Whatever...Love Is Love: Questioning the Labels We Give Ourselves by Bello Maria

Author:Bello, Maria [Bello, Maria]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780062351852
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-04-27T16:00:00+00:00

9

AM I DAMAGED?

It wasn’t until the late 1980s, when Oprah came on television, that we discovered my father had bipolar disorder. When my father was growing up, and even when I was growing up, people who seemed strange, agitated, or not quite there were labeled “crazy.” I remember going to Norristown State Mental Hospital when I was a Girl Scout to give cookies to the patients. I will never forget the smell of urine and the chorus of screams. I will never forget the poor man lying on his side in a pile of his own feces. I wondered what was so wrong with him that he had to live there. I now wonder why the head of our Girl Scouts troop thought it was a good idea to bring young girls to a place like that.

When we were children we didn’t know that in addition to being addicted to alcohol and drugs, my father was also bipolar. He would rage and hit and scream, and then sometimes was not able to get out of bed for days on end. Still other times there were moments of sanity and kindness. And yet, through it all, we believed that my dad was a good man with a kind heart, a behavior our mother modeled for us. We saw his hurt through our own pain and often sympathized with him.

After my father broke his back he was labeled “a cripple.” Now we call it “handicapped.” But the worst part is that it wasn’t because he was physically disabled that he went off the rails. From a very early age, my dad showed signs of what we now know as bipolar disorder. The beast was always there. His injury just unlocked the cage.

My father wishes that he had gone to college at 17, instead of joining the army. Back in the 1950s, they didn’t have diagnoses like ADD or ADHD, so my dad was just labeled “a troubled, dumb kid.” Even his parents told him so. But he was curious. He wanted to learn. He could have done great things had he believed in himself, and understood himself more.

From the onset of puberty, I would become possessed by rages and depression. I contemplated and staged my suicide at age 12. I wrote about it in my pink Holly Hobbie diary, which I locked with a key. I’m sad I don’t have that journal now, but I remember every moment of the evening.

I was 12 years old, living in my suburban Philadelphia neighborhood. I was five five, the tallest kid in my sixth grade class. I weighed about a buck forty. I was not a little girl. My house was in chaos. Some months before, my dad had been taken away to rehab after he had destroyed the house and the hearts of those of us inside, yet again. When he got back after a few months, he seemed okay, but out of it. Since he was off painkillers, he was in agony every minute.

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