Well, I Guess I Just Didn't Notice
October 1, 2006 | permalink
I was unaware of my The Old Man's dissociative identity disorder until my late teens. There were some strange things that, in hindsight, make it clear that something was not right, but at the time it was all just normal. That's what we were used to, the baseline that we compared everything else to. I guess on some level, I figured everyone's family was more or less like ours. It wasn't until I went away to college that I had enough regular contact with people outside my family to realize that this was not the case. I can count on one hand the number of times that I went over to another kid's house when I was growing up, and I don't think any of my classmates ever came over to ours.
This didn't particularly bother me; as I said, it seemed normal at the time. I didn't feel deprived or like a shut in. Most of the time I was off in some daydream or another anyway. Of course, now that I am an adult and have trouble feeling comfortable when I interact with people, especially people I don't know well, I wish that things had been different; but that's another can of worms altogether.
I'm sure you are wondering, Gentle Readers, what the strange things that I mentioned earlier might be. I don't imagine that any of you have had any dealings with someone with multiple personalities. I tried for a long time, actually, to find someone else who had, so that I could discuss it with another person (besides my sisters- at that time it was something that we didn't talk about amongst ourselves. That is no longer the case). I never did. But I digress.
The Old Man would leave notes to himself, on the message board by the front door. Only, they were from one personality to another, reminding whomever might be at the steering wheel that day about the things that had to be done. Because when one of the personalities wasn't 'on top,' they had no awareness. Not of anything. He told me, once, years after the fact, about waking up one morning and not recognising where he was or knowing why he was there instead of in his own room. Except it was his own room- it was just that particular personality hadn't been 'on top' since before we had moved last, and had no idea that we had new digs. Things like this were not uncommon, and as you can imagine, there were serious mood and behavior swings all the time, reflecting the differences in each of The Old Man's facets. Different speech patterns, different likes and dislikes, different gaps in his memory. Something that was perfectly acceptable one day was practically a hanging offense the next. Some days he seemed like a rock, some days fragile. Some days he was approachable, some days he seemed so stern and aloof I didn't want to be in the same room with him. You just never knew what his reaction to anything would be. It was both incoprehensible and completely normal all at the same time. I guess I didn't really try to make sense of it; that was just how things were. The Old Man was a rollercoaster, and we were all along for the ride.
Posted in Family Matters & Growing Up & The Old Man & The PastInstant Messaging was the last entry.
MC Hawking is the next entry.
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