Over the past few months, my family and myself have noticed significant changes in my father. My father was the type of man that enjoyed simple things. Spending an entire weekend eating, drinking wine and watching movie marathons on the SciFi channel would be a perfect weekend for him. There was nothing that he loved more than having a few drinks, creating new mixed drinks, or sharing a whole bottle of any type of liquor with people. As of recent months, my father no longer drinks any alcohol, not even wine. There aren't even any liquor bottles in my parents house. He no longer eats, he no longer sleeps and he no longer watches television. At all.
He is a completely different man
He has also been stuck on the idea that my mother is having an affair (well, several affairs now). At first, we thought he was being a typical jealous Dominican man. Jealousy runs in Latin men's blood since they are raised to believe a woman should stay home tending to her husband's every need (holds back vomit.) However, things kept taking a turn for the worse. He would accuse my mother of sleeping with any and every man we knew. He even accused her of sleeping with family friends that were women! He accused her of poisoning his food, of performing voodoo on him, putting sleeping pills in his drink, dressing provocatively, cheating with her doctors, her co-workers, her co workers husbands, her friends husbands and pretty much anyone that came to his mind.
All the while during his accusations, he was unable to produce a single piece of evidence. No phone calls, no voice mails, no sightings, no pictures, no text messages, no comparisons, no motives, no nothing. He would follow her, watch her, even hired someone to follow her, took her cell phone, and did several things that would have led him to find SOMETHING, anything...but he still produced nothing. And since he has been unable to produce evidence, he started saying that my mother placed a spell on him to blind him from seeing/finding evidence. She had a spell put on herself to protect her while she is out and about fornicating with several men and women. He became paranoid about everything and everyone. He would ask a question and you would answer him and then 5 minutes later he would ask the same question in a different manner to see if you would give him a different answer so he can try to catch you in a lie. He became a man obsessed, a man on a mission to catch my mother in an act that she wasn't even doing.
My father even went as far as saying that my mother belongs to a cult where women meet once a week to devise plans on how to control their husbands so they could go around whoring themselves out. This cult would send subliminal messages through the phone to people they wanted to influence and this is also how they would "prey" on the men that they wanted to sleep with. Mind you, my father is a very intelligent, scientific and highly educated man who got a Master's degree in Mathematics.
Wait, it gets worse...
This whole time all these things are going on, we had an idea that something was not right with him. We knew something was going on, but couldn't figure out what. We chalked it up to a mid life crisis and perhaps a nervous breakdown, but he just kept getting worse and worse. We started to notice these changes I spoke about in his behavior. We would also notice that he would suddenly break down in tears often. He would also threaten to disappear from our lives, threatened suicide when nobody believed him, and he would sometimes regress to child like behaviors and patterns.
Even with all of these somewhat clear signs, I still had a thought in the back of my mind that maybe he was right about everything. Maybe there were things that we just weren't seeing and weren't catching on to. Maybe, since he was obsessed, he noticed things we didn't. So I started to watch my mother's every move, watched the way she spoke, her behavior, analysed her words, dissected them, read into every line, noticed how she dressed, how she walked, how she moved. I watched every single detail my brain was capable of processing. I found nothing different, nothing that seemed like strange behavior from my mother, nothing out of the ordinary and nothing to lead me to believe that my father was right.
Then earlier this week, my father called me with something that made me realize that he was in serious need of help. I realized this was not normal jealousy or a mid life crisis or a nervous breakdown as we previously thought. My father had a mental problem...something way more serious than I ever imagined. Earlier this week, he called me and told me that he had discovered something that would seal the deal and convince everyone of my mother's "infidelity." He told me he was more than 100% sure of this news and he would lay his neck on the line to show he was right. He spoke with such conviction that I believed him before he even told me what it was. He went on to say that he was certain that my mother was sleeping with my fiancee, Victor, and with my sister's boyfriend, Stephen, who lives in the basement with my sister and her kids.
My heart literally came out of my ass at this point
It was right then and there that I knew he was not in tune with reality and he was not mentally well. I did some research on the Internet and looked up all his symptoms (delusions, paranoia, etc) and I discovered that there is a disorder called delusional disorder. There are 6 types of delusions, and one of them is jealousy where the person is convinced their spouse is cheating on them.
This disorder is a psychotic mental disorder where a person believes a delusion that could be possible and plausible, but is certainly not true. People with this disorder lead high functioning normal lives and don't really exhibit bizarre behaviors other than the delusions. These delusions can also be linked to other psychotic disorders, such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. The symptoms of this disorder, along with everything else associated with it, describes my father to a T. I have no doubt in my mind that he is suffering from this...no doubt at all.
People who suffer from delusional disorder often fall victims to depression and anxiety and suffer from this chronically and often for the rest of their lives. The only way to manage this is through drug therapy, where the patient is prescribed anti-psychotic medication, and through psychotherapy. However, most patients do not seek any help since they strongly believe that they do not have any type of psychological problem. My father, of course, is one of these people. He does not think there is anything wrong with him and he swears he will find evidence soon.
My family and I all went to see a family therapist yesterday (my father refused to attend) and we told him everything that was going on. He agreed with my diagnosis of delusional disorder and also told us that it sounds like my father might be suffering from a mix of mental disorders such as depression and schizophrenia.
I have no words to describe how that information made me feel...no words at all
We devised a plan to trick my father into coming to see this therapist. I don't know if it's gonna work and I don't know what to do if it doesn't. At this point, this is one of those things that my psyche cannot process. I feel like I am watching a movie and I am just waiting for it to end so I can leave the theater and go back to my normal life.
Title post is "The Bucket" by Kings of Leon
