Meet the President

They will rebuild the old ruins, raise a new city out of the wreckage. They will start over on the ruined cities, take the rubble left behind and make it new.

He did what?

My dad was just like any other dad on the face of it. It’s just that at times he wasn't too good. The problem with mental illness is that it lacks a marker, some sort of barometer that flashes to the world saying ‘go easy on me I am not feeling too great’.

I remember one episode when dad donned himself in a suit and headed out to state house.  For those of you that don't understand what that is, it’s the big house in which the president of my birth country lives in.

My dad walked up to the guards patrolling the formidable gates and demanded to speak to the president. According to him, he had a few issues of national interest that he wanted to iron out with the president. You don’t walk up to state house with a list of presidential hostile demands and expect to still hold to on your freedom! Needless to say my father was arrested at gun point!

We had a difficult time trying to convince the authorities that he wasn't well.  For all intents and purposes he looked the part of a successful business man. Looking back I find it comical that I had spent a large proportion of my life up until then, refusing to acknowledge publicly my father’s illness but in that moment facing the barrel of a gun, I had never been more desperate for the world to acknowledge he was a sick man.

What do you do with a guy that looks distinguished and speaks so eloquently but yet claims to be fighting mental illness? I have observed when people can’t explain a dilemma they will look for someone to blame.

They threatened to arrest my mother!!

What does it take?

A lot of people have asked me since I started to write my blog, how it is possible for someone stigmatised by her father’s illness for most of her life, can begin to publicly document her life journey. How can I speak about my dad's mental illness with ease and comfort?  To this I say it has been a process, the process has neither been easy nor comfortable.

The key I have found is to obtain emotional closure from pain resulting from encounters on lifes journeys.

Sometimes you have to give yourself what you wish you would have gotten from someone else, I gave myself acceptance, and acceptance brings peace.

I made peace with my past.

Make peace with your past because no matter what you do it's too late to change it. Forgive those that have hurt you, let go of old resentments and hurt.

It took a while, it took a process and sometimes I stumble but I remind myself to get up, look up and keep going ~the pain of what sometimes happens to you is inevitable but continuing to suffer is optional.

Ride the waves

You know that from your empty way of life inherited from your ancestors you were ransomed—not by perishable things like silver or gold

 

Prisoner?

My parents separated when I was in my teens, something to do with pressure from extended family, they never divorced for some reason. I was too preoccupied with teenage hormones to understand fully what happened. I came back from boarding school one half term and went to live with my mother and her sister.

My mother had done a good job supporting (well I call it concealing) my dad’s mental illness. She contained it within an intimate circle. This made it easy for me to wear a mask to face the world in spite of the turmoil inside of me.  She wasn't around him to cover him, I had to be mentally prepared for the bad, the ugly and the very ugly to go on blast. My dad for the first time was not around me every day,  I couldn't control the message to the world any more.  I had to accept that the world would sometimes hear gossip about him before I did.  

I wasn't prepared for the ignorance that was spoken.

I decided to be free

There is something at the core of who we are that longs to belong, to adhere to a set of societal norms. But who sets these norms? Why is it that we have to speak, act, behave or be a set way before we become accepted? What is the appropriate image? Who decides?

People will pass judgement, categorising others all the time. The difficulty with labels is that labels will keep you trapped in categories. It’s your job not to let the outside get inside of you.

My life story contradicted the act I put on, people considered me outgoing, bubbly and energetic. The truth was I was conflicted.  No one understands the struggles you face unless they walk in your shoes. To others your challenges may be minuscule but to you they rock your world.

  

I wasn't going to hide nor feel ashamed of this truth any more. This may have been the start of my life but it wasn't about to define the end. I decided it wasn't going to control me, I was going to reach up stand on this thing’s shoulders and launch myself into my future. I have since come to accept and embrace this truth.

It’s never the thing, it’s how you think about the thing that will hold you back. So now instead of cowering when I look in the mirror, I look at it and say Gurrrrrrrrl you’re so fine! 

As one writer once wrote…. those who mind don’t matter and those that matter don’t mind.

The Early Years

I’ll show up and take care of you as I promised and bring you back home. I know what I'm doing. I have it all planned out—plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for.

First things first

I was born into a family of loving parents, privileged in a way that the Western world doesn't usually see on a television advert about Africa.  My early childhood recollection was loving parents that loved each other and a house full of laughter. My parents were both tertiary educated people with ambition for their children, great friendship and to me appeared very much in love. I would later realise I searched to model this relationship in my life. 

My family are passionate people a bit like the Italians. We love our food, we love family debates and no one speaks below volume number 5.  I am the eldest of four children, originally five but one was recalled at the end of his tour of duty on earth when he was only two years of age. 

He has plans for me?

My earliest memory of sensing something wasn’t quite right with my family is maybe when I was six or seven years old. I remember my father being brought home, in a metaphorical straight jacket, by medics from the United Kingdom. He had been away to study when he had a mental breakdown and had to be brought home. Isn't it funny how when you discover something about your life, it sometimes becomes the core of who you later embrace or battle to overcome. I have observed when an experience happens it causes a single thought to occur. This thought may be a word, an image, a memory, or even all three scrambled together which has a huge potential to define who you later become.