I arrived in Düsseldorf on Saturday evening, and my dad, mom and sister picked me up and took me back to my parents’ house. We had some champagne in honor of my recent birthday. We chatted pleasantly for a while, about my dad’s upcoming retirement for example. After two bottles of champagne, we were all feeling slightly drunk. I’m not sure why I said what I said when I said it, but I suddenly turned to my dad and heard myself say “Do you remember when you used to visit me every day when I was in the hospital?” I was referring to the time I was in the mental hospital when my dad had visited me every day on his lunch break because his office was nearby. He said “Yes, I remember. Why do you ask?” I started tearing up and said “That was sweet of you.” Then I asked him if we always went for a walk when he visited me. He said, usually, yes, if I wanted to. “And otherwise?” I asked. Otherwise, we stayed at the hospital, he said.
And that’s when I started talking about the two movies that had made me cry recently. In both of them there was a child who was having problems, who was acting out, who was behaving in ways that baffled, worried and sometimes angered the parents. The movies were Where the Wild Things Are and Phoebe in Wonderland. Both of them had made me cry because I felt like the parents portrayed in the movies were much more understanding and loving with their troubled child than my parents had been when I was a troubled ten-year-old. I suggested to my parents that they could have been more loving and supportive when I was having fatalistic feelings and screaming fits, and that perhaps putting me in the mental hospital wasn’t the best solution.
My dad said that he had been afraid that I was going to kill myself and that he didn’t feel that he had a choice. He said that my parents were feeling helpless and that they decided to rely on the judgment of a professional–the psychiatrist they had taken me to after two days of screaming fits in October of 1986. He said that he had seen me lying on the kitchen floor with a chair on top of me, asking my mom to jump on the chair and kill me, that I had threatened to take a knife to my “fat belly” and cut if off, and that I had also sometimes screamed “Put me to sleep!” He said that I also regularly talked about not wanting to live anymore, and that he had wanted to put me in a safe place so that I wouldn’t take my own life.
I asked him if he couldn’t tell that I simply needed attention, that I never had any intention of killing myself, that I just wanted them to pay attention to me, to hear me, and to understand that I was suffering, that I was having negative feelings. I told him that the psychiatrist had seen right through my acting out, and that he had suggested to me that I was just begging for attention. Didn’t the psychiatrist tell him that? I asked. He said no, the psychiatrist had never told him anything he thought or anything he had talked about with me, and that the psychiatrist instead had treated him and my mom like patients themselves.
My dad said that one of the reasons he had put me away was because my mom and I were constantly fighting, that we were not able to hold a calm conversation. I said “So why didn’t you put her away then?” He said “Because she was healthy. But you were very sick. Plus, we had two other children to take care off.”
Up until that point, I felt that the conversation was going relatively well. It was becoming clear that we had opposing viewpoints – he felt that he had done “the right thing” and that he hadn’t had a choice, and I wished that my parents had recognized that I needed more love and attention, given me that love and attention and avoided having to put me away.
I think what went wrong next is that both of us tried to convince the other that our point of view was right. I wanted to convince my dad that it had been a mistake to put me away, and he wanted to convince me that he had done the right thing. And in trying to convince each other, we both said very hurtful things. My dad said that I had always been sick, that there had always been something wrong with me, and that I had told him so when I was 4 years old. He said that when I was 4 years old, I had said to him “There is something wrong with me.” “And you believed me?” I asked.
He said that he was still waiting for god to make up for the hell my dad had been put through because of me, and that he wishes that one day I will go through a similar hell where I don’t have another choice either. He said he thought that I escaped to America because my parents had put me in the mental hospital. My mom said that she was relieved when I left. She also said that she is glad that I’m still in America because she doesn’t think that we would get along if I was close by.
My dad said that even as a teenager I had been sick, that I had always been acting up, that I had always been screaming about something. This is when my sister chimed in and said that she had had problems too but that she had kept them to herself. She said that I had always been very expressive, and that my expressiveness had cast her into the shadows and into silence. This made me feel terrible, but I knew that she wasn’t attacking me now; she was saying this to defend my sanity.
My dad said that I had been a tryant and a terror, and that I had controlled the entire family for years with my mood swings and loud outbursts. I said “And you never accepted me for who I was! You always wanted me to be someone I wasn’t! You wanted me to be quiet and not have any feelings!” My dad said that that wasn’t true, that when I was born he didn’t have any preconceptions of how he wanted me to turn out. I said “But when I turned out the way I did, you knew that that was not what you wanted!” And he agreed. He said that from the day I was born he felt that I was a rebel and that I wanted to change things around in the family. He said he felt that I had always thought I had been born into the wrong family. I said “You always thought that I was the wrong daughter! You wanted a different daughter, one that wasn’t me!” He said “You are the one who told me that there was something wrong with you. You made that decision yourself.” I said “You didn’t like who I was, and that’s why you gave me away!” He said “I thought I was going to lose you. I didn’t want to lose you.” I said “But maybe you lost me anyway! I am gone now! I am all the way in America, and I never see you!” He said “If I had really lost you, you wouldn’t be here right now.”
I told him that I thought my life would have turned out better if they had not put me in the mental hospital. I said that it crippled my self-confidence and made me feel unlovable and unacceptable for most of my life. I suggested that clearly there had to have been another way. I mentioned that even my brother, in the car on the way to the hospital, had thought ‘This is wrong. Vera needs to stay with us.’
I know that my dad was starting to feel really attacked now, which wasn’t actually my intention. I understand that he felt that he had no choice back then; I only wanted him to consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, there had been other options. But he wasn’t having any of that because even considering the possibility of having made a mistake is really hard on his ego.
This was when my sister chimed in again, defending my position. My dad must have felt that we were ganging up on him because he ended up saying “This discussion is over!” and leaving the room.
That’s when some of the things he had said to me really hit me. I felt like he had suggested that I was and always had been what was wrong with his life. I started sobbing. My sister came over to me and held me and said “I love you.” My mom, in saying good night, said “I am glad you are my daughter.”
The next day my dad didn’t look at me or talk to me. He gave me the silent treatment. That evening we were supposed to go out for a family dinner, all five of us, which is extremely rare, but my dad decided not to come. My sister apologized to him and said she didn’t mean to hurt him or accuse him. He was very hostile to her and barely accepted her apology which made me not even want to try, and so I didn’t.
I felt very, very angry and frustrated. I didn’t feel like I owed my dad an apology; I felt like he owed me one. He had never apologized to me for anything ever. I had apologized to him countless times. I was tired of being blamed for any problem he and I had ever had. I was tired of being made to feel like my behavior was wrong in any way. I felt like he had never learned to deal with negative emotions. When I was little, I didn’t know how to deal with them either, so I just screamed to let them out. That’s what landed me in the mental hospital. Now I have learned to deal with negative emotions, and I have finally learned that there is nothing wrong with me. But I felt like my dad still needed me to feel like there is and was something wrong me so that he can feel right about having put me in the mental hospital. I needed him to accept that there is nothing wrong with me. And I needed him to take responsibility for what he has contributed to our relationship, then and now.
I talked to my mom about these things, and she said she would pass them on to my dad. She had always acted as a mediator when my dad was giving me the silent treatment. She also admitted that she thinks that maybe she didn’t love me enough back then. She said that sometimes she had actually hated me. Hearing this didn’t hurt me. I was glad that she was being honest.
Yesterday afternoon, I went over to my aunt’s, my dad’s sister. She told me about some of the really positive aspects of my dad, like how she sknows that if she ever needed help, he would be there for her. She reminded me that their father, another patriarch in favor of the silent treatment, had beat them up as kids. She reminded me how hard it had been for my dad when I was having emotional problems, that he had suffered almost as much as I had. Slowly I started feeling more and more compassion for him. My aunt reminded me that I didn’t need his cooperation in order to let this go, to forgive myself and to forgive him, and to go on living as if there is nothing wrong with me.
I went back to my brother’s that night, and shortly after I got there, my mom called and said “Vera, can you come home, please. I’ll pick you up. Papa wants to talk to you.” My dad had never reached out to me before. I had always had to take the first step towards reconciliation. I was ecstatic. I felt like a princess about to be picked up by a carriage taking her to a wonderful event.
When we got home, my dad was sitting at the kitchen table. I felt like this was kind of symbolic because he usually sits on his throne in the living-room. I sat across from him at the kitchen table, like an equal. He looked terrible. He said “I’m not doing well today.” I said “I’m sorry.” He said “I said some things the other night that under different circumstances I never would have said. I didn’t mean them. But I was feeling backed into a corner by you and your sister.” This is when he started sobbing. I was touched and started crying too. My mom walked over to hold him. He took off his glasses and said “Please forgive me.” I said “I forgive you.” I also told him that this means a lot to me because he had really hurt me.
And that’s pretty much all that was needed. We all breathed a huge sigh of relief. He said that of course they had made mistakes back then, but that when it came to the decision to leave me at the mental hospital, he was so desperate for help because he knew he couldn’t help me, that he felt it would be best for me to stay there. He said he didn’t know what he was doing and felt completely powerless. I told him that I understand and accept that. I also said that a few years ago, for the sake of my own self-esteem, I had started, just theoretically, exploring alternatives to the mental hospital. I told him that this had been important for my own sake and had caused a very important shift in how I feel about myself and even how I relate to others. I asked timidly–because this new feeling is still delicate: “So you don’t think there is something wrong with me?” He shook his head firmly and said “No. What you went through back then is only a small fiber of who you are.”
I felt like a million bucks after this conversation. I think I had been waiting for this moment all my life. I had needed to make peace with my dad and really forgive. A few years ago I had tried to talk to him about it, but he had said that he didn’t want to talk about it. He said he had dealt with it a long time ago, and that the topic was closed for him. I am so grateful now that even my dad, at 61 years old, can grow. He reached out to me. He apologized to me. He made it clear that he wants to have an open and positive relationship with me. This is huge for him and for me.
Today I feel like I was born into the right family. And for the first time in years I feel that maybe, just maybe, I was born into the right country. It feels like it’s all tied up together. My world is right again.
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and said that they had both loved it. Anna said “If you like honest writing, you will love this.” It’s a very graphic tale of the ingestion and insertion of body fluids. I have been reading it, and it often makes me cringe and squirm. At the same time I admire the author’s bravery and gross honesty.
for Kean because I think he would love it as well, not for its honesty but for the intimate games and experimentations described in it. When exploring the English version, I noticed that it had been translated by someone named 
by Ethan Hawke. There was no note to say who it was from.
