When I found out my father died in the spring of 2019, an unholy swell of despair rose to the surface and couldn’t be pushed down again. Afterward, I did my best to wade through adolescence and young adulthood, working diligently to assure everyone that I was fine. I remember the feelings of helplessness and rage were more than I knew what to do with. I remember wrapping my hands around the fence between us, crying for her not to go, until a nurse guided me back inside. I remember my roommate liked to pull the fire alarm and that, at some point, my mother came to visit. A social worker told him I’d been admitted because of some of my new behavior: acting out toward other kindergartners, making comments about my private parts and theirs, telling my mom I was going to kill myself, before laughing uncontrollably. My father, who began abusing me sexually three years earlier, was outraged by the hospitalization because he feared I’d become perverted by listening to “all the sex talk” from the counselors.
I n 1989, when I was 5, I spent several weeks in a children’s psychiatric ward.
