I wish my dad had been harder on me. He once told me that he walked on eggshells around me the whole time I was growing up because he was afraid he would hurt my feelings. Just about ten years ago my sisters told me he said the same thing about them. He was probably partially right.
He grew up different than me; he grew up poor in a small, rough town in the Gold Country near Sacramento during the Great Depressioin. His father was a violent man who worked in a prison and got married 5 times. My dad and his friends loved to fight and do crazy, dangerous things. When they reached 16 they started hanging out in all the bars and frequenting the cathouses. When they were in high school they all couldnât wait to graduate and go fight in WWII. They were all disappointed when WWII ended before they could go fight. But they all joined the service right out of high school. Some went into the marines, some went into the army, a couple were paratroopers and my dad and a few friends joined the navy.
They all fought in the Korean War and my dad sailed around the world in the navy, going to Japan and Korea, Hawaii, Hong Kong. etc. When he got out he started working and got on a surveyor crew. They traveled all over the county, doing surveying jobs and he told me that every time they got in a new town they went to every bar they could find. He was a heavy drinker and there were some pretty seedy, dangerous bars in that area, at that time. And he had tons off girlfriends in his late teens, early twenties until he married my mom, settled down and had us kids. So thatâs how he grew up.
He and my mom had my sisters in 1959 and me in 1961. We grew up comfortable. We always lived in decent houses, had decent cars, enough clothes and ate well. We were probably lower middle class but we lived in middle class areas and my friends lived in houses and were comfortable too; more than us anyways. But I grew up shy and I didnât get in a lot of fights. Me and my friends mostly hung out on our own street just fooling around, getting into minor trouble. My upbringing was nothing like my dads.
He was a tough, mean son of a gun and he always had mean, tough friends and he was an alcoholic since he was in his twenties though he never laid a hand on my mom or me or my sisters and didnât verbally abuse us either though his sarcasm used to make my mom cry. Like I said, I think he took it too easy on me. I mean I thought I was tough growing up but I was sensitive and could get my feelings hurt easily. I always had a tough time around girls too; could barely talk to them when I was a teenager. Yeah, Iâm not a masochist or anything but I wish maybe he had physically disciplined me more and been tougher on me verbally. It wouldnât have been fun but it would have got me ready for the world more than I was then when I got out of high school.
I got sick at age 19 and I was pretty naive. I got psychotic and put in a group home when I was 19 and it was downtown in a big city. I remember when I got there that one of the other residents had been in prison and I went in outrage to the psychiatrist who ran it and complained about letting that guy live there, lol. Pretty soon I got used to it and we had a few other rough characters there. I was still naive though. It was interesting because my whole family stuck by me, especially my dad. I mean what does a guy with his background know about schizophrenia? The answer is nothing. But he listened to my delusions, and we used to talk all the time. He would visit me in the group home and we would sit in the car and just talk for hours about life, and violence, and sex, and talk about his life and everything else. And I felt suicidal and like giving up but he kept me going.
Maybe my advice on here isnât as plentiful or good as it used to be but a lot of what I say here I learned from my father. I have to say here that though he could be mean he was actually a nice guy and very kind. And I got my sense off humor from him. He was probably funnier than me though. Yeah, he knew a lot about life and a lot about people. I miss him; he died about 14 years ago. He told me a lot of stuff about life and I wish I had listened more but I let a lot of it go in one ear and out the other. He was a good father, stuck with me for 45 years through thick and thin, always supportive, always willing to listen. Stuck by me through my addiction; but once I got clean he never wanted to talk about it.
You used to see these threads on here occasionally titled, âWhat is positive about having schizophrenia?â And people would write all this stuff about what it did for them. I always though those threads were bull. I always thought that there was nothing positive about having schizophrenia. But having schizophrenia had one positive thing and that was because of schizophrenia I got to know my dad very, very well.