So here’s the thing, I understand how mental illness and depression works. I do.

When I was a kid, maybe around ten or so, I was old enough and smart enough to vaguely grasp what everyone was saying when they would make comments about my father’s “happy pills”. And when he was in a particularly terrible mood for weeks on end, I would think “It’s okay. He just needs to take his happy pills and then he’ll feel better.”

The older I got, the more understood what that meant. And the older I got, the more I started to realize how his meds effected him and when he was and wasn’t taking them. Sometimes he would be off his medication because my parents just couldn’t afford it but most of the time it was because he would make the choice to stop taking them. Just like he would start going to therapy and then stop and start taking anger management classes and then just stop. Simply because he wanted to. Now, I know enough to know that the condition of his brain chemistry played a hand in all of that, but he also made choices.

Just like I chose to forgive a lot. My whole life, he has only been a decent person when he is medicated. And I do use the term decent very loosely because even medicated he was still mean to me. But I forgave a lot. I forgave every nasty comment he ever made about my physical appearance or the choices I was making in regards to what I wanted to do with myself. I forgave him skipping my Confirmation, a religious right of passage that I only did because of him. I forgave him missing the first musical I did in school and the first play I did where I had a lead role. And sometimes it would be good but mostly it wasn’t.

And I am at the point where I am not going to forgive shit anymore. I know, and understand, that he has had a particularly bad breakdown recently (within the last eight or nine months). It’s bad enough that he’s actually on medical leave from work because he cannot function enough to go to work. But this isn’t the first time it’s happened and he gets off work and then only sees a therapist once a month.

Now the incident this summer where he pushed me into the wall, hit me in the face and then proceeded to come into my room when I was scared and crying and physically shake my bed and threaten me, happened while he was in the worst parts of his breakdown. Except that the instability of his brain chemistry is not an excuse and does not require me to, in any way, forgive what he did. And I am getting really tired of my mother trying to make excuses for him and talking to me like I somehow provoked the argument with him. I am so done with everyone making excuses for him because he’s sick. I ignore the sound of his voice in the house. I have to pretend he’s not in the room if we happen to be in the same room or I have to leave the room because I get so angry that I feel physically ill. And my mom tried her best. I know she does and I know that she’s on my side. But sometimes she says things that make it sound like she’s not and it hurts.

 I get it. He’s broken and sick. But what about me? I just …it’s so hard for me to be in that house. I sit in my room all the time to avoid everyone and if I walk by him and he’s in a bad mood, I flinch on instinct. And my mother things that maybe I need to talk to someone but I’m unemployed and he’s almost done with his unemployment benefits and my mom can barely afford to pay for him to see a therapist so really …what am I supposed to do?

I am so fucking done.