My Father

With there being two recent post concerning him, I think it’s time I spill my guts.

A long long time ago, my father invented the internet. As in he worked for network solutions and laid down cables that later became what we know today as the internet. A few years later, that company was bought out and the higher-ups were given a phat check and let go. That’s the official story anyway. It didn’t really go down like that, but I’m not allowed to tell that truth. I’m sketchy on the details myself, anyways.

So my father started plans to begin his own business. While he waited to get things set up, he did day trading of stocks online. One thing led to another, it took awhile and then his father died. Suddenly the money he had saved was getting his mom, who later remarried, out of financial trouble. With his money for starting the business gone, he continued to do day trading and living off his retirement fund.

As the years went by, and the stock market started to not do so well, my father became very depressed. He had many dreams of how to support himself, but nothing seemed to be panning out. One day while painting his home, he took a bad fall off a ladder that was located at the top of some stairs. When he went down off the ladder, he went down the stairs as well, the ladder went with. This fall left him in mass amounts of pain, and still very depressed.

Not too long after my mom received a copy of his will, and his suicide letter in the mail.

That was a long day.

The police in NC, where he lived, entered his home to find him alive, but very sick in his bed after taking an entire bottle of morphine. He proceeded to spend the next week in the psychiatric ward of his local hospital. Around this time, while he was in the hospital, 9/11 happened.

That was a long week.

The doctors at the hospital pumped my father full of Wellbutrin and proceeded to see him on an out patient basis. That medication was not good to him.

Here is where I will never know the full truth, and I’ll explain why later.

There is a small percentage of people who can’t take Wellbutrin. It does not metabolize well in them. My father is one of those people. It causes psychotic break downs and has led to some violent crimes (for other people, my father never got that bad). As well as memory problems and seizures. When my father went to talk to his doctors about what happened they refused to discuss it and slapped a silence order on his therapist. My father stopped seeing them. All of them. As well as going off all meds.

None of my doctors in the field have ever heard of problems like that with Wellbutrin. So is it that rare? Or is my father that messed up mentally? More on that in a minute.

My father still has the memory problems and the seizures.

My father talks to people who aren’t there. Always has. He does this when he mumbles. He’ll never admit to it. But you can sometimes hear what he’s saying.

He also has fanciful tails of the security clearance he use to have for the government. The people he advised, the projects he worked on. These stories are all the truth as he knows it.

Have you ever seen the movie A Beautiful Mind? My father reminds me of the home game.

Will I ever know the truth?

Only if my father receives a diagnosis that points us in one way or the other.

It’s taken us a year of him living here (he lost his home finally due to the suck that is the stock market) but he is finally back into therapy. He is very VERY paranoid of the system so we are having to take it slow. My hope is that at some point he’ll get into the meds doctor and will receive a full diagnosis along with the appropriate meds.

My opinion is, that while at times I think my mom might have BPD, I’m pretty sure my father does. Everything fits well, and my acorn did not fall far from that tree. If my father is indeed having delusions, that would fit in well to Schizotypal. Only in his case I think it’s been his truth for so long, that he honestly believes it. Or who knows, maybe it really is the truth. As I said, I may never know.

Just like how I was really conceived. I fully recognize the possibility that maybe my father wanted to believe so badly that I was fully planned, that he convinced himself I was and that it only took x number of tries. So maybe both stories are the truth according to how both parents know it. I’m most comfortable with that version of things. That way, there is a little less hurt. Both parents are convinced they wanted me.

Will I ever know the truth?

Why?

Why does my father brag that it only took a few tries to knock up my mom with me, when according to my mom I was a planned (on her part alone) accident.

Which lie would hurt less?

The lie that my father didn’t want me because he knew he couldn’t be around as much as he wanted but my mom got pregnant anyways?

Or

The lie that my mom manipulated my father into getting pregnant when in reality they tried for me.

If I can’t know how I got here, what luck am I suppose to have knowing why I want to be here?

Not that one automatically leads to the other.

Why I write

As spoken by Kuhn in Gertrude by Hermann Hesse:

“What made you interested in composing?”… “I see,” he said slowly, “but why does it give you pleasure? You can’t express sorrow on paper and be done with it.”
“I don’t want to do that,” I replied. “I don’t want to thrust aside and be rid of anything but weakness and construction. I want to feel that pleasure and pain arise from the same source, that they are aspects of the same force and portions of the same piece of music, each beautiful and essential.”

I’m Reading…

Gertrude by Hermann Hesse. I think this may be one of my favorite pieces by him yet. I love how he talks about how pain and joy, happiness and unhappiness, and light and dark are all closely related.

It makes me reflect that the concepts are not real. They are all simply words that attempt to reflect on a great state of being. And it’s impossible to have one without the other.

Dark is simply the absence of light.

I don’t know, it just makes me think.

Pick up the book! Now!

Memories

My first memory is probably called a false memory. As in there is no way I could remember it. But I swear I do. I remember being younger than Luke, lying in my crib, looking up at my mom and realizing wow, this is love. I realized I loved her and she loved me. I don’t think the word “love” was attached to it until later, but the feeling was there and strong. It was a sunny day that day. I can even tell you the layout of the room in regards to the door, window and my crib. Which is how it’ll probably be proved false. But I’m ok with thinking, really believing that it’s a real memory.