Identifying mental illness is no simple task. People have studied for decades on the matter and can still misdiagnose patients due to the complexity. There is no definitive, hard and fast symptom that dictates a specific affliction over another. Therefore, multiple aspects of personality disorders can overlap and easily be mistaken. That is however, when the patient actually seeks treatment. A much more frightening scenario to consider is the one that does not, and that goes about their life with a compounding, frightening, and often dangerous mental status.

Chills run down my spine when I think about a woman I knew, whom I once called mother, and how very lucky I am to be alive today. As my mind runs through endless memories of horrific details about my life with this woman, I wonder just how in the world I managed to escape.

As a child, I was vulnerable, impressionable and powerless over any choice of right and wrong. I was born to a psychopathic mother, (and family) with hosts of other complicating mental factors. Day to day life was a horror movie in the clutches of what was the most evil mind I have ever encountered. This woman was a master of disguise and would easily charm anyone into believing she was a most genuine, sound and caring person. I knew the woman behind the mask, the demon of epic proportions that she hid from the outside world.

Growing up in the hands of a mentally deranged mother was terrifying. Literally every moment was in anticipation of what would spawn from her evil thoughts and delusions. Physical torture was a norm I'd come to accept as I'd never know anything other. It was the mental torture that still plagues me and gives me nightmares to this day. It was easy for her of course, to severely abuse me while in her care (or lack there of). However, even after being removed from her, she managed constantly to hurt me in one way or another. Her mind was complex to say the least, and it was nothing for her to devise elaborate plans of destruction, enlist armies of others to help carry them out, and then execute over long stretches of time; all without ever feeling regret or remorse for the victims. I was the target of this woman for forty years and despite my best efforts to steer clear of her, she always found a way to get to me. She meticulously planned, or had a hand in absolutely every horrible thing that ever happened to me over the course of four decades.

Aside from the obvious and frequent physical abuse; she would consistently publicly humiliate me, relentlessly degrade my character with vicious lies, exploit my body for herself and others, and methodically strip me of anyone or anything that I cared for. She very clearly and profoundly wanted to me to suffer. There was never a moment of hesitation, or compassion toward me, or even consideration of the pain she was putting her own daughter through.

To the average person, or those who've not been touched by this type of insanity, it is incredibly difficult to grasp how truly terrifying it is. Others do not understand why I am still so afraid of a woman that I have nothing to do with. Some even think that it couldn't possibly have been that bad. I myself have often wondered how a mother could be so diabolical to her own child. To those people I bid thank goodness, for you have been blessed. Blessed to never know how it is to live in perpetual fear, to have never seen unimaginable horror, and to never have felt trapped at the mercy of a monster.

When I hear other stories like mine, and of people such as her, I am instantly terrified and worry about what her plans to come are for me. I'm reminded of how real a problem it is and how it always will be. I know that it will never stop. The psychopathic mind is an endless, methodical, remorseless machine. I would not wish on even my worst enemy, the wrath of this sinister, evil mentality.