The child in the mirror is closer than appears
Sometimes, I feel interrogatory. Sometimes I feel like I have an answer.
I thought I would write about hiding mental illness as a child. But maybe I just want to write. Let it go and let it flow… after all it’s been eight decades. The child is getting older now.
My first standout memory comes as a five-year-old. I was watching a bee fly in and out of flowers on a bush next to our driveway. The flowers and bee were beautiful. I wanted to touch the bee. So, I cupped my right hand over the busy bee as it entered the next flower and closed my fingers around the bee. That’s how I learned most of life’s lessons. Of course, the bee stung my hand… right in the palm.
My next standout memory was my frantic mother instructing my ten-year-old brother to take our dad’s 16-gauge shotgun next door to hide at the neighbor’s house. It was the same gun my brother used to end his life at age twenty-one.
My mother was clearly frightened. So that made me frightened. I remember her saying, “he’s going to kill me!” As a five-year-old, I logically figured he was going to kill me too… which was a recurring theme off and on throughout my childhood.
When my dad got home, he didn’t kill her (or me), but he attacked my momma, screaming and throwing objects like the clothes iron and ironing board across the room. I think mom must’ve already called his brother to come help. Uncle Gordon showed up and wrestled my dad into his car and drove off. I witnessed the whole episode. I can still see my mom’s desperate face and my father’s out of control anger. I felt fear and dread around my father for a long time.
I remember my dad getting in trouble at work, losing his temper at his Lockheed supervisor. He had to be periodically treated at the VA hospital because of his violent episodes.
I feared my father. I did not want to associate with him at all. I avoided him as much as was possible for a child. At five years old, I mentally separated from my dad because he attacked my mom and scared the hell into me.
I focused mostly inside myself growing up, trying to make sense out of what I didn’t understand. I knew something was wrong with me and my father, but I didn’t know what. I hid a lot of anxiety and anger.
As a youngster, I thought that I was supposed to hide my problems. At one point, hiding in a dark closet, I begged God to end my life. The brain pain was unbearable.
Several decades later, I understand a bit more than that five-year-old boy. My dad needed mental therapy which he wasn’t getting at the VA hospital. Maybe they just didn’t know how to treat him properly. He was given shock therapy which left him sedated for a time.
A third standout memory – At nine years old I was in the back seat of my mom’s car parked in front of my aunt Margie’s house. She said we could spend the night in the car. We were hiding from my episodic dad. My aunt Margie told me that I was going to have to be the “man of the house”. I knew what she meant and I knew what she was saying… mainly that she didn’t want to deal with us and my mother’s problems. Neither did I.
A lot happened until I was old enough to get out on my own. It suffices to say that there were some good things and some bad things happening. For one, my dad got more and more mentally “quiet” as the years rolled by.
I never connected with my dad, and I eventually lost connection with the rest of my family.
At seventeen, I separated from the family after I started having serious suicidal thoughts. I figured that I needed distance, comfort, solitude, and time to heal. I eventually found all of those in varying degrees. Healing has been a little tricky.
I’ve never dealt well with attention from a crowd – good or bad. i.e., There was panic for me when I attended a 1992 Amiga computer user group meeting at Georgia Tech. I nearly had a nervous breakdown when everyone started asking me questions about HummerHead which was featured at the meeting. I should have adored the attention but wanted to disappear. I’m happy just showing my work with my therapeutic insulated isolated nutshell website.
After my second mental breakdown, I turned to God for help with my brain.
I’ve been fortunate. I got help. Lots of help. So, I’m spilling the beans!
God showed me a lot of helpers over the years. Susan, our kids, the Addicks, my nurse whose name is also Susan, friends, Yona, Sean of the South, and many other pleasant people whom I’ve spiritually and physically connected with at some point in time.
My all-time favorite helper is my front porch… and the visiting birds. The songbirds are especially soothing. I touch God in my heart through those beautiful birds… it’s a grateful, happy, and very healing kind of feeling.
And lastly, my website.
This website is my artful masterpiece, endowing my soul with that accomplished feeling only an artwork can bring to an artist. This website is my therapy garden.
Life is hard sometimes. Depression sucks life out of you…
Love can make it all better.
Have a love filled day!
Enjoy a flower 🌺… but leave the bee 🐝 be.