Revision. I could definitely use help on my conclusion most of all. For some reason, I'm still floundering there. But the rest of the essay is more concise now, and I'm hoping it also flows better.
Several months after the first time I saw the homeless man wandering the streets in tattered clothes, I pulled up next to him in my car. He was standing at a stoplight, looking at the ground and muttering to himself. Desperate to reach out to him, I waited until he looked up from the ground, made eye contact with him, and waved. He looked back at me, but his glassy eyes never flashed with recognition. He was lost in the fog of his illness; he no longer recognized his own daughter.
Mental illness has affected my life more than most. Throughout my childhood, I watched my father suffer with both bipolar disorder and paranoid schizophrenia. I watched as these diseases tore a once charismatic, successful man apart, and how their effects on his personality and his actions devastated my entire family. I cried as I watched my father attempt to hang himself in our garage when I was ten. During one of his manic episodes, we dealt with the fallout after he squandered our entire savings on a single lost bet. I helped my two younger sisters pack their things after he sold our home because he was convinced that our neighbors were watching him. I witnessed his violent outbursts (exacted) on every member of our household, and felt the embarrassment of trying to conceal his violence so that our family could continue to hide his illness from everyone, including ourselves. All this while he started and stopped medicating on a whim, adamantly refusing therapy because "I'm not crazy."
I did not understand my father's illness, and after my parents' divorce when I was 18, we quickly drifted apart. It would not be until I began learning more about psychology that I would understand the scope of his disease, and come to terms with why he had lost control. It was devastating when I realized that instead of harboring his illness as our dark secret, if we, as a family, had opened ourselves to the possibility of family therapy, his illness may never have advanced as far as it did. My newfound knowledge (soothed) my anger and (bitterness) toward my father. I felt compelled to reconnect with him and see if I could find a way to help him. Unfortunately, around this time I would learn, first through family friends, and, later, with my own eyes, that my father had fallen apart. He, like so many others afflicted with schizophrenia, had become homeless.
It has been nearly a year since the last time I saw my father (wandering the streets). I do not know if he is still homeless. I do not know if he has gotten help and started a new life. I do not know if he is still alive. I sometimes wonder if my encounter with him at the stoplight was a missed opportunity. As an adolescent, I would never have been able to comprehend that having a parents with a mental illness could have (a single positive aspect). However, the inability to help one person has filled me with the drive to help many people, a new predisposition to help those who are in need. Learning about mental illnesses, especially those of my father, has been fascinating, and learning how to treat them will be exhilarating. Words cannot express the excitement that I feel when I think about all of the ways I will be able to help people with mental illnesses once I am properly trained, and I sometimes imagine a day where I see my father, off the streets, in a more stable environment, and I am able to offer him my knowledge, and my care.
Thanks, Dad. I love you.
Ashli Butler
top of page