Fabricating Claims of Mental Health Issues Is a Heck of a Way To Ruin A Family

I’d been away for the summer and my dad picked me up at the airport. That was the kind of thing he liked. He liked sliding into his Suburban. It was a climate-controlled, portable office that allowed him to lose himself in his music.He spent most of his time in his car, on the road, away from the house. Like all of us, he was escaping.I can’t remember him meeting me at the baggage claim. Back then you could meet at the gate without a ticket, but we would have met at the baggage claim. I can’t remember walking to the Suburban and loading up my things. I can’t remember him asking me how my trip was. I assume all these things must have happened, but they didn’t make an impact on me.The part that did make an impact came later when we were close to home and my dad started complaining about my mom.That, I remember.She’d been away too that summer. As I said, we’d all found our means of escape even if we didn’t deliberately perceive them as such. We were all clawing to get away. But this wasn’t the kind of situation you could just pick up and flee. To some extent, I’m still trying to escape.My dad is a lawyer, and there, in the car, he began to make his case. I’d been through it with him before. He felt he deserved to make his closing arguments uninterrupted. There were many times I’d wished a judge had been present. I wanted to yell, “Objection!” but absent the presence of a higher authority, my cries only provoked my father’s irritation.He was always so confident in his discourse. I’ve seen this manifest in a lot of people. There was something he was trying to say, but that something was too ugly for him to state directly. Therefore, he wanted to play “inception.” He wanted to lay out the argument and trust that you’d get there on your own.He knew the thought was more powerful that way. He had to make you think that it was your idea. Then he had you. Then you would take ownership of the idea and never question where it came from.“Son, I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but your mother has mental health issues and you should never talk to her again.”That’s what he was getting at. That’s what he wanted me to believe.Instead, he laid out his argument, showed his evidence, then finished with the closing statement, “The best part of the summer was when she was gone.”His voice faded into silence, and it created a vacuum. It was like he was reaching into my chest to pull agreement out of me.I said nothing. The pressure steadily continued to build.For the first time in years, I allowed myself to become annoyed with him. After all, I was tired. I’d been on an international flight. I hadn’t slept well. It felt as if I was being ambushed. It felt like that because I was being ambushed. My dad loved to ambush people. Ambush is a very effective strategy.The last time I’d contradicted my dad was thirteen years ago when I was five. I can’t remember the details. All I remember is that I’d disagreed with him about something and wanted to make a minor course correction in our relationship.I wanted a move towards more mutual respect.I told my mom that I thought my dad needed to apologize for something and that we needed to talk it over. My mom said, “That’s very mature of you, I’m very proud of you!”She left and sent dad in. He came like a petulant child. Every muscle in his body told the tale that he didn’t want to be there. He sat on my bed and refused to look at me. He refused to listen and denied that he should apologize, then he left.Even then, as a child, I knew he was wrong. I learned to accept his attitude and live beneath his expectations, but I didn’t agree with him. We didn’t make the course correction that I wanted. Instead, we kept going the way my dad wanted to go and it’s led us here.That, I think, is the key element. Ultimately, it was his path we followed because he didn’t listen to us. His path didn’t work.But, as always, he had a way out of accountability.“Son, your mother has mental health issues. That’s why everything is a disaster. You see? The way I did things was perfect! The problem is her.”I remained defiantly silent in the face of the unspoken accusations. Dad exerted his silent pressure, but he wasn’t dealing with a terrified five-year-old anymore. I was 18 and an athlete. I was still a kid, to be honest, but dumb enough to think I was more. Mainly, I was just tired.“It’s been a long flight,” I said.My dad went silent. We traveled a few more miles before he roused himself. We were getting close to home now.“Now that I think about it, I regret that I brought this up,” my dad said. He might have used the word “sorry” though I can’t remember him saying that often. The one time I went to visit him when he was married to his second wife, it seemed like that was the only thing he said.“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he whispered to her, as if making up for a whole alternate failed family where he never once apologized.But all that would come later. We still had years of pressure and agony to traverse.Actually, I shouldn’t complain about the second marriage. It kept him occupied, at least up until the second divorce. Since then, he’s decided to resume his attacks on my mom.I suppose he thinks the second wife had “mental health issues” too. I should ask.Today, he’s completely committed to a full frontal assault on my mom. This has been an effective tactic on my dad’s side of the family, his older brother, my uncle, actually succeeded in having his first wife committed. He tells the story like it’s funny.He’s also a lawyer.I’ve come to believe that many lawyers are more concerned with the argument than the truth. That’s their job. The people in my family are highly intelligent, highly driven people.I think lawyers, not all lawyers, but some lawyers, are effective because they convince themselves that their way of seeing things is the only reasonable way to make sense of the facts. They start to believe that anyone who, when presented with the evidence, doesn’t arrive at the same conclusions as they do, must be insane.I suppose that’s their job.Maybe some lawyers can rise above this and not be so personally involved with their arguments. Maybe some of them can accept a loss and move on without seeking retribution.I can only speak from experience.About a year ago, a relative reached out to me to have a “nice conversation” about how my mom had mental health issues and that I should never talk to her again.“I don’t think that’s the case,” I said. “In fact, I think that’s the story dad is telling so he doesn’t have to face his own culpability.”Instant rage.It reminded me of being five again.The packaging boasts, “Instant rage, just add a few rational questions!”“So, you’re telling me that my father always thought mom had mental health issues?”“Yes.”“Then why didn’t he ever request any kind of custody agreement? He was content to just leave his kids with her and have a jolly old time. He only popped back in when it was ‘convenient’ to play dad for a while. If he sincerely thinks that mom has ‘mental health issues’ shouldn’t he take some accountability for his actions during that time? Either he’s wrong now or he was criminally irresponsible then. There’s no way of looking at this that reflects well on him.”You learn a few things when you’re cross-examined on a daily basis from your lawyer father. Those cross-examinations were never about finding the truth, they were about extracting a statement that aligned with my father’s preconceived belief.“Is it not the case,” he would say, “that you were deliberately trying to cheat a little bit?” Then he’d smile like it was funny and I would be rewarded if I said, “Yes.”The only punishment ever came from insisting I was innocent. Years later, I think the point of all this was to establish a mindset of perpetual guilt just to break down the resistance.“Oh well, I’m always wrong so I guess I better just do as he says.”Boy, did he get angry when I was able to produce evidence to vindicate myself. You’d think a father would celebrate proof that he had an honest boy. Not my father.“If dad really thought mom had mental health issues,” I asked, “why didn’t he do anything about it?”As I sit here writing this, I find myself wondering how this plan is supposed to work. Dad’s objective is to get me to view my mom as “insane.” He’s always established that the path of least resistance is to just go along with whatever he says.“You can never talk to your mother again.”Well, what’s going to happen the next time he does something to make me angry? Who is he going to blame then?Oh, I’m sure he’ll find somebody. But in every iteration, the structure becomes more complex and unstable. It’s exhausting to maintain all these lies. At some point, your mind quests for something easier, something that doesn’t require such contortions of logic.You can’t avoid the facts forever. At some point, denying reality becomes more painful than the truth.As you might have guessed, I’m now among the ranks of “those with mental health issues,” at least from the perspective of my dad’s side of the family. From what I understand, my father even picked a day when I went “insane.”Maybe he mocked up a little gravestone and chiseled in the date. Maybe every year he places flowers beside it, always careful to make sure everyone is watching.“He went insane,” he says, wiping away a tear. “Cruel, cruel fate!”“Oh, what a great father he is,” the onlookers say, and it’s their idea so they believe it.I guess my mom and I should be thankful that he never tried to flex his muscles and have us committed. As I said, that’s a tried and true tactic on his side of the family.If you’re the one who calls the cops, the cops listen to your side of the story first.I assume the same thing is true with mental health professionals. They’d show up at your door with the implanted assumption that there was something wrong with you, and you’d have to demonstrate otherwise.The way it should be is that a person can only make such an accusation after submitting to that process himself. But our society doesn’t work that way, particularly when it’s a man accusing a woman or a child.It’s really too bad we didn’t have a more productive conversation when he stomped in and sat defiantly on my bed when I was five.He didn’t see the need to listen because he was powerful and I was weak.But I was right and he was wrong.Power doesn’t exempt you from consequences. It only allows you to kick them down the road until they grow strong enough to obliterate any chance you have of being happy.My mom doesn’t have mental health issues.I don’t have mental health issues.Even my dad doesn’t have mental health issues.What we have is a lack of accountability.Everyone is accountable. Nobody gets to exempt themselves from accountability by pretending the people they hurt are “insane.”That’s my closing statement.The defense rests.You all make this newsletter happen! Thanks for your sponsorship! I have payment tiers starting at as little as twenty dollars a year.Upgrade at 30% offUpgrade at 40% offUpgrade at 50% offUpgrade at 60% offI’m so happy you’re here, and I’m looking forward to sharing more thoughts with you tomorrow.My CoSchedule referral linkHere’s my referral link to my preferred headline analyzer tool. If you sign up through this, it’s another way to support this newsletter (thank you).I'd Rather Be Writing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to I'd Rather Be Writing at walterrhein.substack.com/subscribe