Wednesday, March 13, 2019

Walking With Old Fuss and Feathers…

Dad came and walked with me this afternoon. We are going to try and walk everyday he doesn’t work weather permitting. We talked a long time about my early years as we strode through my neighborhood.

“We should have sent you to a school for the musically gifted,” he told me.

I agreed. I just never fit into that classic mold of a student unlike my brother and sister who excelled in the classroom. I struggled to make C’s and B’s and was socially inept when it came to my fellow students and classmates. I could play a mean piano, though.

“I worried you were autistic at first,” my father added. “I had no idea you were schizophrenic and there weren’t any real drugs to treat you as well back then.”

“Ah, when you mother started taking Zyprexa then the pieces to the puzzle started to fall together,” he continued. “She was a different person within two weeks of taking that drug. We knew then it was schizophrenia that afflicted you.”

Dad drove over here for years to give me my medications knowing that was the only way I would have a normal life. I wouldn’t take them on my own volition fearing they were trying to drug me into submission and controlling me which is common with noncompliant schizophrenics. Dad always thought he could control my drinking with those pills, but he couldn’t. That had to be my choice. 

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