Personal Post

I'm gonna do some bragging here. I think I can safely say that after all this time, I came out fairly normal. Somewhat normal, I guess. What's prompting this little self-confidence boost?

Learning that my dad is being committed. Again. He'll be committed to a psychiatric ward care for a year.

It's so funny that the hell that my mom and I went through back on Guam is happening again but in another place. Maybe it's because I'm not living with my parents to get the full brunt of it. This kind of thing is asking for a mental breakdown. And yet, I'm the one trying to reassure my mom that everything will be ok.

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Here's some context: My dad has been mentally ill for a long time. Back on Guam, when I was a freshman in high school, my dad attempted suicide by slitting his wrist. My mom was the one who found him and she tried desperately to clean up his blood while yelling at my grandma and I to stay upstairs, which was pointless because we already saw what had happened. She would later have him committed to a psychiatric ward for over a year. My mom tried to shoulder the burden of all of this and not let it affect me, which was also pointless because this isn't something you can ignore or pretend that didn't happen.

After some talk with my dad's sisters in Las Vegas, they decided it would be best if he left Guam to stay with them. He got "better", as in he was happy to be in a different place and out of the ward. We thought our life would get back to normal until my mom was laid off from her job and she suffered a severe mental breakdown. She let someone else take over the payments for our condo because she was too depressed to look for another job (despite having 20+ years of experience in Accounting), I had to withdraw from University of Guam, and we ended up moving to Las Vegas, NV, to join my dad and his sisters in October 2012.

I later learned (and which my mom refused to accept) that my dad never got better. He went back into his routine of sitting around doing nothing, watching TV, staying on the computer, and getting stupid ideas of making money without going out to get a job. He was only "better" because he was around my aunties who were used to going out and gambling at the casinos with their money. And having him around, as opposed to him being in the psychiatric ward and doing a few visits, turned out to be very unbearable. He was so paranoid and controlling. He was always right and he demanded you respect him. He was the reason I had to move out of my parent's place because he refused to accept the fact that I wanted my own life, that I was was an adult, and that I was in a relationship with a great person. He still saw me as a teenager with some guy who was going to ruin my life, get me pregnant, and burden them with grand kids. And he stubbornly held unto that belief despite me proving him wrong as I graduated college and got a job without asking for any help from them.

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I called my mom right after my uncle called me to tell me what happened. She sounded very sad on the phone; she was alone in the apartment. I told her that I may sound heartless in saying this but take this time to reflect and have some time for yourself. You've spent all your time worrying about dad and caring for him, this is your first time to have a break. Besides, he'll be in good hands and will be taken care of by professionals since it's obviously beyond her control now.

My mom has been extremely stressful when my dad suffered a minor stroke a few weeks ago. He's had this weird blood thinning condition and has been taking medication for it. After his stroke, my mom noted that my dad started talking weirdly, assuming he has a lot of money and that he can buy things. He was in a manic state and saying weird things on Facebook. She's been working with a caseworker to help them and after weeks of trying different hospitals, it looks like they're going to commit him. Truthfully, I was glad that he was going to be under someone else's care 24/7 without bothering the relatives. I wanted my mom to focus on herself now.

This was the first time in a long time that we actually talked in depth about my dad's suicide attempt back on Guam. We were speaking as equals about it, not like as a daughter trying to get pry out more info from her mom until she broke down. She said she wanted to protect me from it because she didn't want it to affect me in school. And I joked that it's funny that she was so worried about that affecting me in school when I got arrested for shoplifting in my Senior year in high school. And we just laughed about it. It was strangely cathartic. This was a such a dark moment to bring up - my mom, grandma, and my uncle were disappointed with me, and my friend's parents were understandably upset - and I think this was the first time we could actually laugh about it. She said that despite that happening, she is still thankful that I turned out be a good daughter.

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More context: Oh? That shoplifting thing? Yeah, that was something that happened back on Guam too. Basically, my cousin, JM, and I were shoplifting. He told me about how he would get away with it and I decided to join in. I'll admit, I enjoyed it for a bit. It was a way for me to get away from what was happening with my dad and there was such a high with getting away stuff. My mom eventually found out that I was stealing stuff and told me to stop. The very next day, I got 3 of my friends into it, and we all got arrested. We all decided to blame my cousin for it. We didn't go to jail since it happened on a Friday, so we were released to our parents. We got banned from DFS for life and had to do community service. Our high school banned us from going to prom but they allowed us to be in the high school graduation ceremony. In fact, we had to wait until my community service wrapped up before we officially left Guam.

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Anyways, this segued into what I was talking about with my mom; how that shoplifting event didn't negatively impact my life, as well as my other 3 friends. We were able to find jobs and have, to a degree, a fairly successful life. It's not something that will forever haunt us. However, I didn't know how JM fared after that incident. My mom mentioned that JM was still stealing stuff and he even got arrested for stealing jewelry from his grandma (from his dad's side) last year. I thought he was trying to get better, until Erika forwarded the video to me from KUAM's Facebook page:

As posted in a reward flier, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service looked to the community for help identifying the suspects who were caught on camera stealing mail. Today, the duo appeared in federal court where they were charged with mail theft.
Posted by KUAM News on Wednesday, July 22, 2015

I was more shocked about the fact that it made the local news AND he was featured prominently on TV, let alone him getting arrested. He had 2 other people with him when they got arrested but they were released. And to make it worse, they addressed that he had a previous arrest from 2011. After we got arrested, I was scared straight. I can't imagine being in that scenario again, where you will have a police record that anyone can look up and that your peers and family will know all about it. That scared the hell out of me in high school. Why on earth would you want to go through that again?

So there you have it. 2 major life events that should've made me a messed up individual but didn't. I guess I do a better job at hiding it than my mom did?