217AM on Christmas morning.

Got back from the hospital a short bit ago.

It's really hard to put everything together right now.

We almost committed him.

Still might.

I'm at home. Something that I wasn't sure I'd ever get to experience, at least with this house, again. Each time I snuck in to see how things were, what he had done to the property, to grab clothes or documents for my mother, I would look around, look into my room and say goodbye, fully aware that I may never see it again.

This may, for all I know, be the last time I sleep in this house as it is.

Or it may not.

It depends on if the diagnosis was right: that the medication my father was given to deal with his incredible sleep issue was the trigger point that caused this extreme manic episode, or if it's just him cracking under the stress of how life has been lately.

I held my mother while she sobbed too many times in the last few days.

My sister was in a state of avoidance/denial that made her almost useless except for running errands. She is not sleeping here tonight because her boyfriend's child is going to have his fourth Christmas tomorrow/today and she wants to be there for it.

We almost just committed my father to a mental institution, we've been at the hospital for over ten hours, my mother is barely holding together, and she has more important things to do.

It blows my mind.

But that's how she copes.


It has been incredibly hard. Monday night, I came home because things were so bad. My father's behavior was so aggressive and erratic, so out of character. And it's difficult for us because my mother doesn't work, my mother doesn't challenge, my mother has no control that he does not give her due to their emotional bond. So... if he goes nuts, we're a bit screwed. Our lives aren't over, but they are drastically shifted.

So I come home, maybe around 7PM. I call my dad and he says he'll be home by around 830-9PM. 10PM rolls around. 11PM. My sister calls. He freaks, aggressively. He gets home at 330AM. Talks to my mother for a bit, who calls me immediately after she gets off the phone with him and tells me to get my sister and myself out of the house.

I go downstairs. He's up. Putting notes on everything. Re-arranged the kitchen. Angry, almost incoherent notes. The cats... even though I had already fed them and told him that I would take care of them while my mother was gone (I had told her to go stay with a cousin), he dumped out the heavy bag of kibble all over the floor so they could eat, he said. Even though some of the cats have special diet needs.

God, there's so many things, so many random things. I could write them all out, taking hours. The crazed phone calls. The tagential rants. The threats. The lack of coherency, of reality. His aggression. The fact that he got a total of seven hours of sleep in three days because the mania was pushing him so hard.

I could talk about walking into the guest bedroom of a family friend's house and finding my mother crying on the floor.

Or all the other times she fell apart in my arms and I would stroke her back, kiss her cheek, the top of her head, and tell her how it would all be okay. Watching her call him and cry, about how she was missing her other half, how it felt like he was dead. Helping her write a pleading love note that asked him to seek help. Her phone ringing at 1230AM and him angrily blasting her with his insanity.

I could tell you of how all the pictures are down in the house, stashed in the garage. Or the paint missing off the wall, where he duct-taped the fire extinguisher to the wall and then ripped it down. Or how the kitchen counters are suddenly empty. Or how all the kitchen chairs but one have been placed elsewhere, and the couch and armchair have been blocked off so there is only room for one.

Or the piles of clothes on the bed and the floor.
The mismatched shoes.
The duffle bags full of random items.

His threats of filing a police report because we hid the gun from him.

I could talk about going to bed on Monday night, knowing that something was going to happen. Warning my sister to pack a bag. Her barely listening. Looking around my room, determining what I had to have if I was going to be homeless and unable to access any of my belongings for, at bare minimum, a month. Jacket, sandals, week's worth of socks and underwear, one set of dress clothes, one pair of high heels, jogging shoes, one set of pajamas, week's worth of shirts. Two blankets. Pillow. Bathroom bits. Plastic bags for dirty clothes. Folded and put in a duffle bag. My two laptops were packed, as well as my emergency cash, phone charger.

Then the psychological needs. When I stop moving, when I settle somewhere, what do I need with me to a) not miss and/or b) keep myself sane? What will I turn to, what will I cry over if I leave it behind? Two movies. All of my books by Henry Rollins. A teddy bear I received on my first birthday, a stuffed animal I bought when I was little that I saved and saved for, the first time I had managed to save for anything. A little stuffed green monster GV8 bought me, as well as the long coat he bought me on our first date. The robe that still smells like him.

I left out a change of clothes, loaded my car, showered so I would not have to worry about showering in the morning... and slept until I received the call I knew I would.

You need to leave. Get your sister and get out of the house.

We snuck out and I called her to let her know we were okay.

I went back later, after my father went to work, and took pictures of all the notes he left around. Maybe that was the next day? It all blends together.

My mother and I stayed with a family friend, my sister's best friend's parents. They had twin beds in their guest room, so my mother and I slept across from each other, exhausted and jumping each time her phone rang in the middle of the night, going back to sleep shaking with anxiety, not knowing what he would do next, to himself, to his future.

But my mother is the most important thing in the world to me. My father and I... our relationship has always been hard. We're too similiar, but not quite enough. When she hurts, I switch into protector mode, and it was a losing battle to not see my father as a beast that needed to be neutralized at any cost- even if that meant getting him to physically attack me in a public place, which was what I nearly tried to make him do.

My mother was the only thing tethering him to us. I had snapped him free out of a need to survive.

Things are... okay now.

There's more to say, but I'm so very tired. Tomorrow, things might be better.

Or they might be just as bad, if not worse.

If that is the case, then a lot will change.

But I need my sleep to survive it. I need my sleep to be my best, to support my mother and react well. My friends, both in life and online, have been wonderfully supportive. GV8 has been a godsend, almost. There was a rough patch earlier this evening that I have to discuss with him later. It hurt. He hurt me. Unintentionally, I know.

But that's another night.

It doesn't even feel like Christmas. It might as well be February right now. I am not 100% certain what day it is, actually.

What a blur.