Introduction
I put two labels front and center on the book’s title, right there on the cover, precisely because I wanted everybody to take notice of them. I wanted it to feel like I was holding them out in my palms, like two sparkling gems for all the world to see. “Hey! Look over here at these words!” Because that’s what labels tend to make us do when we hear them, don’t they? They make us look. They make us take notice.
Yet they aren’t sparkly, shiny gems at all. They are mundane things at the best of times. They are simple things like our age. Words like “young” or “old”. They are words that tell what race we are, or what sex. They speak to our gender. Maybe they tell us what religion we are. Maybe we get labeled by our outward appearance because we are “tall” or “short”. We get labeled by our relationships: “Brother, sister, mother, daughter, husband, son.” Truly a person can and will get labeled by anything about themselves. Each of those labels only captures a microcosm of the person they are attached to. Nobody is just any one thing. We are all of us more than the sum of our parts.
So, I put those labels out front, precisely because I wanted you to notice them only long enough to tell you to pay them just enough heed that you recognize them for the stereotypes they are. A person might hear “schizophrenic mechanic” and giggle at first and think, “that's crazy.” And that’s ok. As long as the thought passes as quickly as that first giggle. Because “crazy” isn’t something so easily defined and, like they say, “normal is only a setting on a dryer.”
People are complicated and this book doesn’t shy away from any of those complexities. Though it’s short, it has some very real discussions.
We don't talk about mental illness nearly enough in our society; not about what it’s like to be mentally ill, nor what it’s like for the families of those who are mentally ill. I don’t pretend to speak for everybody. I can only give voice to my own limited experience. But by voicing my experience, I can make it easier for the next person to speak their own truth.
And the truth is, people with mental illness are stigmatized. Marginalized in a way few others will ever be. When they speak, they are often disregarded. Legitimate medical and emotional concerns are often minimized as persons labeled mentally ill are seen as “unreliable narrators” in all aspects of their own lives. Can you imagine? Going to the doctor for an illness or in pain and because of a mental diagnosis being dismissed almost out of hand? This can be the experience of people with mental illness. It was certainly my father's experience. I saw it with my own eyes. How, leading up to his death, he complained of chest pains and was sent home from the hospital time and again. He died at 42 of a heart attack.
I don’t even specifically blame the medical professionals in the busy emergency room departments he visited. If anything, I blame a society that learns that when it sees certain words, “schizophrenic”, “psychotic”- those types of labels, it automatically generates certain assumptions about people. I hope that with this book, I can pull back some dark curtains on what it means to be schizophrenic in America, as well as what it means to be the family member of a schizophrenic. Not everything I have to say will be sunshine and rainbows. This illness is tragic and painful. But the way the media typically portrays schizophrenics is neither accurate nor genuine.
My father was a complicated man, but more than anything, he was not a disposable person. Many would consider him an unlikely fellow to learn anything from, but I’m here to tell you that I learned from him, all the same lessons you could pick up from any of the great thinkers of the past and present. Perhaps he did not teach me every lesson directly, but I learned them all the same. I want to tell you our story - my father’s, and mine. I appreciate you coming along with me as I step into my past, remembering what it was like to grow up with a schizophrenic father, and at the same time, share with you some of the beautiful lessons he taught me.
I do recommend you have a small notebook that you can use as a journal to write the answers out to some questions you will find at the end of chapters Two through Eleven. Writing them out will help you the most in challenging yourself to step out of your comfort zone and absorb the lessons.
