Mental Health
For my entire childhood, my sun-loving mother weeded the yard and tended to other outdoor chores in our suburban home in a string bikini and shorts. She wore the string bikini to get some sun while outside anyway and shorts because she needed a pocket for her keys to the house because Dad habitually walked around locking any unlocked windows and doors.
I spent my entire childhood hearing "He's paranoid because he survived two wars." And he did survive the front lines of two wars.
He was a twice decorated two-time veteran. He had a Bronze Star with V for Valor designation from World War II and a Purple Heart from his time in Vietnam.
So I never questioned her framing of why he was like that.
I went to therapy for the first time in my teens. Most therapists working with troubled teens will tell you the teenager is the presenting problem and they habitually look at what's going on with mom and dad and the bigger picture to try to figure out how to help the teenager.
I was probably thirty-nine years old when we finally filed the paperwork starting the process of getting divorced and I was likely forty one when the divorce was final. During the long, drawn out divorce process, I and my two sons moved to my hometown of Columbus, Georgia and lived with my parents for nearly a year.
I spent substantial time in therapy in my teens and twenties and I had difficult children who both spent time in Special Ed programs and things like that. I attended invitation-only free education once a week provided by the excellent first elementary school my oldest attended in Kansas because of his difficulties and I later homeschooled and participated in online gifted education support communities to help me adequately serve my children in my role as a teacher in a two-student private school under the laws of California while homeschooling.
During my divorce, I went home to see my parents for Christmas and had no plans to stay. They invited me to stay and the following September or October I started my corporate job. I moved to an apartment of my own the weekend daylight savings time changed back to normal time.
Some time after I moved out, I went to my parents' house for some reason and my mom met me out front or something and as she was unlocking the front door to get us into the house, she again said to me what she had been saying about Dad my whole life: "He locked us out because he's paranoid because he survived two wars."
And I replied to that "You have that backwards. He survived two wars because he's paranoid. My oldest son is exactly like Dad and runs around locking all the doors and he's never spent any time in a war zone. He's had a fairly cushy middle class life his entire life."
And, no, he didn't learn it from Grandpa. He didn't spend much time around my father until we lived with my parents for nearly a year during my divorce. And I never thought of my oldest son and father as being alike until we lived with them that year.
My oldest son has the same genetic disorder as me and he and I were both diagnosed relatively late in life. I was diagnosed just before I turned thirty six and he was diagnosed the following month after turning fourteen.
We both had our first bout of pneumonia as infants. I had my second bout of pneumonia at about four years and three months of age. He had his second in kindergarten at around age five and a half.
So well before either of us was diagnosed, his prognosis was measurably better than mine.
Some of that can be attributed to me always being understanding and accommodating of his quirks. Unlike my relatives who told me I was spoiled for being a picky eater and I shouldn't be that way, I never told him to be less picky about what he ate. Instead, I worked at keeping healthy foods on hand in abundance that I approved of and he would willingly eat and encouraged him to eat healthy within the constraints of what he was willing to eat.
I've talked some about that on Raising Future Adults and Nutrient Dense.
But most likely his tendency to be paranoid and untrusting and scientifically minded and always wanting to check it for himself and not take anyone's word for anything is another substantial factor.
Like my father, his tendency to be "paranoid" and untrusting is a harmless quirk. My mom was inconvenienced by needing to take her keys with her anytime she stepped outside the house, but she wasn't harmed by my father's untrusting habits.
Additionally, when there was a crime spree in our neighborhood and someone was breaking into houses, our house was the only one that wasn't robbed.
I don't know if my mom ever consciously connected things like "Dad is paranoid." to "We are the only house in the neighborhood that didn't get burglarized." but she NEVER tried to tell my Dad to stop locking things up or that he was in the wrong or anything like that. She just explained to other people that it was a personal quirk of his with extremely reasonable and understandable origins, an annoying personality trait leftover from trauma from being in the front lines of two wars that served a constructive survival purpose during a very dangerous time in his life.
She also never fussed at him about his drinking. Dad spent 26 1/2 years in the Army infantry and he drank heavy.
I don't remember this. He left the Army the summer I turned three and I only remember him have a beer or two with dinner when I was something like four years old.
My mother never drank. She had a glass of wine once in her youth and was violently ill afterwards for days and never touched alcohol again.
Was it the alcohol? Or was she ruffied?
I don't know, but SHE never drank and also never gave my dad any friction or criticism over his drinking and he drank heavy. He would go bar hopping with friends on nickel beer night where your first beer was a nickel and supposedly hit over thirty bars one night as his all-time biggest bar hopping achievement.
I was told endless humorous stories about his heavy beer drinking days.
He played cards with friends while drinking and one night called my mom and said "Helga, I'm hungry. Cook me a big dinner." and she did and he never came home. So she calls him back and says "Bill, your dinner is getting cold." and he replies "Woman, you don't TELL me when to come home!"
Because he didn't remember calling her and telling her to cook for him. They laughed about stuff like that. There was no acrimony or hurt feelings.
So Dad drank. He drank very heavily for a lot of years.
And then he retired from the military when I was three years old and continued to drink for a time after that but not like the stories I heard my ENTIRE childhood about his legendary drinking. I remember him have a beer or two when I was little and only with dinner.
I remember that from when I was four or five years old. And when I was seven, he was diagnosed with a heart condition and he decided to blame his drinking and officially swore off alcohol and never touched the stuff again.
And he never went through delerium tremens or Alcoholics Anonymous or sought any kind of program for helping him quit and had likely defacto quit already by a long, slow tapering off before he made his dramatic pronouncement and officially swore off alcohol.
For that and other reasons, having never done illicit drugs myself except one toke once under enormous social pressure and never had a drinking problem, I've read up on addiction and alcoholism and I don't agree with a lot of the popular existing mental models.
I believe those mental models tend to make the problem worse and I've read some literature that supports and shapes my views, including a book called The Truth About Addiction and Recovery, a book I have heard people in AA rabidly HATE on.
There's no clear, bright line between mental health and physical health. And when all of society actively promotes stupid ideas about something like alcohol or addiction or so-called paranoia for a cautious but reasonable habit like actually locking the doors, that actively creates problems for people who aren't doing anything genuinely problematic.
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