Christmas, freshman year.
Sunday, 24 November 2002 10:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carose59That Which Does Not Kill Us Makes Us Very, Very Tired.
-:- -:- -:- -:-
Freshman year of high school was the first time I ever knew my father was manic-depressive.
He'd had breakdowns before, but I had been unaware of them, at least consciously. Our house had been bigger, which seemed to play a role in my ignorance.
I wasn't surprised to find out he was manic-depressive. I'd known he'd gone to Recovery meetings (though I couldn't've told you what he was Recovering from). I'd known he'd been in the hospital (though I didn't know what for). But I was really seeing for the first time what was happening. I don't know why it was the first time–because they kept sending him home from the hospital, so his craziness wasn't cloistered? Because the house was smaller? Because my mother was having her own problems, panic attacks, and she wasn't between us, no longer a privacy fence?
Even thought I didn't know what was wrong, it came as no surprise. It was the same experience I'd had in the 7th grade, when I opened up my reader, read through The Highwayman once, and could recite it. It was already there in my brain (from my mother having read it to me, over and over, when I was a baby), waiting to be recognized.
I read up a little on manic-depression then, though I don't know what I read. It helped me make sense of my own moodiness, delusions, confusion. It helped me, you should pardon the expression, find myself.
That Christmas was weird. I did the tree all by myself. (My mother has issues with Christmas trees, though I've forgotten why. Something to do with ill-treatment during her childhood, she resents them . . . I don't know. And I'm not making light, really, it's just that I'm tired.) I refurbished the old ornaments, added new gold paper where needed, new feathers to the birds, a new dress for the little glass ballerina. (It was also the year I broke the ornament my aunt Shirley made me when I was 4. I loved that ornament; it was magenta, with silver glitter and little blue . . . things on it. Sequin fleur-de-lis-type things. Just an accident, but still . . . ).
My father was in dictator mode. Up all night, pacing the halls, driving like a maniac (hey, why do you think they call it that, huh?) being thoroughly obnoxious to everyone. The doctors told him how he was acting, so he changed from "WE'RE GOING TO DO IT MY WAY!" to "WE'RE GOING TO DO IT MY WAY BECAUSE IT'S FUN!" It wasn't. My mother and I stayed up all night Christmas eve, drinking gin and making bad jokes. My favorite was one about a little self-help snippet in the newspaper, that told how to fix a loose screw. We discussed whether it would work on my father . . . .
After the first of the year, they moved him to a the VA in Illinois (where they'll keep you for longer periods of time). We were dead broke (he'd lost his job again) and on food stamps at that point. I think the only money coming in was from the rental property. We had a freezer full of cheap hamburger, so every Saturday I made a meatloaf, and took meatloaf sandwiches to school every day. My mother burned out on meatloaf very quickly, but I never did, until I was in my 20's, came down with the flu, and spent the night throwing it up. I've never felt the same about meatloaf since then.
It was a strange time, though. I remember feeling very . . . cozy, in a bunker-mentality sort of way. I'd come home from school and my mother and I would play Mille Bornes. I felt very close to her that year. And spring was a wonderful time that year, like coming out of a long illness.
-:- -:- -:- -:-
Freshman year of high school was the first time I ever knew my father was manic-depressive.
He'd had breakdowns before, but I had been unaware of them, at least consciously. Our house had been bigger, which seemed to play a role in my ignorance.
I wasn't surprised to find out he was manic-depressive. I'd known he'd gone to Recovery meetings (though I couldn't've told you what he was Recovering from). I'd known he'd been in the hospital (though I didn't know what for). But I was really seeing for the first time what was happening. I don't know why it was the first time–because they kept sending him home from the hospital, so his craziness wasn't cloistered? Because the house was smaller? Because my mother was having her own problems, panic attacks, and she wasn't between us, no longer a privacy fence?
Even thought I didn't know what was wrong, it came as no surprise. It was the same experience I'd had in the 7th grade, when I opened up my reader, read through The Highwayman once, and could recite it. It was already there in my brain (from my mother having read it to me, over and over, when I was a baby), waiting to be recognized.
I read up a little on manic-depression then, though I don't know what I read. It helped me make sense of my own moodiness, delusions, confusion. It helped me, you should pardon the expression, find myself.
That Christmas was weird. I did the tree all by myself. (My mother has issues with Christmas trees, though I've forgotten why. Something to do with ill-treatment during her childhood, she resents them . . . I don't know. And I'm not making light, really, it's just that I'm tired.) I refurbished the old ornaments, added new gold paper where needed, new feathers to the birds, a new dress for the little glass ballerina. (It was also the year I broke the ornament my aunt Shirley made me when I was 4. I loved that ornament; it was magenta, with silver glitter and little blue . . . things on it. Sequin fleur-de-lis-type things. Just an accident, but still . . . ).
My father was in dictator mode. Up all night, pacing the halls, driving like a maniac (hey, why do you think they call it that, huh?) being thoroughly obnoxious to everyone. The doctors told him how he was acting, so he changed from "WE'RE GOING TO DO IT MY WAY!" to "WE'RE GOING TO DO IT MY WAY BECAUSE IT'S FUN!" It wasn't. My mother and I stayed up all night Christmas eve, drinking gin and making bad jokes. My favorite was one about a little self-help snippet in the newspaper, that told how to fix a loose screw. We discussed whether it would work on my father . . . .
After the first of the year, they moved him to a the VA in Illinois (where they'll keep you for longer periods of time). We were dead broke (he'd lost his job again) and on food stamps at that point. I think the only money coming in was from the rental property. We had a freezer full of cheap hamburger, so every Saturday I made a meatloaf, and took meatloaf sandwiches to school every day. My mother burned out on meatloaf very quickly, but I never did, until I was in my 20's, came down with the flu, and spent the night throwing it up. I've never felt the same about meatloaf since then.
It was a strange time, though. I remember feeling very . . . cozy, in a bunker-mentality sort of way. I'd come home from school and my mother and I would play Mille Bornes. I felt very close to her that year. And spring was a wonderful time that year, like coming out of a long illness.