A Daughter's Story

Patience Is A Virtue

When dealing with my father, I strive very hard to be patient. Sometimes I cannot stand to even look at him beause I can see that he is going downhill in every sense of the word.

I am a junior at a major research university and I have my hands very full with my own schoolwork, activities, ill health, work and bi-polar disorder. So, you can see that mental illness or challenge as I like to put it, is in my family.

I have no help in dealing with my situation; however, I do a lot of research and updates on both conditions. I have other brothers and sisters(5) and I feel like they should have their share in helping him and encouraging him to stay on his medications. Perhaps he will listen to them.

He knows that I am majoring in Psychology and I have a lot of experience dealing with medications, I have a PDR and use it even when it comes to myself, recently I was just put on two new psychiatric meds myself, I have not slept for four nights straight, even though I may sleep a little during the day, I have not written any poems in a while. However, I am going to resume working on writing one poem per week in addition to my schoolwork.

I am working on the autobiography "Drowning In Unseen Tears" which will speak of my life dealing with Breast Cancer Survival, my father's mental challenge which was the majority of his life, my mental challange which has been over half of my life, my dysfunctional family, my failed marriage and my homelessness.

Despite all of that negativity, I have a lot of positive things to write about: My success in college, academically and socially (activities) getting along with almost everyone, loving college, working on the goal of becoing a psychologist and teaching it at a small university, adopting a son, being an indepependent woman and being resilient and bouncing back with tears. I am drowning in tears this moment but you do not see them.

Father is so important to me ; I know that he is not going to get better at this point; if he takes his meds he will simply exist but his brain is slowly fading and he has somewhat a form of dementia. I have a hope in God that I can endure with my father being the way that he is. I hung up some curtains for him last Saturday; he was extremely elated; I still could not look at him.

I believe the reason is that I feel that he is to blame for my bi-polar condition or that I inherited it from him. Nevertheless, it is not his fault. We both have a chemical imbalance and for anyone reading this please don't be so quick to be judgemental because there are a lot of undiagnosed persons who have schizophrenia and other forms of mental illness (challenge ) that are not even aware of it.

I tell you one thing playing lottery tickets, using street drugs and drinking alcohol will not suffice if you are suppose to be taking psychiatric medications. They are safe. Trust in God and Trust in the doctor. It will be known if it is not right.

Until next time, the daughter shall return with her story. Thank all of you for reading. It is a priivilege for me to be writing on this site sharing with you.

Patoence, Patience, Patience, ladies and gentlemen, young teenagers.

Posted by at February 23, 2004 05:06 AM | TrackBack