5 Years of Crazy...

I lovingly refer to the years between the deaths of my parents as the crazy years because they literally were crazy. And not just because we were experiencing all the new eccentricities associated with bipolar disorder. Not even when the kids were babies was my life so incredibly busy. The baby years turned out to be like a vacation compared to this time in my life. We were utterly consumed. Consumed with doctor’s appointments, prescriptions, phone calls, visits to the hospital, making sure that all potential weapons were out of sight and making sure Dad had enough ‘money’ (or cigarettes as most people call them). Consumed with all the stories we were hearing all of a sudden – stories that we thought were true because we had no reason to doubt the source. Stories that we later learned might have started with the teeniest tiniest ounce of truth to them (so tiny that they were nothing really) but were blown so out of proportion by confused delusion. I grew up convinced that my father had never lied to me so why would I even stop to consider that the things he was saying weren’t true. This is where it gets a bit tricky (and why I believe my father was misdiagnosed). It’s not that he was lying to us. He really believed what he was saying. And he was very convincing. Hell, he’d had 30plus years of practice. He was good at it!

I remember walking into his new house (the one he bought after he sold my mother’s house...I hated that new house!) and he was relieved to see me which I thought was a bit weird. Happy sure, excited even to see the kids, but relieved? He confided that he was glad someone else was in the house. That maybe the other voices would stop talking now. Or when my brother went to visit him on one of those 72 hr holds and he noticed there were napkins taped over the light switches because it was the only way our dad could get those darn light switches to stop talking. Imagine our frustration when his psychiatrist asked him about it (because we snitched!!) and he denied the entire thing. Said he was just joking around. This is where treating a mental illness differs from treating a physical one. If I had taken my dad to the emergency room and told them he had pains in his stomach they’d run some tests and check it out. But taking him to the emergency room because he’s hearing voices? What were they going to do if my dad denied it? Nothing. Continue on with current treatment unless my dad gave them a reason to change it.

And so we went on. Doing what we could - hiding cigarettes in pockets so that he could use them to barter for phone time or an extra dessert and tattling to his doctors when necessary. Sometimes hiding ourselves because we just didn’t want to deal with the crazy anymore. Putting our own grief aside to get the one parent we had left healthy again. And living with the regret for the people that were hurt in our attempt at getting back the dad we adored.