Some pain never really goes away.
When I was a child, I struggled with my mood. I was a self-centered child. Everything was always all about me. I never considered how other people felt or how my actions affected anyone else. I just showed up with my ever-present pity party. Sometimes I still see these traits in myself.
When I was thirteen I ran away from home. I spent the night in a park, in a hole, under some wooden planks. And the next morning, I went to school – the only place I had where I felt good about myself sometimes. The police soon arrived to bring me home. My parents had no idea what to do with me.
Later that year, my dad had a stroke. He lost his vision. Apparently, he’d been lazy about taking his diabetes medicine. I don’t know if that was (or could have been) the cause. His vision slowly returned and school let out for the summer. He had a second stroke in bed. One morning, he just didn’t get up. I finally went to check on him and could see that his skin was discolored. I couldn’t wake him. I called mom. She called the doctor. He called the insurance company. Finally an ambulance arrived. Dad lost his vision again, his short-term memory (and some long-term), some mobility. He was a different man.
We tried to care for my dad at home. He wanted to help, but he easily forgot what he was doing and he needed to be supervised all the time. He wasn’t together all the time. One day I was watching him wash the dishes. I wasn’t really paying much attention, to tell you the truth. I looked up and suddenly there was a big knife an inch from my face. Dad moved into a nursing home two weeks later.
I was a terrible teen. I felt guilty for what had happened to dad. I thought it was my fault. I never had the chance to apologise and then he didn’t know me anymore. I had bouts of insomnia. I had periods of depression. I started getting panic attacks. I fought with my brothers. I shut out my mom. She was at her wits end. She sent me for counseling. She put me on medicine. She changed all the light bulbs in the house to super-bright ones that mimic sunlight. She tried everything. I ended up in hospital when I was sixteen.
Dad ended up in hospital twice the same year. The first time it was because the staff at the nursing home found him laying on the ground and when they tried to get him up, he snapped at them and told them he was pretending to be a cockroach. The second time it was because he hit another resident and knocked her down. We had a very hard time believing it when the nursing home called us. Who is this guy?
My last year of high school was also my younger brother’s first year. He and I ditched fourth period together weekly and left campus to go have a long lunch. He missed his French class. I missed Calculus. We never got into trouble. I’m afraid I set a very poor example for him. He dropped out a couple years later. Well, got kicked out is closer to true. I cleaned up my act. I aced all my classes and I learned to write with “flowers”. I got into university in spite of very long odds. And I put my “problems” out of my head while I packed up and headed across the country.
My family was both religious and conservative. I was a problem child and I knew it. I could not settle into the life they had planned for me. If my dad had not taken ill, I would not have been allowed to go to university at all. I would have stayed home to take care of things until I got married to someone he approved of and then I would have been a housewife. The knowledge that my father’s poor health (for which I already felt responsible) allowed me to live the life I had only dreamed of overwhelmed me with guilt.
It was not long before the bouts of depression came back. I was hospitalised again. I was medicated. I got “better”. I became flat. And I guess it did feel better to be flat for a while. Slowly my perspective changed. I wanted to feel again. I stopped the medicine. The world came back to life. I finished university and moved across the world. How far away could I get?
In the meantime, my dad deteriorated. He lost the ability to walk or hold himself upright. He stayed in bed all the time. A few minutes in a wheelchair made him very uncomfortable. When we took him to his doctor’s appointments, he complained a lot – not because he’s a complainer, but because he didn’t remember he’d already said that a few seconds ago. It was heartbreaking. There was nothing we could do. There was no way to make him more comfortable. He developed lung cancer. It spread and spread. He had surgery. They couldn’t get it all. He was in pain. He stopped eating. We got the phone call.
And the image I cannot get out of my mind is the last one I have of my dad, reclining in his coffin with part of a smile on his face. He looked for all the world like he was ready to jump out and laugh. They closed the lid.
I’m thinking about this today because I feel depressed. I have no reason to be sad. I have a lot of reasons to be happy. I share five of them every day. I have everything I need. Maybe I am paying the price for burying my guilt and shame so deeply that I didn’t feel them anymore. And maybe in order to grow and move forward, I need to forgive myself and let myself be forgiven.
Karuna Care 