Chapter 9: Convulsion
One evening, I was downstairs with my son. My wife had taken our daughter to the emergency room because
she was sick with the flu.
My son and I heard shouting upstairs.
By this point, that was not unusual.
I waited to see if the argument would calm down on its own, but it didn’t.
Eventually, I went upstairs.
I was furious. My son was downstairs listening to his grandparents scream at each other, and I felt as though
neither of them was considering what this was doing to him.
I entered the room and demanded that they stop shouting.
My dad was trying to make my mom leave again. At that point, I asked him to let me speak to her alone.
I had been trying to convince my mom that she needed help beyond what any of us could give her.
My dad was angry and resisted at first, but eventually he agreed to step away and let me talk to her.
I asked my mom to imagine that our positions were reversed.
What if I were in her position and she were in mine?
What would she tell me?
Would she tell me to keep waiting, or would she tell me to get help?
Eventually, she acknowledged that if our positions were reversed, she would want me to get help.
So I asked her:
What are you waiting for?
She had recently rescheduled an appointment with her psychiatrist. My understanding was that this was
supposed to be the appointment where she finally told her doctor everything that had been happening.
Instead, she moved the appointment until after Christmas because she did not want to miss the holidays.
Neither of my parents wanted her to miss Christmas.
They said they were doing it for their grandchildren.
I didn’t believe that.
From my perspective, keeping everything together for Christmas was something they needed, not something
my children needed.
My children did not need another holiday surrounded by shouting, anger, and instability. If anything, I
believed continuing like this was far more likely to ruin Christmas for them.
I told my parents as much.
They would not listen.
At the time, I often felt like the only adult in the room.
Their insistence that my mom remain home for Christmas made no sense to me. My dad had just been trying
to make her leave the house.
Why did preserving the appearance of a normal Christmas matter when nothing about our lives felt normal?
I couldn’t understand it.
The distance I felt between my parents and me continued to grow.
I felt powerless.
Nothing I said seemed to matter. Nothing I could say seemed capable of making them value my perspective.
And the situation was about to become much worse.