On the morning of my 25th birthday, I looked at the wall calendar from my spot in bed, horizontal and snug beneath the covers. And I waited. I knew what turning 25 meant in my family.
My mother, who has struggled with mental illness for the better part of her life, started hearing voices around the time she turned 25.
Her paternal grandmother was a diagnosed schizophrenic. So was her biological father. My mother is certain that she has schizophrenia, though she has never been formally diagnosed. Partly because she doesn’t “do doctors.” Partly because she doesn’t have medical insurance.
For women who develop schizophrenia, the peak age for the first psychotic episode is in their late 20s, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (D.S.M.-5). In men, it typically happens earlier. I was well aware of the genetic risk factor and thus concerned about a potentially impending mental health crisis, so you can see why I was in no rush to get out of bed that morning.
At the time, I was a reporter for a New York City tabloid and living on the Lower East Side of Manhattan with a roommate. My mother was more than 600 miles away, at her home in South Carolina. I had many friends and was in the early stages of a new romantic relationship. Things were, for the most part, just fine.
My mother was a Catholic schoolgirl raised in upstate New York in the 1960s and ’70s, but a hippie at heart, quirky regardless of her mental illness.
Then she started to talk to Jesus outside of the confines of the church her grandmother still dragged her to on Sundays — not in a Holy Roller way, but in a weird way that made people around her nervous. Jesus told her to find a man named Youngin, a fictional creation whose nonexistence ruled my childhood, the never-ending search for him inspiring many cross-state moves.
Other strange things happened, too. During one sleepless binge, she read every book in the Albany State University library, or so she told me as a child. When I asked how she did this, she looked at me, surprised, as if the answer was obvious: “I can speed-read.”
The voice also told her when to eat, how to cut her hair, whom to sleep with.
My mother was 30 years old when I was born, 32 when my sister came. A single mother without a stable income, she was constantly worried someone would take us away. Even in the warm months, she dressed us in sweaters and coats, concerned that someone from social services would stop by our school and think we were neglected.
I have a vague memory of watching her install three deadbolts, one on top of the other like buttons, on the front door of one of our many apartments.
We were always worried about evil, because it seemed to lurk everywhere. Sometimes the neighbor was the devil, she told us. Or it was the mailman. Or my school principal.
It is frightening to wait for something terrible to happen, knowing you can’t stop it.
So on the day of my 25th birthday, I waited, unsure if the illness would hit me all at once or trickle in slowly, like an IV drip. I’d been preparing myself for what seemed inevitable.
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After all, my mother, grandfather and great-grandmother weren’t the only ones in the family who struggled with mental illness. Five years earlier, my little sister had died by suicide. She had struggled with depression and had been cutting, but I didn’t find that out until later.
Her death was a shock, a punch in the gut.
For our entire lives, it had been the three of us against the world. Our way of living may have been unconventional, but it could also be fun. Our nomadic existence still had constants: In every apartment, we had an “art wall” in the living room, a blank canvas for us to paint and scribble upon, which we’d then repaint white when it was time to move.
On road trips between states, we had an anthem, “I Am Woman” by Helen Reddy, which we would sing at the top of our lungs, sandwiched between boxes of pots and pans, books and clothes.
But now our union was broken. My sister was gone. My mother — who may have been struggling, but she was also a loving and effective parent — fell apart. Who was I to turn out all right, or even wish for such a thing?
My sister’s death struck me as further proof that my own lucidity must have an expiration date.
I acted out after her suicide, certain none of it would matter anyway. I drank and used drugs and put myself in dangerous situations. Save for some hangovers and embarrassment, nothing happened. For five years, I put one foot in front of the other, and life just progressed.
My birthday was a Saturday that year. At the time, I was working late hours that included weekends, so that afternoon I went to work.
And after I turned 25, still nothing happened.
For most of my life, I have been steady. My rent check always clears. My bills are set up on auto-pay. I go to the dentist. I have renter’s insurance.
These things continue to blow my mind, although I’m aware that they’re likely a response to how I was raised, in the same way that someone who grows up in the house with two parents and a white picket fence might, say, yearn to go backpacking across Asia after graduation. I always yearned for the white picket fence.
As I get older and find myself choosing Netflix over nights out with friends, I sometimes wonder if I am boring. In a city where therapist recommendations are commonly discussed over dinner, I do not have one to recommend. Not because I’m avoiding some issues, but because I simply don’t have anything I need to discuss, at least not in a professional capacity. Nor do I take any medications, unless you count the melatonin gummies I’m hooked on to get a good night’s sleep.
My life is not perfect. But it is not remarkable either. And that is much different from the life I had as a child, or the life I thought I would one day have. It is much different from the life my mother — still ill, still loving, still in South Carolina — has led.
I am unbelievably, undeniably ordinary. This is a fact (yes, let’s call it that) that surprises many people who know my family history, but no one more than me.
This should all be reassuring, but somehow, at least sometimes, it has the opposite effect. I’m often unnerved by this calm. It’s as if I’m walking on eggshells, certain that I have not escaped disaster and that disaster is merely running late to its own party, allowing me false comfort only so that the pain of its capture will be greater. It is around the corner, waiting for me.
Yet deep down, I know that it isn’t. There’s nothing there. Nothing is going to happen.
Today I am 32 years old. I’m still a reporter and still living in New York City. That new relationship I was in all those years ago? We’re married and expecting our first child this year.
The thought has crossed my mind that our son could, one day, inherit my mother’s illness. But, as the weeks go by, and I silently check off the markers I know to be good signs — a heartbeat, a successful anatomy scan — a stronger part of me is choosing to focus on the fact that he will probably be just fine.
And mostly, I’m looking forward to seeing my mother take on a new role, as a grandma. It’s a job that leans less on stability than on love, which she has in abundance. My husband will become a father and I will become a mother. We are all shifting. Quietly, boringly, blissfully.
Rheana Murray, who is working on a memoir, is a reporter for Today Digital at NBC News.
[If you are having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK) or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.]
Rites of Passage is a column from Styles and The Times Gender Initiative. To read past essays, check out this page.