1983

SURVIVAL

My Paternal Grandmother: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

The shrapnel remains embedded in your calf. A crude reminder of the Malaya War. You ran for your life leaving everything you ever had to be destroyed by the bombs dropped by the Japanese. Your escape vessel was sunk and after spending many hours floating in the ocean, you were rescued by a British Destroyer. You survived and within a year you were pregnant with my father. You would unknowingly influence him with your disorders.

The narrow pathways through your apartment led people to spots where you existed. You threw nothing away. A box for elastic bands, a box for the plastic wrapping and a box for the cardboard inserts off pantyhose packets. It took weeks to empty out your apartment. When the family finished purging the vast weight from your hoard it had warped the floor so badly that the front door would not close. You hated everyone in your life and it was obvious.

My Adoptive Father: the Sociopath (Antisocial Personality Disorder)

Born in 1943 at a cantonment in India to a mother suffering from PTSD you developed severe mechanisms to survive. Your mother didn’t care about you or your brother. She show boated for her own benefit. Your birthday parties as a child were grand revelries, with elephants and delusions. You survived your childhood but developed a serious disorder.

Above average intelligence and a skillful manipulator you fooled and hurt a lot of people to satisfy your will. You lavished people with gifts and you didn’t care who you hurt or abused along the way. You coped with your inherited dysfunction with alcohol as you poisoned yourself with vodka. Even you, a genius, couldn’t hide or get away with fraud forever and you your actions sent you to prison and isolated you from family members. Your inability to sustain healthy relationships hopefully stopped you from passing on your disorder to the many people you had influence over.