survivors guilt

tw / death of a parent, suicide, drug use, psychiatric abuse, self harm, brief mention of suicide methods

i'm sat in bed, in a position my hip really doesn't like, eating one of the few foods i can for the next few days. it's an aero mousse dessert thing, if you were wondering. yesterday, i got an angry wisdom tooth pulled, and yesterday, i got diagnosed with bipolar disorder on the way to getting said angry wisdom tooth pulled. i knew it was coming - there was no way even the stupidest psychiatrist on their angriest day could see anything else in me. well, except autism, but that's a whole other ballgame. when i went into that long-awaited appointment, in the psych-ward-not-quite (no bedrooms, but certainly a psych ward), i knew what was going to happen when i got out. i would wait a few days, he would consult, he would prescribe. that's exactly what happened, he was right when he said i seemed clued up. bipolar affective disorder type two and lamotrigine tapering from two weeks 25mg, two weeks 50mg, two weeks 75mg, to 100mg at minimum. come see us immediately or go to a&e if you get a rash. probably nothing, usually nothing, but maybe something, on a very rare occasion. not in his 30 years, though, so probably nothing.

the thirty years comment made me think. how many people exactly like me has he seen before? what did he think of me? or them? has another early-twenties maybe-a-bit-psychotic politics student who took the concept of a bipolar power distribution a bit too seriously floated through his door before? i wondered if anyone has ever died because of him; maybe someone like me. it seemed mean. he was kind to me, he listened when i voiced my preferences on medications. it was a pretty normal conversation all things considered (the psych ward setting, the dread in my stomach, the fact he had the power to institutionalise me if i said something he didn't particularly like). being nice means nothing.

i wonder if anyone has ever died because of him; maybe someone like me. maybe someone like my dad. funnily enough, that was one of our first conversation topics between me and... let's call him doctor steven. where was i born? into what sort of family? how about as i moved through primary and secondary school? am i right in remembering that your dad died by suicide, lucas? yes, yeah he did, a month to the day before the first lockdown pretty much. did he have any diagnoses or long-standing issues? yeah, he was diagnosed with major depressive disorder and substance use disorder, but i think there was more to it and he died before anyone could find it.

i don't like it when my dad is just a piece of my medical history. but really, that's about the only time he comes up anymore. i get it, it's an important piece of my history. not that i believe in the biomedical model of mental illness, but hey, you grow up in an environment like that with an experience like that, you're bound to get a little bit fucked up along the way. i only learnt from the best.

my dad was definitely more than my medical history. my abuser, yes, but i'm trying to forgive him for myself, so i won't go into that. my dad used to be a mountain biker, a steel worker, a huge radiohead and gorillaz fan. we used to do this thing at the local mainline train station where we would train spot while eating sugary donuts, playing a game to see who would lick their lips first. he'd tell me about how someday, when i was old enough, he'd show me a movie called trainspotting. i watched it at fourteen, high out of my mind on tramadol, as a "fuck you." once again, i only learnt from the best.

my dad didn't die because he wasn't getting any help. he was; just not the kind he wanted or needed. no one heard that he didn't want or need what he was getting. i don't know what it is that he wanted or needed, and i never will, and it eats at me every day. i choose to not try to find out; i couldn't have given him it anyway. i was sixteen and had given him enough. i remember overhearing "he won't go back to [insert hospital name], he hated it there" on the phone. i remember something else i don't have the stomach to repeat here, or anywhere, even to myself. i remember "the last time you said we could have the house you tried to kill yourself." i remember coming home to that exact attempt, and taking myself right back to school. i had a concert for my music course worth 50% of my grade. i played bass in father and son by cat stevens. ironic. i also played, solo, weird fishes by radiohead. that was our song for as long as i could remember, and as i looked into the crowd, he wasn't there.

now, as i sit in my psych's office, my dad is, still, not here. i wonder if i carry a piece of him within me in all of this tangled-up mess that sits between my ribs every day. i wish that wasn't all i had of him. except his eyes; i've got those. i wonder if people see him when they look into my eyes, but of course, that's silly. no one knows my dad anymore, but i think i do. every day, every appointment, i feel like i know him more and more. it's an unpleasant and disconcerting feeling to witness yourself moving closer and closer to someone who hurt you, and others, so much. i have to learn to recognise that it means nothing about me as a person, because my actions are my own, and i control them. our other similarities doesn't mean i act like him. i don't, i won't.

still, though, i wonder what even separates me from my dad. except for our actions, i wonder what means that i get to be taken seriously by doctor steven, but another psychiatrist some three hundred miles north of here let my dad drunkenly get into the bath, down a handful of pills, and slit a wrist. couldn't just have one, could you dad? i digress, i wonder what makes me worthy of an actually-kind-of-explanatory diagnosis, and what got him slapped with "you're a depressed alcoholic, go to AA." i wonder if it says anything about how ill i am that i get lamotrigine while he got fluoxetine, or if i'm just making myself into the ultimate sufferer, when clearly, i'm not. i wonder if it matters at all, because there's nothing i can do now. i wonder why everyone can't get at least the basic respect i got. i wonder why we can't just do away with this and do something better. i think i have some sort of survivors guilt.

i wonder what he'd think of me now. sat in my room, three hundred miles from where he (poorly) raised me, scars up my arms, a drug problem not-that-long-gone. would he see me as an ally? or a competitor? in my head, i like to imagine it's the first. i never thought i'd imagine myself wanting him beside me at these things, or to give me a hug, or to just tell me we're in it together. in this fucking family, i need someone to tell me it isn't just me. i've never felt so strangely alone. you'd think they'd have learnt from this, but, not really. i like to think my dad would at least tell me i wasn't alone. instead, he never even told me goodbye, or sorry, so i think "we're in this together" is pretty impressive wishful thinking.

the last thing i remember my dad saying to me was "don't be a stranger." now, as i grapple with what it means to become more heavily psychiatrised (though, of course, i am still privileged to be an outpatient), i think we aren't strangers after all. how can we be strangers when we share a music taste? how can we be strangers when i've got his eyes, his hair pattern, his nose? how can we be strangers when he always tried to tell me what i wouldn't believe - that he wasn't evil? i would love to be a stranger to him, to his abuse. but, we never really were strangers, and we never can be. not as i walk in his shoes but, for whatever reason, luckier. sorry, teenage me.