Reflections on Directions

(11:30 EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)

One of the weird transformations I have noted in this last year is that both of my parents have been turning to me for advice quite a bit. On the one hand I am comfortable giving the advice, and on the other I am reminded that in my youth I was rather good at ignoring it. Especially from my parents. Naturally I wonder if what I am saying is the same half baked crap that I rolled my eyes at. I certainly feel no wiser, nor any more insightful than I was as a younger person. Nor do I see my parents as lacking in competence and intellect.

Suddenly one is middle aged and judged to be somehow stable and sensible. Being sensible is never anything I have been accused of in the past.

I have detailed in my comments and a few essays the struggles my mother has faced trying to help my grandmother retain some dignity and independence and there have been no dramatic changes. In the movies and literature there is always some defining moment or event that propels the protagonist to action. For many of us there is no grand stage upon which to declare ourselves and our intentions. Nobody is our witness. Often when we have our “aha” moments we are by ourselves doing mundane things, poking along. And then the phone rings, or the spouse and kids mutter something, and the “aha” moment eludes or shows back up again while we are brushing our teeth.

Dealing with my father’s issues have proven to be more complex. He is eleven years older than my mother, they have been divorced for years and he is suddenly experiencing a profound crisis with depression and anxiety. And that was the reason my mother left. Unfortunately, this seems to happen to so many people these days. They start experiencing mental health issues and people seem to leave them without support. This can often make the problem a lot worse. I’ve been reading about some of the ways to help my father cope with his illness. One method is using health products from companies like Delta 8 THC. They offer a number of different products that could reduce my father’s stress and anxiety, helping him to manage his own mental health a lot more effectively. Hopefully, that will help him. Unfortunately, when my mother left, he definitely got a lot worse. The way she described it to me was simple: it was him or us. Either he was going to be institutionalized or we all were. I do have memories of those times, they were so vague and disjointed that as a young adult I finally asked my mother if my memories were real or how I thought they transpired and she confirmed their reality, or at least her perceptions matched mine. He to this day sees himself as a victim of the mental health system in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s when medications were fewer in number and treatments were more rudimentary. And to this day he believes in the end he “cured himself.” Now my father is a good and decent man. But until I was a teenager, he was not a good father. He had the desire, he just did not have the capability. I don’t blame him, he was ill. Naturally, at the time I blamed him for plenty.

Every day on the phone I have tried very vainly to counsel and reassure him. I convinced him to go to his GP, I convinced him medication would be appropriate, I convinced him to see a psychiatrist. I have explained that his wife who says things like “think positive” simply does not understand his illness. He is worried the psychiatrist will hate him, that he will never get getter, that he is doomed, a coward, a bad person. I in turn have reminded him the thoughts he is having are just thoughts and he is not the sum of those thoughts. I have described getting better as a marathon in which you have to stop and rest. He fears not being able to sleep. He fears being afraid. He thinks in that definitive and circular way that those who struggle with mental illness often do.

He is certain I am the only person in the world who can possibly understand him.

Yes. I see the karmic irony. In the dawn of his life, he is trying to fight the very experiences and feelings, that led to the splintering of our small family when I was just starting my life.

My gut tells me he might also be subject to some  mild dementia which makes the task of dealing with his fears that much more difficult.

His mother had a partial lobotomy in the 1950’s. She suffered no ill effects. Toward the end of her life she was finally diagnosed with some form of personality disorder mixed with depression and paranoia. And my father and his wife were her major caretakers in that era prior to her being admitted to a nursing home.

I won’t lie. A part of me wants to run. Some days I lack patience with him. I am torn between wanting to make sure he feels better by the end of our conversations and wanting to get the hell off the phone.

And I worry. Is my fate going to be similar? Will I tumble into serious depression and anxiety? Am I looking in a mirror?

Am I lying to him when I tell him the medication takes time to work and the therapy will only be successful if he participates fully, faces his own fears, explores his own emotions? He wants promises and guarantees and I dance on the knife. If he doesn’t get better, I am going to end up as his Judas. And frankly if his mood disorder is complicated by dementia, he won’t. I haven’t offered this observation.

In desperation, he also called my mother asking advice and pissed off his wife.

When he got re-married when I was 25, I was relieved that his wife was significantly younger. I recall thinking, good…. Because I can’t take care of him if he gets mentally ill again. Ha. Ha.

When my Dad got better, he went back to teaching something he excelled at. Once healthy, being a productive member of society was very crucial to his identity. He wanted to shed the stigma. He wanted to be an involved father, and he was.

When he came to visit last summer I noticed then he was more tentative, more reliant on his wife. He wanted to talk about the past and I steered him away. He wanted once again to be “absolved” of his guilt even though I told him over and over and over that there was nothing to forgive. As an ill person, my father is rather narcissistic. As was his mother.

Sometimes the hardest thing to accept is that we don’t always get answers. The very thing we so crave eludes us. It can turn us bitter and angry. It can make us uncertain.

It also makes us human. Ordinary. Unique. Humble and outraged. Kind and cruel.

We always think that an answer will satisfy us. But we are relentless and we barely sooth ourselves with one answer before we ply ourselves with more questions. The beginning and the end merge.