I had a long chat with my mentally unwell niece. in The Big, Blue House, year one.

It’s getting harder and harder to sympathize with her, or to see the little girl I knew in the eighties, when we were both kids, and neighbors.

She says she’s quit her job, and moved in with her father, and left behind everyone she knows because people are “fucking with” her, “trying to kill” her, hacking her phone and her computer, and so on. She says her most recent ex is a “computer genius” and a “mob boss”, despite him being a heroin addicted rural school bus driver. She says he threw things at her, (that part I believe), and that his eyes turned into “devils eyes, red, like a cat’s eyes”. She says that his other ex, and their friends, are all trying to kill her or ruin her life, and she doesn’t know how or why. She says that she can “sense” when someone is a liar or a bad person, that she shakes, and someone in her head “sees what I can’t” and lets her know when people are messing with her. She thinks the ghost of my dead mother is guiding her, showing her that she can’t trust nearly anyone.

She didn’t say that she heard voices, but maybe that’s only because she knows how that would sound. She adamantly believes in psychics, says her friend is a seer, and that she “saw witchcraft in his eyes”. - Don and are honest to goodness Wiccan clergy, and have been for 26 years. I’m fairly well read on the subject. (I need more books on Quabballah, and ceremonial magick, but I digress), So I said “Har har I have witchcraft in the living room”. (A few Egyptian style statues, candles, incense, the usual.) She seemed offended, she said, “No, the bad kind!”

So she believes in the Hollywood version of witchcraft. (Not good, obviously.) And thinks her ex is possessed by Lucifer?

I told her she sounded like she really needed a good therapist, someone to vent to who was trained to listen, and be helpful. She said, “I’m in Oklahoma, that’s not likely.”

I told her that I’m generally awake, and just sitting around every morning, if she ever wants to vent.

I mean, what else can I do?

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I am just.
UGH.

Like, what the heck happened here? How did she go so wrong? She wasn’t disconnected from reality, or liable to believe complete nonsense when she was 20, and we all went to Garden Of The Gods in Illinois. She, and her half-brother, and Don, and I, it was a great time. They spent several days with us, we played a lot of video games, we had fireworks, it was all wholesome and lovely and she was a perfectly happy, well adjusted, young lady.

Or so I thought? She was kind of quiet.

Can mental illness rob an otherwise reasonable person of the ability to look at things rationally?

Did she always have poor critical thinking or bad judgement and I just didn’t see it? She never spoke much, and at that point she hadn’t had a serious relationship yet. Maybe it just wasn’t visible.

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At this point I feel like I’m watching a train wreck in slow motion.

Her adult life has always been a series of poor choices, but at least before, she seemed to be in control of her own life, dumpster fire though it may have been.

Now I wonder whether she’ll be able to hold a job well enough to stay off the streets.

I’m conflicted, and I hate being conflicted. I’m worried about her, but at the same time I’d like to take her by the shoulders and shake her vigorously.

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One other thing: About Don, and his cooking, she said “I’m glad he treats you good”. In my experience talking to women in the South, “treats you good” means a man who doesn’t beat you.

I want to tell her that no one I’ve ever been with has ever hit me, because I have standards. Looking at her life makes all of my problems seem extremely insignificant.