Underneath my yellow skin

Category Archives: Mental Health

How dementia ruins everything, part two

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I know that I can only change myself. I mention that because I’ve been musing about family and getting frustrated with my parents. Different reasons for each one, but frustration just the same. I don’t bring any of it to my father because he can’t help how he is (dementia), and it’s just how he was before, but worse. Actually, that’s the hardest part. He’s hitting me in all my sensitive spots, but I have to just remind myself that he’s not himself. But he is. But he isn’t. Before I get to that, here’s yesterday’s post.

Here’s the problem. My father before his dementia was a selfish, or rather, self-absorbed person who never thought of anyone else. He was also deeply sexist and said sexist shit to me all the time. Here are some brief examples. He was always scolding me for not putting on a jacket when he was cold. He never asked if I were cold, which I rarely was. Now, one of the things he asks about often is the weather. And he gets stuck in the loop of being concerned that I’m cold.

In general, he doesn’t think women can do anything for themselves. Or rather, that’s what he tells himself even while my mother does everything around the house. This was even before his dementia, by the way. He’s been like this all my life. I know it’s a self-protective mechanism, but it’s so ugly and distasteful.

Fortunately, the explicit sexist shit does not show up, but it does rear its ugly head in sly ways. Such as, him repeatedly asking me how I get places. He knows (or knew) that I drive, but he has somehow forgotten that. To be fair, I can’t say that’s for sure a sexist thing, but it certainly feels like it. Also, his harping on my health might be because of the medical crisis, but I have a hunch it’s more a neg than anything else.

That’s the problem with my father–past behavior has shown me not to give him the benefit of the doubt. I know who he was in the past, and it’s hard not to apply that to the present. But he’s not resonsible in the present for…how do I put this? He’s not of sound mind (dunno about body). So he’s not trying to be offensive on purpose, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a quick flash of ‘not this shit again’.

However. The cruelty of the dementia has far outranked the impatience I feel when he hits one of my buttons. It’s really sad what’s happening to him and since I only talk to him for five minutes (at most ten) at a time, I can deal with the bullshit that comes with it.


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The cruelty of dementia only intensifies

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I intended to write a post about dementia, which I still will. However, today on Ask A Manager, there was a post from a man who is in the same industry as his well-known (and well-loved) father. The letter writer (LW) is estranged from his father, and he wrote in because they are both up for prominent awards in different categories. People seem to assume they’re in entertainment, which does make sense. Anyway, the LW did not want to take any pics with his father (which he feared the organizers would want for marketing/promo reasons), and he wanted a diplomatic way to tell the organizers that he didn’t want to be seated at a table with his father, either. I learned in the comments that Angelina Jolie’s children are speaking out about how awful Brad Pitt is (some are his biological children and some are not). I am not surprised by it, but it just brought out a feeling of profound sadness as did reading the comments.

So many people with abusive parents with whom they were either estranged or low-contact. In a weird way, it was comforting to know I wasn’t the only one. Also, to see a steady stream of ‘it’s not your problem’ as to the question about what to do in this situation (in response to managing the father’s emotions or other people’s reactions to the situation.

It’s hard. It’s isolating. It’s lonely. Having very dysfunctional parents, I mean. In my case, it’s tempered by the fact that my father has dementia–which is just getting worse by the day. I talk to my parents on the average of once every other week or so, but during the trying times, my mom has been known to call me several days in a row.

I have accepted that I am her therapist/emotional support person. I do what I can to not let it bring me down, but I would be lying if I didn’t acknowledge that I heave a small sigh of weariness as soon as I hear her voice. Not to mention a constriction in my chest. I have to put up a shield as best I can and not let it get to me too much.

Side note: I gave up on my parents being parents to me a long time ago. I never expected it from my father because he has never been a good parent. In fact, I would say he hasn’t been a parent at all except monetarily. He once hounded me to know if I was grateful for the money he had spent on me/given to me, and  I was in a very rebellious state at the time (mid-twenties), full of seething resentment over so many things. I was so very angry, and I was not having any of his shit. This is me saynig that I was a brat at the time .I will fully acknowledge that I was not at my best.

However, with his next line, he destroyed any illusion that he wanted to be my father. Or rather, that he knew what being a father meant. He looked at me with such hatred in his eyes and said, “Why should I love you then?”

And with that, I saw him for who he really was. There was no way to hide the man behind the curtain any longer. I mean, I knew before then that he did not love me and that he never really wanted to be a father, but it was unspoken and merely felt. See, in our family, we don’t say that shit out loud.


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Try to see it from my point of view

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I have more to say about family dysfunction, dating, points of view, and other things related. In the last post, I was saying what was my deal-breaker in dating someone. It’s not race, religion, or gender (to a certain extent). It’s political affiliation, specifically being a Republican. That can expand more widely into cishet white dudes because there are so many layers of privilege going on that it tires me just to think of it.

I want to say up front. This is not saying that all cishet white dudes, some of my best friends are cishet white dudes, blah blah blah. But. I just don’t have the heart for it any longer. Trying to relate to them, I mean. I think everyone should be treated with decency and respect, yes. That doesn’t mean I need to give everyone a chance in the dating world.

Side note: This is something I firmly believe–you don’t have to date anyone you don’t want to date. I don’t think it’s cool if someone is prejudiced against, say, black people, I think it’s perfectly legit not to date them. More to the point, it’s a service to black people to not date them if you aren’t attracted to them because who wants someone dating them out of pity/guilt? I had white women who felt they should date me to show how progressive they were, and believe it or not, I was not turned on by that. At all.

Here’s my point. Everyone looks at things from their own point of view. The trick is to realize that other people don’t necessarily think the way you do. And, if you want to be advanced, you could try to imagine where the other person was coming from.

This is the problem in describing abuse. There is just no way to give the complete context other people need in order to understand what has happened. Each individual instance may not be a big deal in and of itself, but oftentimes, it’s the death of a thousand paper cuts.


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Differing vantage points

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I’ve been talking about family dysfunction and abuse in general. It’s difficult to talk about because in order to have a conversation about something, you need  a common starting point. You have to have agreed upon boundaries as to what the conversation will entail. In discussing families and abuse, the person listening has to have at least a rudimentary knowledge of such things happening.

It makes such a difference. If you are someone from a  happy and well-adjusted family who does not have any friends who have dysfunctional families, then that person, let’s call them Alex, may not be able to understand where I’m coming from. In the last post, I talked about how my mother has no boundaries, and what’s more, she feels that it’s her right as a mother to meddle with my brother and my relationship. I’ll get back to her later. For now, though, I want to talk about my father.

I have a story I tell about my father to indicate his narcissim. It’s the one about when I was a kid, I never got cold. We found out when I was a teenager that I had hyperthyroidism (Graves’ disease). That was why I never got cold. My father would say, “Put on a coat because I’m cold.” People either didn’t get what I was trying to emphasize (“Why are you mad at your parent for caring if you’re cold?”) or said I should do it to placate my father.

The first is vastly more common, and they don’t read/hear what I’m actually saying. My father doesn’t say, “Put on a coat because it’s cold.” He said, “Put on a a coat because I’m cold.” Meaning, beacuse he’s cold. Not beacuse I’m cold. It never occurred to him that I would feel differently than he would.

In addition, he came up with a different narartive of his own as to what happened. He said that he would tell me to put on a coat, and I would refuse because he didn’t ask nicely. That I wanted him to say ‘please’. That’s certainly possible that I threw that out there because knowing him, he probably ordered me to put on a coat rather than ask. However, that was never the main reason. The main reason was because I wasn’t fucking cold!


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Dyfunction dysfunction, what’s your function?

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One thing rarely talked about when discussing abuse is how coping mechanisms that have been developed to deal with the abuse are faulty in healthy situations. It’s something that comes up on Ask A Manager on a regular basis because she talks about how being in a toxic work environment can warp you to what is ok and what isn’t. The wildest example I can think of is the letter writer who bit a coworker and in the update, said it was considered ok by her colleagues because the guy is a jerk. The LW’s conclusion was that people with normal jobs found them boring and hated it, so, yeah, her work environment was toxic, but, hey, at least it was interesting. Many commenters pointed out that the LW was getting warped by the toxic environment.

I bring this up because abuse does the same. In the last post, I mentioned that I was resigned to managing my parents because they weren’t going to change. The way I deal with them, though, is not something that would work well with healthy people. Basically, I just placate them and get through a conversation as painlessly as possible. I keep it as surface-y as possible as well. The goal is to not say anything of importance unless I absolutely have to.

You can imagine how this would not work well with people I actually want to be close to. You can’t shine off a friend and expect them to be happy about it. A true friend, I mean. Not just an acquaintance. When the tragedy happened in February, I told my close friends about it. I was devastated and needed the comfort/support. I would not think about holding back with them, which is the normal and healthy way to deal with it.

The longer you’ve been in an abusive situation, the harder it is to recalibrate your thinking. I am low-contact with my parents, but it’s still enough contact to keep me off balance. I have a shield up around them that I can’t afford to let done. Explaining that to other people is futile.

I’ve said it before, but it’s a matter of context. For people who have loving parents, it’s nearly impossible to imagine parents who don’t love their children. Or rather, it might be imaginable, but it’s not something that can be understood if you haven’t been in the situation. Like anything else that is the outlier, really.


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The family dysfunction don’t stop

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I have mourned my entire life for the loss of a sense of family. Or rather, since I realized that my family was so fucked up. It started when I was in my twenties, but I was more intent on fighting against it back then. I was angry as fuck, and I didn’t know how to properly express it. Everything up to that point was a lie or told with such spin, it migcht as well be a lie. I was extremely angry at God (with a G) in my twenties, in part because of those lies. And by extension, at my parents, though that was not safe to voice.

Yesterday, I talked about the consequences of a lifetime of family dysfunction, and I want to explore it further today.

I feel like we all have definitive moments in which we can decide to change the way we are–or not. I hasten to add that most people don’t grab those moments by the horn–me included. It’s a fact of life that it takes a lot to consciously make a change. And, more importantly, to keep it up. I made the choice to try out Taiji over twenty years ago. My first teacher was a horror show, and I gave up after close to a year. I didn’t try again for several years. When I did, I hated it at first (as I did during my first try at it0. Why did I stick it out? Because I’m stubborn and because I needed something to back up my swagger.

Another time was when I moved to the East Bay to attend grad school for a year. That was a bad decision in retrospect, but at least I got something out of it. Would I have done it if I had the chance to make the choice over again? No. Life doesn’t work that way, though.

Side note: My brother has said more than once that he had no regrets–meaning he would not change anything about his life. I get the reason why (it’s made him who he is and he’s where he is today because of it), but I could not disagree more. I have so many regrets about my life, and I would have changed them in a heartbeat.

My parents, though, have not changed hardly at all in all the time I’ve known them. Well, not in a positive way, anyway. If anything, they are more conservative now than ever, and they are acting as if they were in the 1970s. It does not surprise me, but it makes me cringe. Fortunately, I do not have to be around them in public because I would just not deal with it well.


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How deep is the dysfunction

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One of the hardest things about knowing people who are deeply flawed is that it’s difficult to convey the flaws without sounding unhinged. Because other people don’t have the proper context to absorb what you are telling them. For example, I had a horrible personal tragedy in February of last year. I told my friends and selected members of my family, but I most emphatically did not tell my parents. Why? Because I knew they would make it all about them and not about me. How did I know this? Because this is what they’ve done all my life.

I finally told them in July or August. That was enough time for me to gather the inner resources needed to deal with my parents. The next time my mother brought it up, I was able to tell her the news. I told her it had been several months, but she still reacted as if I had punched her in the face. She asked why I hadn’t told her earlier and sounded so hurt. That’s normal. I don’t blame her for that reaction. But, then, I told her she did not need to tell my father and probably shouldn’t because it would just upset him. And, selfishly, if he was upset, it would mean that he would pass the upset to me. We hung up and not five minutes later, she called back. She had told my father and he was extremely upset.

He dumped his upset all over me and then said that we should pray together. I can’t tell him I don’t pray because he would not understand it so I said that he could pray. He gave the phone to my mother and insisted that she pray right then and there on the phone. My brain disconnected as my mother prayed and I went to my safe place in my mind so I wouldn’t either explode at my mother or slam the phone down in rage.

Back story: I don’t pray. I am not a Christian and have not been one for decades. I don’t believe in prayer and I still have some bitterness over the whole thing. In general, if people don’t shove it in my face then I’m fine with it. This was shoving it in my face and it was for them, not me. My mother knows I don’t pray and yet, she did it anyway because my father wanted it.

Speculation: My mother told my father in part so she could pray at me. She knows I don’t pray, but she doesn’t like it. She has claimed that she could not lie to my father, but this wasn’t even lying. She simply had to keep her damn mouth shut–which she can’t/won’t do. As I was listening to my mother pray, I was completely numb. It’s not an ideal way of dealing with the situation, but it was the least-harmful.

I told K about it, and she could not believe it. She admitted that when I told her I had put off telling my mother about my tragedy, she (K) thought I was being…not hyperbolic, but exaggerating or overreacting. Not in a negative way, but more that she wanted to think my mother would be a reasonable human being about it. K added, “But you were right.”

Yeah, I was. Because I know my mother. In fact, her resoponse was actually more muted than I had expected. But, a few weeks later, my brother told me that my mother had called him and told him to check in on me because of the tragedy. My mother said I said it happened a month ago. Which, I did not. I didn’t tell her it was in February, but I did say several months. My mother hears what she wants to hear.


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New year, new me, who dis?, part two

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And we’re back. Let’s talk current family situation and what I want to do about it. In the last post, I talked about the history of my family dysfunction. That was not the point of my post, but it’s what was apparently on my mind.

My father has dementia. He’s had it for roughly twenty years. He’s nearly 85 now, so it was early-onset back then, but it’s just dementia now. Since I only see him once a year or so, it’s easy to see the decline from year to year. In addition, they could not come the summer of 2020 or 2021 for obvious reasons, so when they came in the autumn/winter of 2021, the decline was stark.

To be clear,he still had most of his faculties most of the time. By the way, I always mix up faculties and facilities. Every time. But, even when he was in his right mind, he was still…just a bit…off. It’s like a Vaseline smear on a lens. Not all his synapses were firing, and you could not assume he knew what you were saying/doing.

Here’s the thing, though. He was still himself, even when he was deep in his dementia. That made it difficult to tell when he was being a jerk because of his dementia and when he was being a jerk because, well, he’s a jerk.

I know you’re not supposed to say that about someone with dementia, but it’s true. My father has always been a self-absorbed, bitter, calculating man who cared not a whit about anyone else around him. Or rather, he only cared about other people as it pertained to himself.

Related: it’s really difficult to be honest with people about my parents. The Great American Myth is that families are everything and that parents will do anything for their children. Well, that’s what people give lip service to, but don’t actually support. Still, the belief that parents LOVE THEIR CHILDREN AND WILL DO ANYTHING FOR THEM runs deeeeeeeep.

It’s not true, by the way. I mean, most parents love their children, I presume, as best theey can. Most parents will do what they can for their children. But to say that every parent loves their kid more than anything in the world? Nah, I don’t believe that. In fact, in the United States,  roughly 600,000 cases of child abuse were reported in 2021 (I’m sure that’s vastly underreported), and that was the lowest number of reported cases in five years (prior). This was according to the  Children’s Bureau at the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Administration for Children and Families (ACF), which is a governmental agency.


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New year, new me, who dis?

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We are back with another post about my goals for the new year. In my last post, I was talking about Taiji and how much it’s helped me in my life. It’s not hyperbole to say that it’s saved my life, both during the medical crisis (literally) and before it (emotionally).

My family dysfunction runs deep. Of course, as a kid, I did not realize how dysfunctional it was. That’s the thing about being a kid–you think your life is normal because you have no touchstones to anchor yourself to. In addition, my father was a Taiwanese nationalist and did not want to be in America. I did not realize this until maybe two years ago.

He went back to Taiwan when I was twenty-two or twenty-three. I have a feeling that he resented not being able to go back earlier. This is what I figured out. My parents both came to America for grad school (individually)–in Tennessee. My moather for her MA in psychology and my father for his MA in economics. They went to different schools, but met…not exactly sure. Probably at a Taiwanese event? (More likely, called Chinese something or other. I am not going to get into tho complicated politics of Taiwan.) My father did the hard press on my mother, and she fell for his charms.

After a year, my mother was done with her program. That meant she had to go back to Taiwan because her visa ran out. My father wasn’t done with his degree yet. Much gnashing of teeth was had. My father’s housemother told them that in America, people just got married in their situation.

I really wish she hadn’t told them that. My parents should never have gotten married, and they most certainly should not have had children. Sometimes, I wonder how different their lives would have been (individually) if they hadn’t married. My mother was engaged to someone in Taiwan when she met my father (long, misogynistic, archaic story), and she might have gone back to him if she hadn’t become besotted with my father.

My father got his degree after another year. They moved to Minnesota so he could go to the U of M to get his PhD, and my brother was born soon after. I was born 2 1/2 years later.

I think this was the point when my father got really bitter. I’m working with the assumption that he wanted to return to Taiwan. With that knowledge, everything afterwards makes sense. Well, not all of it, but it at least puts things into perspective.


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My re-birthday and my mental health

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I’ve been writing posts about my medical crisis, my re-birthday, and my goals for the upcoming year. I have written one goal per post (as is my wont to talk endlessly about the smallest minutiae), and we’ll see if I continue that in this post. Yesterday, I talked about learning new weapons forms in Taiji because I haven’t in some time.

Today, I want to talk about my mental health (Taiji and Bagua would fit here as well). It has been on a slow, but steady decline since the second anniversary of my re-birth. In the last post, I outlined some of the reasons why, but I want to dive more deeply into that.

One of the biggest issues is that while I had a life-changing event, that didn’t stop life from happening. It also didn’t completely change me. I mean, there was a change to my core. How could there not be when I died twice? That leaves a stamp on your soul that you can’t erase. At least, I cannot. Nor would I want to erase it. I have said that while it was traumatic (of course), it was also the best thing to happen to me.

Side note: This is one of the books I’ve toyed with writing. A joke self-help book in which the only advice is to try dying and coming back again. I just don’t know if I have enough to make it last for a whole book. I can carry a joke far, but how far?

Back to my mental health. My depression is probably back up to 60% of what it used to be.

Interjection: I have struggled with chronic and deep depression since I was seven. It lifted by roughhly 90% when I died. Twice. And came back twice. Then it steadily went up again. (My anxiety dropped to 40% and is now back up to 60% or so.) Here’s the thing, though. As I mentioned in a recent post, I had a shitty run of several months in which there was a steady drip of negative things happening to me–ranging from trivial and irritating to devastating and heartbreaking.

Which brings me back to my mental health.

Taiji (and now Bagua) has kept my mental health issues under control for fifteen years. Taiji has saved my life, even if it’s metaphorical. I mean, it literally saved my life during my medical crisis, but it metaphorically did it for years before that.


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