The child in the mirror is closer than they appear
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 hit her as he was screaming and throwing objects like the clothes iron and ironing board across the room. I think mom must’ve called my uncle to come help. Uncle Gordon showed up and wrestled daddy into my uncle’s car, then drove him off.
My dad 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 my dad 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 me to death.
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.
I learned that I was supposed to hide my problems. My father’s episodes were described just as, “he needs to go to the VA hospital”. He didn’t go willingly.
At one point, hiding in a dark closet, I begged God to end my life.
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. Maybe he was uncurable. 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 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.
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… a grateful, happy, and very healing kind of feeling transpires.
And lastly, my website.
Ed’s Art Net is my masterpiece, endowing my soul with that accomplished feeling only an artwork can bring to an artist. My website is my therapy garden.
Life is hard sometimes. Love makes it all better. Love makes it worthwhile.
Have a blessed day!
