4:26pm September 21, 2014

Apology to my father

I know my mom reads my tumblr and then shows stuff to my dad, so hopefully this will make it to my dad.

Dear Ron,

I want to apologize for what I put you through as a teenager.  I know it wasn’t really my fault, exactly, but it still makes me feel bad.  At the time, I hadn’t learned that my actions had an effect on other people.  I mean I sort of knew it a little, but the knowledge had not really sunk down in my head to the point where it was readily available when I needed it.  I don’t know if that’s a normal teenage thing or not, but it makes me feel bad when I think back on how self-centered I was and how many things I did that made your life a lot harder.

Like back when you had to sleep in your running shoes because I was always trying to get out of the house at night.  In my mind, I was just trying to get out of the house, and you were in the way.  I never thought I was hurting you, emotionally or physically, even when I had to fight you to get out the door.  I hated that house and had some half-baked plans to run away and find somewhere else to live.  

I know I told you guys that I didn’t know why I did that stuff, but the reality was that I didn’t know how to explain why I did that stuff.  So “I don’t know why” or “I don’t remember doing it” was the only thing I could say.  That went for a lot of things — I simply didn’t have the verbal equipment to explain things, so I’d say I didn’t know or I didn’t remember.  I didn’t have the option of saying “I don’t know how to explain” because that wasn’t really in my capacity to communicate either.  A lot of things got very confusing back then because of the explanations I’d come up with for things — those explanations came about mostly because I couldn’t give the real explanations, my brain wouldn’t handle words that easily.  But it did know how to slip in a plausible explanation that had nothing to do with what was going on, so it did that.

Anyway, so my plan was always to walk to somewhere I could hide out and find a way to live.  I’d been planning it for years, ever since I started seeing institutions in my future.  And I saw institutions in my future because I was losing skills every day, and nobody else seemed to notice.  Or rather, they kept thinking it was just a temporary setback, and I knew better, because I knew I was running as fast as I could and still falling behind, so there was no way I was going to grow up to live out that one shrink’s fantasy of living in the Santa Cruz mountains totally independently and writing novels.  And given my choices were someone else’s fantasy world or an institution, I chose to try to run away.  Just about every time I ran off was an attempt to take the first step in the plan, which was to get the hell out of the house and find somewhere to go.  Unfortunately I never found anywhere to go before someone called the cops to report someone “wandering” who didn’t respond appropriately or something, and then the cops happened.  (Very rarely was I actually doing anything that warranted calling the cops.  Maybe two or three times — trespassing or screaming.  Usually though I was just walking.  And refusing to talk to strangers.)  

Anyway that’s just one example where I never thought of the effect of my actions on other people.  I never thought how it made you feel.  I never even thought that it made you feel anything at all.  It just didn’t cross my mind that the things I did had consequences for people other than me.  I don’t know why I was so self-centered.  It wasn’t that I didn’t care about other people when I knew how things affected them.  It was that the thought of other people didn’t cross my mind.

So I want to apologize for everything I ever did or said during the time period before I learned that my actions affected people.  I know that’s a lot to apologize for.  But I thought you should know, I understand now.  I understand how hard it was for you guys to watch what was happening to me and not understand what was going on.  I understand how hard it was to run through all your money trying to get me treatment, and not have any money left over in the end.  I understand how hard it was to have no clue in hell what to do about me, or even what exactly was wrong with me.  

As to what was wrong with me, I don’t think there’s a diagnostic term for it.  I just call it going crazy, it fits better than any of the words any shrink would ever use.  I wrote this though, about what I was actually doing, you may want to read it too (click on the link to get to it):

 http://youneedacat.tumblr.com/post/90128299065/life-is-not-a-dream

That’s what my motivations were for most of what was going on.  I’m sorry that I rarely considered my impact on you or anyone else as I did those things.  I was too busy thinking about dreams and reality and all this other stuff, my brain didn’t seem to even consider that other people existed and mattered.  And I hate to admit to that, because people will misinterpret it in a whole lot of ways.  It’s not that I didn’t care about other people, it’s that I didn’t notice about other people.  When I noticed, I cared.  And that’s probably what made the difference in the end — I became more able to notice, and therefore more able to care.  I’ve met people who just don’t care, and they don’t ever grow out of it.

Anyway, I’m sorry.

Love,

Mel

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