I'm here

I'm here because I need a place to unload. It isn't fun to talk about having a bipolar man for a dad, it also isn't fun to go crazy holding it all inside. So that's why I'm here.

When I was 13 my dad disappeared. He withdrew to the point where we didn't talk at all and spent most of the time in the basement. It made me really mad for a while, but as time went by I just kinda let go. It wasn't so hard to live without him, he hadn't been that great of a dad in the first place. My sophomore year in college is when we figured out my dad wasn't just depressed, he was bipolar. I didn't even know what that meant, but I knew what my dad was turning into was scary as hell, but before it was hellish, it was hopeful. His mom died in the fall and that's when things started to change. We thought he was getting better. He was talking, and showering. I remember hearing him cuss out my brother for no reason, and that's when I realized this wasn't better. That's when I knew that I'd rather not have a dad than live through what was inevitably coming next yet.
After Thanksgiving break I went back to school and tried to go on normally. I went home to visit for a weekend and an ended up spending it sleeping on the floor in my best friends bedroom because dad had kicked me out. I called him a jerk. He was being one. During a family meal he actually pulled out his bible, read Proverbs 31 and told us all how my mom was nothing like a Proverbs 31 wife. It was infuriating. My mom is amazing. She stayed, or really let him stay even though he had been nothing but an extra mouth to feed (certainly not a husband!) for the past seven years.

Through the next few months things only go worse. Eventually mom left to stay with her mom in Ohio. Dad figured out where she'd gone and followed her. My uncle called the cops and dad ended up in a mental hospital in Ohio. He stayed for two months and racked up a bill that you wouldn't believe. When he got out my mom had changed the locks. Dad lived in a hotel downtown for a while. By this time I was living back in my home town in an apartment with a friend. He called me everyday, probably 5 times a day. My boyfriend and I got engaged despite his reaction to the whole thing. So dad called me to tell me I would be a horrible wife just like my mom. He called me to tell me he'd just had sex with a hooker. He called me just yell and cuss me out. He called me crying, begging me to tell my mom to let him come home.

He spent money like there was no tomorrow. It took a few years to pay off the debt that he racked up in a few months. Mom got a restraining order. Dad peed in the lawn and egged the house. He ripped the windshield wipers of my brothers car. He canceled the family cell phone (I didn't want to be on his plan in the first place, but there was no telling him no). I would go home to visit mom and he'd be in his car a block away. He'd get out and yell and scream at me to stop. All the neighbors knew. It felt like the whole town knew. I could not wait to get rid of his last name. The stigma was horrible. He would come to the house even though he wasn't allowed to because of the restraining order. We was out of control, we wanted him in jail. So one evening stopped by and stood in the yard yelling at us. My brother and my fiance went out to talk to him while my mom called the cops. He got in his car to leave so my brother and fiance stood in front and behind of his car. I was so scared he would get mad enough to run one of them over. He was so angry and so loud.

The time he spent in jail somehow broke him. He slipped back into the depression and eventually my mom let him come home. There was so much damage from his manic episode. Both financially and emotionally. He'd involved countless people and burned so many bridges. Despite my general feelings for the man I let him walk me down the isle at my wedding. Since then my relationship to him (or lack there of) has been very similar to the way it was during the last 7 years that I lived at home. It's easier this way, much easier to live without a dad than to deal with an insane one.