July 13th

Where to begin? There is so much I would like to share that beginning is hard. Lets begin with a prayer that I found out on the web.
Exemplary Mother of the great Augustine, you perseveringly pursued your wayward son not with wild threats but with prayerful cries to heaven. Intercede for all mothers in our day so that they may learn to draw their children to God. Teach them how to remain close to their children, even the prodigal sons and daughters who have sadly gone astray. Amen
At the age of eighteen my oldest son was diagnosed with Schizophrenia. This was not a shock to me as you might think it would be. I was told that I was exhibiting unusual behavior toward the news. The reason for this was that I had known something was different about my child from the day he was born. Noone would listen to me they all said it was just first time mother syndrome. I have started to write down all the things that happened to try and make sense of everything. I even thought of writing a book so others would understand who he is today but it is in the process of becoming for now. The reason I am telling you all this is because that his behavior kept me in isolation. I believed that I could only associate with others if they did not know my son or they had not experienced what they might view as troubling to them after being with him. Let me put it this way he was one of those people whose behavior was not predictable or comprehensible and people especially other children felt uncomfortable sometimes even frightened around him. He was not dangerous nor did he do things that were bizarre. He just seemed to make them uneasy by staring or twitching he did not show any emotion and he watched people and sometimes copied their behavior but nothing that would scare anyone. Still the days he went to school I lived in dread of the phone. Other mothers would not let their children play with him and they did not like the idea of me babysitting because it meant exposure to him. This put me in a difficult possition since I was part of a babysitting C0-Op. My other children were viewed with suspicion until people realized they were not the same as their brother then they took pity on them and invited them out so they ended up spending a lot of time away from home. It became tiresome for them when they were asked endlessly how they could live with a brother like theirs As they came into their teen years they resented him so much that they did not want to bring friends into the house and they began to stay away more and more. Our fourth child is ten years younger than her brother so she was blissfully unaware of a lot of what had gone on before she was living like an only child especially since her other siblings were not around her that much. This was a lonely time for me as it was hard to make friends and I was not an outgoing personality at that time. I had noone to talk too since my mother had died when he was five and all she told me was that I was going to need more patience with him than with the others. Little did she know what an understatement that was. I had stopped worrying about what other people thought of me and had started praying for someone to talk and be with. My husband was away much of the time so he did not understand what it was like on a day to day basis nor did he want to believe that anything was wrong with his son he just thought that I was turning him into a mommies boy. It was during this time that I began to blame myself for what was wrong and this wasn't hard because the school was blaming me and family members were blaming me everyone was sure that some how even though my other children were fine I had and was messing up my oldest. When puberty hit his personality changed and that was when his religious education leader called me and told me that I needed to get him to a psychiatrist. After the doctor saw him and talked to him he asked me a series of questions and I discovered that he had all but one of the symptoms that the doctor was naming and the doctor turned to me and said he only needs five. It was at this time that I found out that my son was in the 3percent of schizophrenics that are born with it. His is more commonly known as a personality disorder called schizotypal (this may not be the correct spelling).
I am going to stop here for now if you have any comments on what I have said so far please feel free to express them.