(SPOT.ph) There's no social anxiety quite like trying to keep your family life and school life separate. Bringing a classmate home for school work and having them realize what your family is really like? Yup, that's a lot of overthinking right there. Now imagine you're 14 years old, your family has just moved to Manila, and you're doing your best to fit in at your new school. Only, your mother happens to be a zombie. That's anxiety to the max. Well, you can relive that trauma—for whatever reason—in a must-read young adult book called At Home With Crazy by Kat Martin.
Also read:
This Gritty Graphic Novel Reimagines the PH As a Super-Power Nation
This Epic Pinoy Space Opera Is Getting a Full-Color International Release
At Home With Crazy is a peek into the state of mental illness in a Filipino Family
At Home With Crazy is Kat Martin's debut work and the first fiction novel for young adults from Milflores Publishing. We know the idea of zombies typically reads like a fun bit of fiction, with fans in it for the gore and dystopia, but this novel takes the trope and uses it to discuss something not so discussed before: living with someone who is mentally ill, in the Philippine context.
"The book is about journeying with [Cayt Vergara] as she navigates through life, all changes that a 14-year-old teenager goes through," says Kat Martin during the book's launch. You know how it is: everything looks normal from afar—she's dealing with puberty, school, and the typical things, but zoom in and you'll see the cracks run deeper than they seem. It's the changes "within their family, within their home" that Cayt struggles to deal with the most. Enter the "zombie" mother.
There were a few things that served as catalysts for Martin to write her book. What started off as a class project while finishing an MA in Creative Writing at the University of the Philippines Diliman grew thanks to her wanting to shine the light on what it's like to live with someone who is mentally ill, particularly a figure that society typically sees as the carer.
On a personal note, the project started around the same time that someone very close to her told her they didn't want to live anymore. "I was already in my 20s at that time, and this person was so important to me, and I didn't know how to deal with it." Now, there's no singular "right" way to react to that type of situation, but when Martin reached out to others, she was met with a lot of "unhelpful advice."
"There are a lot of novels where it's really the protagonist who goes through this problem," Martin points out, but rarely is the story told from the perspective of those around.
These not-so-seen-or-heard perspectives are really what Martin wanted to bring to light. She shares that it was around this time that another friend of hers shared that her own mother had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. "She's from Cebu so the way she said it 'Buang talaga'. She accepted it already, wholeheartedly," Martin says, explaining her amazement at how her friend described the situation, one any other Filipino would be hush-hush, even ashamed, about.
The truth is, the socially described "perfect" family is rare, and the Philippine context is no exception. There are families where the role of carer and cared-for are switched, and everything from the degree of this "switch" in the relationship to yes, mental health, is on a spectrum.
At Home With Crazy wraps a hard truth in an engaging and even humorous story of a young girl just trying to be normal, and coming to terms with the fact that "normal" doesn't exist. As Martin points out, "We all experience different states of mental health and wellbeing" and shining light on this fact will make it "easier for each of us to say 'Right now, I'm not okay.'"
At Home With Crazy (Milflores Publishing, 2022) is available at selected bookstores, via Shopee, Lazada, and the Milflores Publishing site for P499.