What was it like to have a parent with Schizophrenia?

My father passed away earlier this year. The biggest thing we shared was the love for our family, but we also shared the pain of being misunderstood, he far more so than I. Unlike me, my father’s schizophrenia was untreated. The generational gap between us was apparent when looking at the self perceptive attitudes of his diagnosis. The deal was, he never talked about it. Not once. Around the age of 12, I discovered he had schizophrenia, but I had no idea what it even meant. I still don’t know what parts of his personality were attributed to having schizophrenia and which parts were cultural or unique to just him. I know he lacked any supports other than my mom. When it came to his mental illness, he didn’t have anyone to relate to, no community, no way to bounce thoughts back and forth, and no medium to express his innermost mind.

He was isolated throughout his adulthood, turning to booze and a bad temper, turning to a frustrated state of loneliness and separation from the mainstream. He would often yell outside on our apartment balcony; my mother informed us that he was hearing things that weren’t there.

My father would talk to himself (his voices) more than he would talk to his children. I don’t want to make my father out as an evil guy, because he wasn’t, but he was distant for most of my life, almost unreachable. I didn’t know how to talk to him for the longest time and there were times I lived in fear of his emotive states. Growing up, I would rather just ignore him all together, rather than engage in conversation that could potentially turn for the worst.

Around the age of 21 my own life turned for the worst. I was sent to the hospital and diagnosed with the dreaded schizophrenia myself. After swearing that I would never turn out like him, I could not believe how this was possible? How was it that I would share in the same fate as him? I grew up witnessing the pain he endured, and now doctors were telling me I was about to carry the same weight. If I was going to tread along the same journey that my father trekked, then I needed answers if I was going to survive.

I began to insist upon deeper conversations with my father in an attempt to understand the mind. I remember asking him in the car during a road trip to my grandparents, what the meaning of life was. I insisted upon gathering the depths of knowledge from my own creator, from my own god. He responded with something along the lines of, “to find your own purpose.” In a sense, this set me up for my own self discovery, one that was just beginning. It was one of the few lessons my father ever instilled.

I started to bond with my father over more philosophical questions. I asked him what it was like on the islands where he grew up. He told a few stories and painted a better picture of his boyhood. Why did I wait so long to ask these questions?- because I was waiting for him to come to me. I was waiting for him to start the conversations, without knowing that he had probably been yearning himself for someone to ask him about his own life experiences.

I think my father feared talking about his deepest thoughts because he lived in an era where mental illness was to be hushed. He lived in an era where having schizophrenia was a death curse, the fatal black spot, the end of progress, where dreams would stop and the nightmares were the only thing to look forward to. The amount of anxiety and frustration he expressed existed in darkness, but where my own quest through the shadowy mind differed from his, was the community that stood right beside me. I had support where he had none. As I stood next to my father, I think he was finally relieved from the idea that he was simply crazy. He had finally come across a person who was equally lost in the world, and he had seen a reflection in himself through me. Moreso he saw the people that were seeing me through the darkness and into the light. He saw that there were people who truly cared about me, despite my shortcomings, and he witnessed the comradery for battling stigma that he unfortunately had missed during all those years in isolation.

There was no EASA in his day. There was no path to recovery. It wasn’t until towards the end of his life that he saw it was possible to make it out of the diagnosis, to become reintegrated into society and to be treated as equal. While it pains me that he had to withstand the harsh reality of his time, I am comforted that he was able to see the beginning of systemic change.

My father was a beautiful soul. I may have children of my own some day. Perhaps they too will be struck with schizophrenia. Perhaps the genetics are inescapable. But where schizophrenia was a death curse in his day, perhaps in my child’s future it will be like getting the flu. Something to worry about sure, but nothing to lose hope over.