I Cut My Bipolar Father Out of My Life
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"Your father missed out on raising an amazing daughter. It's his loss that he didn't stick around."
Acquaintances often made comments like this when they learned I hadn't seen my father since the age of 10. I usually smiled and quickly changed the subject because the truth was too difficult to explain. How could I describe the drawer full of letters I had from my father begging me to have a relationship with him? How could I ever explain the heartache I caused my father by severing all ties to him?
Mental illness robbed him of the chance to raise my sister and me as children and — later in life —to know us as adults. My dad was a brilliant young man with a promising future until he began suffering from an invasive mental illness that doctors finally diagnosed as Bipolar disorder. He and my mother were married for 12 years until they finally divorced. I was relieved when my mom told us the news. Even as a young child (I was six; my sister was nine), I knew, sadly, that there would be a lot less chaos without my dad around.
I remember very little about living with my father. Snippets of intense arguments, screaming, crying, and erratic behavior are nestled into the caverns of my memory. One of the few positive recollections I have of my dad is him teaching me how to tell time. After my parents divorced, my sister and I were court-mandated to visit my dad in his dilapidated, filthy, unheated apartment. The visits were terrifying and slowly became less frequent until they stopped completely when I was 10. By that time, my father's mental health had deteriorated to the point that my mom knew he couldn't have fought her in court for violation of his visitation rights.
My father lived the rest of his life never receiving the proper mental health care he so desperately needed. I don't know if this was due to his reluctance to get help, or because the care and resources he required were nonexistent at the time.
Due to my young age, and the fact that our visits with my dad slowly stopped, I don't remember the end of our relationship as a succinct moment in time. Yet, I do not remember missing him. I desperately missed the concept of a father figure and all it represented, but I knew the father of my dreams didn't resemble the one I had.
As a kid, I had no idea my father had a fierce desire to be a part of my life. My dad wrote me letters, sent birthday cards, and tried reaching out to me in every conceivable way. Eventually, he could no longer function independently and spent the rest of his life in and out of psychiatric wards and halfway houses. Slivers of information about my sister and me would trickle down to my dad through our Great Uncle Joe who remained close with us and our father.
Growing up without a dad was profoundly painful. Because of this absence, I felt like I was never the apple of anyone's eye or the star in anyone's sky. As an adult, though, I found love, got married, enjoyed a career, and had two children. Still, letters from my father would come and I would be reduced to a pool of mush. I knew that embarking on an adult relationship with my dad would bring chaos to the life I worked so hard to establish. Even the kindest, most patient relatives had mostly severed ties from my father because he made life so difficult for anyone who tried to help him. When he was manic or depressed, he would call relatives incessantly at all hours of the night and unleash his rage, or ramble nonsensically.
I truly wrestled with reaching out to my dad throughout my adult life. With every milestone, I considered including him. Each time, I reached the same conclusion: No.
There are very specific reasons for this decision.
My father was very cruel to me when his mental health was compromised (which was pretty much all the time, as far as I can remember). He often told me I wasn't as smart as my sister or berated me for not giving him information about our life. For instance, my mom had changed our home phone number so that my dad could not torture us with his phone calls in the middle of the night. My sister and I were under strict orders never to give my dad our new number, which infuriated him and led to his deafening verbal rants.
Having my dad be part of my life would mean opening old wounds that time had somewhat allowed to scab over. It would mean every family event would be riddled with strange outbursts from my father and every night of slumber could be potentially disrupted with irrational phone calls. It would mean going back to being that scared little girl who hid behind the drapes when her parents fought. I struggled for years to help that little girl learn it was okay to come out from behind the curtains, that she was smart and deserved love and happiness.
But I could never bring myself to invite my dad into my adult life and risk becoming that little girl again.
Still, thoughts of my dad being robbed of the joys of fatherhood and grand-parenting haunted me. The guilt of choosing my pursuit of happiness instead of my father's was sometimes all-consuming. Well-meaning friends would sometimes say things like, many people would give anything to see their dads just one more time. You really should cultivate a relationship with your father, while you're lucky enough to still have him on earth. To some degree, I saw the validity in those sentiments, but I also resented being judged by those who hadn't walked in my childhood shoes.
In 2013, we learned my father was dying from lung cancer. My sister and I deliberated at length over if we should visit our father, knowing our opportunity to do so was waning. We were both petrified to see him, but feared we would deeply regret it if we didn't. We finally concluded that if we didn't make a decision, time would decide for us. The chance for closure would die along with my father.
Together, my sister and I visited our dad several times before he died. During that first visit, I cowered in the corner near the hospital curtain sobbing. In a fraction of a second, I was that little girl again. But the adult version of myself comforted her and reminded me that I wasn't six anymore. I possessed a lifetime of experiences that had brought me to that moment in time. I went to the stranger in the bed and found the man who had taught me how to tell time, who set up the sprinkler for me in the backyard, and built his beloved daughters a sandbox.
My dad was partially sedated and intubated, which rendered him unable to speak. The tables had turned; it was time for us to talk and our father to listen. We showed him pictures of our families, shared stories about our lives, and told our dad we knew he did his best, and we both turned out well. In sharp contrast to the volatile father I remembered, my final hours with my dad were serene. When my dad died, we made the funeral arrangements, gave him a proper burial, and sat Shiva. My father was buried with a letter I had written him. It was not until I was standing over my father's casket that I began to fully grapple with the complexities of our relationship.
I've learned to accept that my father didn't choose to be absent in my life — his mental illness made the choice for him. Still, it makes my heart ache to reflect on how much his Bipolar disorder stole from him, his daughters, and subsequently his grandchildren. I wonder if he was diagnosed today, would his life trajectory be drastically different. Would he have gotten the help he needed at a younger age? Would a new medication have offered him a different destiny? Would society's changing perceptions of mental illness and improved access to care have offered my dad a glimmer of hope?
In an alternative universe, is there a little girl who gets to grow up with a daddy who is capable of nurturing her? Maybe not for the little girl who resides in my memory, but I have to hope it will be a reality for others who love someone afflicted with mental illness. For me, my father's death has allowed me to make some semblance of peace with his life.
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