also disturbing for me because it hit close to home. My aunt was diagnosed as bi-polar schizophrenic almost 15 years ago at the age of 23. She is my mother's youngest sister and at the time she was diagnosed she was married with two small children both under the age of 3.

She was born when my grandmother was 37 years old, my grandfather was 43, my mother (who was newly married to my father) was 18 and my uncle was 12. I think it's safe to say that she was an unexpected arrival. Being that she was born much later than her siblings, my aunt was more like a childhood friend or cousin to myself and my siblings. She grew up with us, she was always at our house or we were always at hers. She was always a little wild, always challenging my grandparents which most would say was just a result of them having a third child so much later in life. She was the one who fought in school, cut class, smoked, drank and fooled around a little too much with the boys. These behaviors were considered harmless and were never looked at as anything more than childhood rebellion until they changed and became much worse.

About a year or so before she was diagnosed as bi-polar she was involved in a car accident, as a result of which she suffered a closed head injury. It was nothing serious, she lost consciousness for a moment or two and had to have a couple of stitches in her head but that was the extent of it. As time went on she started to display very manic behavior. She would experience times of extreme lows at which point she would take to her bed with severe depression followed by periods of extreme highs which would have her acting almost childlike with giddiness with a very short attention span, slightly neurotic. I was only about 13 at the time so I don't exactly remember all of the details of her diagnosis but I have experienced the effects that it has had on her and our family. My grandparents were supposed to experiencing what some would call their "golden years" but instead were practically raising her two children and trying to be supportive of her husband who was struggling financially. From the time that she was diagnosed she has been on every different medication you can think of because a persons system builds up an immunity to each one at some point and so the vicious cycle of starting a new medication and experiencing all of the ugly side effects it brings starts all over again. She has been institutionalized on many occasions, mostly after a failed suicide attempt and has experienced everything from an eating disorder to an addiction to pain killers following back surgery to numerous infidelities because a trait of her illness is that she displays obsessive/compulsive characteristics. As with most individuals suffering from bi-polarity she was later diagnosed as being schizophrenic. She has gradually moved on through the years from suffering mostly from manic episodes to more of the psychotic behavior such as hearing voices telling her that they want her to inflict pain on her body and at times telling her that they want her to kill herself.

It is truly a terrifying feeling to experience one of these "episodes", I myself have sat with her through one of them where she was being told by what she called evil spirits to kill herself. I don't really know which is scarier, watching her talk back to the voices that she hears in her head or the childlike personality that she takes on. Her illness has had a profound effect on those in her family. Her two children have both had behavioral problems and as of now have failed out of high school.