I took the high road and didn't, ultimately

[palominocorn]

For many years, I had this persistent fantasy - to buy a copy of the DSM, highlight and annotate it to point out which of my family members have what symptoms, and then throw it in my mother's face the next time she insisted that everyone in our family is "normal", that we can't possibly be crazy.

Comments

[yvannairie]

Oh, that sounds so satisfying.

The problem is that she's clearly using "sane" as a synonym for "good (and moral)" so she'd just spin it in her head to be about how delusional you are :/

[palominocorn]

Oh yeah, if I'd done it she'd absolutely tell me I was overreacting. I once mentioned having acrophobia to her (I couldn't look down from the second story of a building without panic) and she snapped at me that it only counts if I couldn't look down while sitting in a chair. This was her idea on mental illness - unless you literally spend all day unable to get out of bed you're fine. Of course, when I actually did have points when I was too depressed to get out of bed, she told me I was just lazy. She literally stopped me in the middle of a suicide attempt, I mean, walked in on me with a knife at my throat, and didn't think I had any problems. When I got an official diagnosis some time later (long story, the school refused to let me back in until she took me to a psychiatrist) she didn't do anything. Except laugh when my siblings made suicide jokes about me.