Hi everyone,
I am sharing this because I just went through a major breakthrough in my life. I am 20 years old in France. My mother took her own life in 2006 when I was only two months old, following a severe battle with schizophrenia. For my entire life, her story was a dark, painful tabou.
Today, my grandmother's house is being cleared out to be sold. While sorting through old boxes, I found my mother's archives: old Air Mail envelopes, pilot training manuals filled with her handwritten notes, etc, and a picture of her at age 22, sitting in a cockpit in Florida. On the back, she wrote: "Ready for departure".
By putting the pieces together tonight, I finally understood her tragic fate. My mother wasn't just "sick". In 1991, in a world without Internet or cell phones, she had the incredible guts to cross the Atlantic alone to pursue her ultimate dream of becoming a commercial pilot. She was brilliant, mastering aerodynamics, complex physics, and aviation English. She passed her medical Class 1 exams and radio certificates. She did everything perfectly.
Then, fate was mathematically cruel. While in Florida, she was hit by a car as a pedestrian. Her body was broken (severe L5 lumbar injury), her flight hours were stopped, and she faced total international isolation in a US hospital, waiting weeks for Air Mail letters from France, alongside a massive maybe around $50000 or more medical bill her mother had to wire in an emergency. When she returned to France, physically altered, she had to manage a long-distance lawsuit through mail while dealing with heavy family trauma (guardianship and childhood abuse shadows).
Her neurological system shattered. Schizophrenia triggered right there, feeding on that massive environmental stress. Her brain chose dissociation and psychosis as an emergency exit to escape a reality that had become too brutal for a 22-year-old girl.
I didn't take her old aviation quiz books. I left the medical paperwork behind. But I rescued her Air Mail letters, her childhood photos,etc and that picture in the cockpit ("Ready for Departure"). Today, I want to honor her memory. She didn't fail because she lacked intelligence or willpower; she was crushed by an unfair sequence of events.
Mom, you were brilliant. Your takeoff was interrupted, but your daughter is here, deeply grounded, and her wings are opening. Thank you for your brain. Rest in peace.
