by fisho mcspaz » Wed Jul 03, 2013 8:44 pm
I'm gunna keep talking - I've opened the floodgates. We've got a family history of depression and suicide - my dad has depression but he refuses to talk about it. In the past decade he exchanged his usual activities (sitting on his arse drinking beer and yelling at the news on TV) for triathlons and marathons, and that's helped a lot. I love him but it's my mum I feel for because she has to put up with it. He can't stand to talk about anything mental health-related - it's only this past year that he's been able to ask me a bit awkwardly, 'How - how are you managing with your depression?' It means a lot that he asks. When I was diagnosed with panic disorder in 2006 he hit the roof, yelled at me that I was crazy and he'd get me sent to Glenside. So he's come a long way. I still think that one day he's gunna have to admit to his depression, though. That s*** doesn't go away. But it's a forbidden topic in Dad's family, because his cousin and his aunt (mother and son) both had depression and both killed themselves. His aunt took a drug overdose while in hospital - my grandpa still insists that the doctors killed her, but my mum said to me that wasn't true, she did it herself. His cousin shot himself in the head. There's no history of depression in Mum's family.
My mum still ventures forth the theory that my experimenting with marijuana in high school caused my depression. Bulls***. That makes me so angry. Because if my depression was caused by anything other than heredity/chemical imbalance, I'd point the finger at my father. I said that Mum had to put up with his crap when he was depressed. I also said that he used to drink beer and yell at the TV all the time. Still, when I was a kid, he was my mate. My little sister was very clingy to Mum, so Dad would take me places. He always wanted a son - when I was eight I overheard him say it to Mum and was heartbroken - so I substituted. We went hiking, camping, fishing, went to watch the Eagles, which Dad still calls 'Torrens' in defiance. We were the best of pals until one day, which I remember vividly. Last day of Year 7. Dad is a high school teacher and had been drinking in the staff room all arvo and was not in the best of moods when he came to pick me and my sister up. I didn't go to the car immediately because I was hanging around, saying goodbyes, getting my yearbook signed, etc. My sister came back a few minutes later and said 'Dad wants you to get in the car NOW' and I could tell by the look on her face he was angry. I went to the car and Dad unleashed an abusive tirade at me, culminating with him grabbing my wrist, twisting it half around and then punching me twice in the leg. I said that Mum put up with his crap and that was perfectly true - I remember being kept up by their screaming matches when I was a kid, and I saw him chuck her across the room once - but from that day on it wasn't Mum who had to put up with it, it was me. He always went for me first. We weren't mates any more. After a couple of years I learnt to hate him when before I'd loved him. He left off hurting Mum altogether, and my sister was never touched. He openly favoured her over me; when we were a bit older he'd let her use his car, his computer and stuff, but he'd always sneer at me and say I wasn't to be trusted. He wasn't regularly violent - I was only hurt by him about six or seven times in four years - but he would get drunk and yell and say the cruelest things and get right up in my face, at least twice a week. I think he found me a more satisfactory sparring partner than Mum - I've got his temper, and where Mum would just look at him disdainfully or say he was a brute, I'd end up yelling right back at him. He threatened to send me to the reformatory and I had no idea what I'd done. He would tell me I was fat and ugly, and I know now I wasn't at all - I think I was a pretty girl once you got past the purple hair. ;-) And I was a f***ing size 8-10 so make what you will of that. But you know teenagers, they're self-conscious. When I was 15 I remember so many blank days where I'd just sit in my room, crying, unable to move. After a while my parents got me to a counsellor, where I was diagnosed with depression. I cut my wrists - not suicide, just mutilation - because the pain in my head was so much to bear, I wanted something physical and tangible to take my mind off my thoughts. I didn't tell my parents and they didn't notice the bandaids on my arms, and I wore long sleeves. My mother's much younger sister, my auntie, she was the one who figured it out. I learnt later that she'd wanted me to come and live with her in Perth and finish school there - a big call, as she had a young family and a husband incapacitated by depression himself - but my mum said no. I remember shrieking at Mum when she told me, 'Why didn't you say yes? Why didn't you? You bitch!' Because for some reason, I resented my mother as much as I did my father. She was always saying she was gunna leave him and she never did. I didn't believe in God but I repeated to myself at night, 'Please let Mum leave him.' They're still together - 33 years or something now. I am glad, because I love my parents - but I reckon my mum could've done a lot better. She's such a sweetheart. She gets preachy and anxious and sometimes I want to kill her but she's very giving, very loving. Dad's a cantankerous old bastard. He really is. I don't know why I love him when he was such an arsehole to me, but I do. Maybe because I think part of him couldn't help being an arsehole, and because sometimes - very rarely - I see his normal face slip a little bit, and I see how frightened he is of himself, and how much he loves me but he just hasn't got the words because he was brought up to be a closed-up, stern man, just like his own father. If Mum had left him, I reckon there'd have been three suicides in his family, not two. He's always loved my mother on a higher plane than he loves either my sister or me.
I escaped from my parents' house when I was sixteen - I'd been going out with a bloke, a friend of my bestie's stepbrother. He was a dropout, nineteen years old, not very bright, and a chronic weed smoker and sociopath. I thought he'd annoy my parents the most. After some months I spent most of my time at his place, not my own, and I tried so hard to help him because I thought I could see a decent person under the ruined exterior. Thus started a two-year relationship in which I was terrorised and beaten. Sorry, but there aren't any other words for it. I started on antidepressants when I was eighteen and they saved my life. I began to get sleep and to stop crying every day, and finally I was strong enough to walk out. He said he'd kill me so I rang his parents and told them I'd call the police if I ever heard from him again. I saw him last year when I was up for DUI in court. He has a one-year-old son that he is not allowed to have custody of because he is a junkie and has a criminal record as long as my arm, and so does the mother. I didn't hate him any more after I saw him, because it wasn't worth it. When he dies, no one's gunna care.
Well, the rest is history - I went to uni, met Mr McSpaz, had an unsuccessful marriage in between, started seeing Mr McSpaz and now we've got a lovely family. I'm still depressed. It's not something that's gunna go away and I've accepted that. I don't mind. I'll take my meds and do my best to keep fighting. I won't give up. The good days are so bloody awesome that they make up for a week's worth of bad days. Things are tough right now, with Mr McSpaz's depression too and the troubles he's having on his meds, but at least he's prepared to get help. My dad wasn't, and still isn't.
I'm sorry; I'm not sure what I've achieved by writing this stuff. But it was in my head and it had to come out.
Hey Goose, ya big stud! Take me to bed or lose me for ever.
