Coming Out Of The Darkness

Chapter 1

Having a family member diagnosed with Schizophrenia is something you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy! I can remember- so many years ago the look on my mothers face when she got the telephone call from my brother-in-law Jeff that Teresa had been placed in a mental institution. I've never seen my mother look so distraught. She was silent as she listened to Jeff go over the details as to why she had been admitted.

As I watched my mother, I thought to myself "What on God's green earth could they be talking about that would cause my mother so much sadness"? Teresa had always been difficult growing up. Thinking back in time the memories flooded my mind.

Teresa as a young child was quite. She said she felt like a wallflower. However, I can remember instances where she was stubborn. We would play games like Dark Shadow's or Kick the Can, Tag, Ding Dong Ditch It, or Kickball as well as many others. Teresa would always quit every game if she weren't winning! It would upset the rest of the kids in the group that were playing and ruin it every time.

Teresa also loved playing practical jokes. Many times these jokes were mean. She was consistent at getting into fights with other kids. Often times she would get me to go along with her and do things with her. Of course, I would feel bad for the children she played these jokes on. I had more of a conscious than my slightly younger sibling.

Teresa had a learning disability and had poor retention. Her comprehension skills were lacking and she often spent a lot of time alone. Teresa was held back twice in elementary school due to her learning issues. She never complained about school and thinking back-- out side of her quitting games- she was normal in every way that counts as far as children are concerned with the exception of her learning problem.

During the years we lived in Montana she had friends growing up- as I recall she had six or eight friends in elementary school and we shared many of the same friends. Some of my friends were friends with her and most of her friends were friends of mine. In fourth grade she had a boyfriend named Tom, he was handsome I guess for a fourth grader. She loved the song "Puppy Love", by Donny Osmond and used to play it at Tom's house repeatedly on his record player. Until one day Tom smashed it, because he was sick of hearing it!

Teresa was slender and shapely in her teens. Boys were drawn to her and she used her sexuality as a way to be noticed. She was no slut. She didn't sleep around with guys, but she did date a few. She had a figure like Cher the singer/actress when Cher was in her twenties. Teresa in my opinion had a real nice figure.

I believe it was in her teen years that I started to notice things about my sister that were a little off. She rebelled like a lot of teenagers. I gave her- her first tattoo. It was a cross on her left shoulder blade with a sewing needle and Indian ink. We spent hours and hours on that tattoo. I never did get to finish it.

Around that time she and I had started experimenting with Marijane otherwise known as Marijuana. She also had started popping pills. She was drinking alcohol- as was I. Back in the day we attended Mariposa County High. It was the only high school in our area. Although Teresa continued her pill popping; I refused to take them. Sometimes she was very careless with the amount of pills she was taking and I would sometimes swear back then she had a death wish. In those days almost everyone in our high school was smoking trees or drinking alcohol.

When she was sixteen she was introduced to a friend of mine Jeff. Jeff was eighteen and had attended high school his senior year when I met him and we became casual friends. Teresa was in the ninth grade then. Jeff and Teresa soon after their introduction started dating.

Our parents had tried to slow them down when they first started dating. I can remember our dad Dale scolding Jeff on several occasions for Teresa not coming home on time. But with Teresa no matter how many times Jeff told her she had to go home, she wouldn't do it. So, Jeff had to be clever and bring her home or our parents would no longer allow him to see her.

Our parents finally realized that no matter what they did, they could not keep her from Jeff. They'd tried grounding her; various forms of punishment and to no avail she would wait it out and go right back out and do it again. I was under the assumption that they were unaware of Teresa and Jeff being intimate in the biblical sense. However, thinking back, they must have known she and Jeff were sleeping together.

Jeff was a likeable guy. He and I got along as friends and we would party or hang out with the same friends. He had grown to love Teresa and would have done anything for her back then. He was her world and she would do anything to keep him.

She and Jeff fell in love and in March of seventy-eight she married him in Nevada. The family chose Nevada as we were moving to Utah and Jeff was moving to Idaho with his family. His parents and our parents agreed it was a half way point for both families. Teresa, his new bride and his family were moving to Boise, Idaho but they ended up in Caldwell some odd miles outside of Boise. She would be living with his family and learning to be a wife.

I can remember conversations with my sister and each time we would talk in the early years of their marriage she would tell me of how hard it was being a wife. Jeff's parents had very high expectations of Teresa. She became a cook, a housekeeper, a babysitter, a sister-in-law, a wife, a daughter-in-law, and she was living with a whole new family. She had never experienced this kind of living prior in her youth.

Sometimes she would call me and cry. She loved her husband and she soon found out just how demanding his family would become. Prior to marriage she had never really cleaned anything but the dishes- on the day it was her turn to do her chores growing up with her own family. Of course she knew how to clean her own room. She had never done laundry, cooked, ironed, grocery shopped, or driven a car except when Jeff would let her. She had no drivers' license. She had no experience paying bills and she had so much to learn. She had to learn how to can fruits and vegetables. She had found herself constantly under so many other people's thumbs. She was over-whelmed.

I admired her. She wanted to please her new husband and her new family. She was doing everything they asked of her. She never went back to school- by then she hated school. She stayed home and did what was expected of her. Her husband Jeff was a very jealous man. Teresa wasn't allowed to wear revealing clothing any more, no short shorts, and she wasn't allowed to go into stores without her husband or his family.

Jeff's family grew to love Teresa and it came time for them to buy their first house. She was so excited. She was now twenty. They were both proud of their new home. She had gotten a job working with her sister-in-law at a family owned drive-threw diner. She had also gotten a job working at a local motel cleaning rooms. She and her husband had bought a house in Caldwell, which is where the rest of Jeff's family lived.

I was moving to Washington State and stopped at their house to visit them on my way up and got to see how they were living. Their new house was an older home and was brown on the upper half and brick on the lower half. This was quaint house around sixteen hundred square feet I believe; it had two bedrooms and the second bedroom is where their dog Sonia slept and a master bedroom. It had one bathroom and a nice big kitchen with lots of cabinet space. The living area was decent and their house had lots of windows. The floors were mostly wooden or tiled. They had a basement which was unfinished and a cat somewhere in that house I never saw the cat but I knew it existed. Their yard was huge and by then Teresa was growing her own garden.

She had grown up so much and I was so proud of my younger sister. I was genuinely happy for her. I had always liked Jeff and I thought he was a good man. He was working at Hewlett Packard along with the rest of his brothers and his father. Jeff was working as a janitor.

Both Teresa and Jeff were both still smoking "trees", marijuana- then and they drank or partied on the weekends. Their home was clean and well put together. I was still smoking as well. However, none of us were doing it every day. We mostly did it on the weekends.

It was nice spending time with my sister and an old friend. It was hard for me to leave her. Jeff was gracious in allowing me to have time with my sister. He had always made me feel welcome in their home. Although at times we as siblings fought when we were younger like siblings do- we were always close- close like twins are close.

It was time for me to leave.

It wasn't that long before Teresa was pregnant with her first child. I believe Teresa and Jeff had been together five years when Monica was born. They were still living in the same house. This is when the nightmare for my sister began. Shortly after Monica was born my sister started changing. She had stated several times that she was tired all the time and depressed but she loved being a new mom. She was very attentive to Monica and this had become her dream come true. She loved being a mother. She had chosen natural breast feeding and was protective of her new born.

Teresa had sent pictures of the new baby. In the photo's she looked tired. Thinking back, Teresa never really wore a lot of makeup growing up. I noticed in her photo's she had gained a little weight and was wearing her hair in braids no makeup and looked as though she hadn't been sleeping enough. This didn't concern her family as it is well known that a lot of new mother's had this happen to them.

My mother decided to take a trip to Idaho to visit and see the new baby. I can remember, our mother saying that while she was there "Teresa didn't seem like herself". She said that Teresa had been up at night in the kitchen talking to herself.

Back then we didn't know anything about Schizophrenia. Teresa hadn't yet been diagnosed and no one was really concerned other than we thought Teresa was going through Post Partum Depression; which is also common for a lot of women who have had given birth.

I had moved back to Utah for a short amount of time and was moving back to Washington when I decided to stop in and see my sister and her family. Monica was now walking and talking. Although at times I couldn't make out what Monica was saying she was beautiful with big brown eyes and wild curly hair. It had taken me hours to figure out what the expression "merk" had meant. I found out it was milk! Monica also had mentioned "yingyang", which Teresa was kind enough to tell me meant motorcycle. Other than that Monica spoke very well. While I had been listening to Teresa interactings with her daughter I had thought to myself - she- my sister, was seemingly ok.

Jeff was doing well at work, and their life was going along as families do. While I was there- I'd spent the night and I had gotten up in the middle of the night for a glass of water. I noticed in the darkness as I came through the living room I could hear voices in the kitchen. I couldn't quite make out what they were saying but I could tell in the darkness that there was more than one person talking.

I walked closer to the kitchen and I could see my sister sitting at the kitchen table. However, she was the only one in the kitchen. I stopped and watched her for a brief moment and she was talking to herself. I still couldn't quite make out what she was saying but she was talking as if she were two people. Her voice would change and she would answer herself back as though she were speaking as someone else. I became somewhat alarmed and apprehensive at the same time.

I stayed with them for three more days. During the day, Teresa appeared tired- she was good with Monica. She seemed like the perfect little mommy and went about her day cleaning, cooking, gardening, and taking care of her dog and child. She was engaging in conversation and her appearance was less than what I was used to- she was ok.

I didn't notice Teresa acting weird after that first night.

On the second day- we had gone to Kmart to purchase a few new items for herself and she had told me she thought Jeff was having an affair and was concerned. She didn't know how to approach her husband with what had alarmed her. We would talk and I would listen to her. Teresa liked using me as her sounding board. In my opinon back then I hadn't seen Jeff doing anything out of the ordinary that would cause alarm. He came home on time. He was home every night. He did his chores. He treated her with respect and was attentive to her and his daughter. Jeff and I would play chess at night and we'd all sit around and talk about the days when we lived in California.