Trigger warning: Trigger warning: Please note: Over the next posts, I will be talking about my father’s cruel and harsh treatment of me. While I watered it down to make it a “PG.” The subject matter may trigger strong, negative, parental feelings/emotions. This is not my intent, the fact is, it is possible. Please, do not read the post after the cartoon…If you like the cartoon, click on the cartoon and you can use this link without the post to share it: http://blogs.psychcentral.com/humor/files/2016/03/1617-Mental-Health-Humor-Mental-Bipolar-Msyter-illness-The-Family-Stew.jpg
Part Three
Mental Health Humor by Chato Stewart
Chato’s Wife: What is going on?
Depressed Chato Stewart 1991: I hate myself
Depressed Chato Stewart 1991: I’m really down
Depressed Chato Stewart 1991: I’m worthless
Depressed Chato Stewart 1991: I wish I was dead
Caption: Years of untreated depression can change a hairline.
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Trigger warning:
Brutality? Agony? How Long is it Before WE Ask for Mental Health Help? Cry Havoc! For me, and my family, that is what it felt like. As depicted in the above Mental health humor cartoon, The Family Stew. Not long after, I was first diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder in 2003.
Talking to my mother about my new mental illness diagnosis, I got a feeling of more apathy than compassion. It is now in my family folklore from Mother, but on the phone…she told me how Dad was diagnosed Manic Depressive! (Also called Bipolar disorder.) It was the way she said it that stuck out to me. It was matter of fact as if it meant nothing to a conversation. “oh yeah the doctors at the VA told your father he was manic depressed years ago…“. Um, Mum, don’t you think I should of had this information sooner??
Again more family folklore from a trusted source: I hear it again while in Boston 2010. We were sitting looking at old photos with one of my sisters and the subject of mental health comes up and she says something like ya, your father was “diagnosed” with Bipolar about six months before he passed… REALLY??
Growing up being on the blunt end of the extremes of Dad’s Highs and lows wasn’t easy. While we kids tried, it seemed to me that I “always” tried his last nerve. My siblings got their fair share and collectively we were a dysfunctional family unit in the projects. Yet, that “mind over matter” crap dad pushed…he was a huge Narcissist as well. He was above everyone. He was supreme ruler. I don’t know why my mother put up with him so long? At one point, I thought she was just codependent on him. Yet, as time went on I realized, my father’s extreme moods hid a real man, a loving father, and good father. That was buried under years of denial and decades of agony, extreme physical and mental suffering, chronic pain.
In the 70’s and 80’s, my formative years, I believe Dad was not in the right place. That many medications for pain and his uncontrolled mood disorder exasperated his fatherhood, parental skills. While I do not want to forget, or belittle dad’s effect…I’ve dealt with it and with him.
My father tried to love us, play catch or go fishing or other Dad things; the best he could. The truth is: with his neck injury and heart condition, he should have been in a wheelchair. With “mind over matter” he ignored the doctor’s orders. He always paid for it the next day. Dad took us kids to baseball games, my sisters to gymnastics (my sister was awesome and regional/state champion multi-years, and Karate class with ‡sensei Richard Byrne. – (I will never forget the day meeting a young, red head guy visiting our sensei showing his martial arts, jumps and kicks and rolling over car outside…May be you’ve heard of him, Chuck Norris).
My Father was no Chuck Norris, but when you scrape away trauma…there was substance…It was not till I was older did I appreciate it. Till I was away from him, was I able to see him.
I then worked on making peace with dad…one could say I was using ‘mind or matter’. My mind was telling me: it did not matter anymore. I had a strange relationship with my father. He never thought he was wrong. He never thought we needed to talk much about the past… To him it was all part of growing up. My father was both brilliant and ignorant. He was amazing and lackluster. He could cut you deeper with a word than any blade. May be my father was trying to toughen me up for the world. This caused disorder and confusion with me – “Cry ‘Havoc!” And I learned to live in chaos.
Yes, Dad could push anyone’s buttons and found joy in doing it. Yet, maybe I was more codepentent on him than I ever thought. All I ever wanted was something he could not give back in words…LOVE. My father would always say he knew he would die alone. Yet, after 3 heart attacks, the doctor tell us that only 5% of his heart worked right due to Cardiomyopathy.
My father was stubborn and only knew his way…the way of harsh, emotional abuse, neglect, physical abuse. Belittling treatment, in between there were moments of clarity of a wise and well educated man. He showed me this in his own way…in bits and pieces. While My father rejected me for years, I never gave up on him. I would sit with him in the hospital and towards the end of the day before he died…I was helping him in the backyard. The same backyard that years ago he and grandpa fought in. There we stood laughing, trimming the tomato plants. He just got out the hospital, maybe a week earlier. The doctor ordered him strict bed rest. “Mind over matter“…Besides if he did not do it, who would. Well, besides me.
The next day while I was at work, I got the call. My father was alone in the back of a garden store and shopping and had a massive heart attack. On June 11, 1996, they found him in the back with fertilizer for the garden. He was gone. That is what “mind over matter” got him.
Joan and I were married in 1991. We planned our third trip to France, but this time we were going for three months and would visit all around Europe. Yet with Dad’s health failing– I was going to cancel the trip. My father pulled me over one night at hospital and told me: he did not want to me cancel the trip… no matter what happens to him. I made a promise to dad that I would go to Europe–no matter what happened. That year Joan and I did spend 3 months traveling in Europe: France – Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Luxembourgh, Italy, etc.
It was dad’s gift. There was a lot of healing on that trip…
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Reference
‡ First my Deepest Sympathy to the family of sensei Richard Byrne. (2016). Legacy Wicked Local Malden. Retrieved on April 4, 2016 frpm http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/wickedlocal-malden/obituary.aspx?pid=159825624 ( I am 75% sure this is the Same oerson I knew as Sensei Byrne: “Business owner of Byrne’s Tang Soo Do Karate Studio of Malden, Richard was Grandmaster and 9th Degree Black Belt. His martial arts training began in Korea in 1969 during the Vietnam War where he was stationed at Osan Air force Base at the same training facility as Chuck Norris”. This would explane why Chuck Norris was in Malden when i was a kid.