At the time, I was a reporter for a New York City tabloid and living on the Lower East Side of Manhattan with a roommate. My mother was more than 600 miles away, at her home in South Carolina. I had many friends and was in the early stages of a new romantic relationship. Things were, for the most part, just fine.

My mother was a Catholic schoolgirl raised in upstate New York in the 1960s and ’70s, but a hippie at heart, quirky regardless of her mental illness.

Then she started to talk to Jesus outside of the confines of the church her grandmother still dragged her to on Sundays — not in a Holy Roller way, but in a weird way that made people around her nervous. Jesus told her to find a man named Youngin, a fictional creation whose nonexistence ruled my childhood, the never-ending search for him inspiring many cross-state moves.

Other strange things happened, too. During one sleepless binge, she read every book in the Albany State University library, or so she told me as a child. When I asked how she did this, she looked at me, surprised, as if the answer was obvious: “I can speed-read.”

The voice also told her when to eat, how to cut her hair, whom to sleep with.

My mother was 30 years old when I was born, 32 when my sister came. A single mother without a stable income, she was constantly worried someone would take us away. Even in the warm months, she dressed us in sweaters and coats , concerned that someone from social services would stop by our school and think we were neglected .