meltdown

I was just starting to catch up on all the stuff that got postponed while I was working – housework, errands, etc when Marie called. “Talk to your father,” she said, and put him on the phone. I could tell from his voice that he was very upset. “She’s trying to poison me,” he said. “She put something in my tea and now I can’t see anything.” I tried to talk him out of it, but he was too distressed to hear anything I had to say. Finally, I told him, “I’ll be there in two hours.” “Five minutes?” he asked. “No, two hours,” I told him. “Five hours?” he asked. “No, TWO hours.” “Two hours,” he repeated. Then Marie got on the phone. “He’s yelling at me,” she said, “and he won’t let me touch the cup. He’s holding it as evidence.” “Hang in there,” I said, “I’ll be there in two hours.” I wanted to come sooner, but I had to go to the pharmacy to get my meds – if I don’t take my medication, neither Dad nor I will be functioning.

Marie was still here when I arrived. Dad was sitting at the counter still clutching the suspect tea, but there was no shouting, and things seemed calmer. I went and stood close to him, and said “what’s going on?” and he offered me the mug. “It smells like tea,” I said. “It is just tea,” he said, ruefully, having come to his senses. As Marie left, he held out his hand for her to shake. “Let’s just drop it,” he said.

Later, he said, “Maybe I’m falling apart.” “I think your brain isn’t working as well as usual,” I said, gently. He agreed; “Me, too I’m cutting off pieces of it, I’m eliminating some of it.” “My brain is really blaugh blaugh,” he continued, “I don’t know where it is. I think that’s the trouble. My brain doesn’t function anymore. It’s the first time anything like this ever happened to me. I hope it doesn’t happen again. I didn’t think anything like this would happen to me, I just didn’t think anything like this would happen to me.”

Once he was settled in his rocking chair with some fresh tea, he started musing, on, of all things, his gender identity; “One of my main problems is I never really decided whether I was female or male. I never really had much of a male or female life. Do you know what I’m talking about?” My brain is boggled, as Dad would say. If he’s talking about what it sounds like he’s talking about, I certainly know what he means – but, but, this isn’t a client talking about their gender issues, it’s my DAD.

Unaware of my silent processing, Dad continued; “My whole life, my whole experience is kind of shaky because I was never certain that I was a real, real male, but I wouldn’t give in, ever. I never would – I was not really male and I was not really female. Very few people have that condition, but with me it was just a little edgy edgy. I wanted to be male, but there was a lot of female in me, I think, so I was male all my life, but not strongly male. So, there I was, 40% female and 60% male, maybe. There are a lot of people who pretend they’re male, but they’re really not. They really act it. In some ways, I think I was very unfortunate because I teetered back and forth. I really wasn’t super strong, super male.”