"THE HISTORY OF VIOLENCE"

After seeing the movie, The History of Violence, and, of course, relating it to the issue of estrangements, I thought, "Some estrangements are better left alone. Why would anyone in their right mind want to get back together with that guy unless he wanted to get back together with you? You’d just leave him the heck alone!"

I can’t tell you any more or I’ll spoil the movie for you if you haven’t seen it.

"PROOF": THE ISSUES OF PROOFS

Then there is the movie Proof with Gwyneth Paltrow playing the daughter to the genius mathematician father played by Anthony Hopkins. A central issue is the fear of insanity having been passed down from father to daughter, a fear that is reinforced by the suspicions of the controlling straitlaced buttondowned sister.

Long ago I worried that I might have inherited the mental illnesses
of my mother and grandmother. But the boogeyman of that serious a
mental illness never materialized. I have suffered and been treated for
clinical depression which is practically the common cold of mental
illnesses.

Once upon a time in my twenties I voluntarily went for an
appointment with one of my mother’s psychiatrists. Because I wasn’t as
close to her as she wanted me to be, she was telling me that I was
crazy. I was so fed up with her calling me crazy that I offered to go
to her psychiatrist to see what the doctor thought. After interviewing
me her doctor assured me that I was not crazy. I told my mother her
doc’s verdict and my mother said, "Oh, I knew it all along!" She is a
strange woman.

I"m sure that I’m obsessive compulsive but at the low end of the
range. Not sufficiently obsessive compulsive to take medication.

I know that my daughter has wondered if she has inherited something.
She tends to exaggerate things. She has said things like, "Everyone on
one side of my family is mentally ill going back for generations! No
one has been treated!" Gasp, gasp!! Oh, the Horror!

The truth is that the two people in my family who had serious mental
health issues are my grandmother and my mother but each had a different
disorder. Both received treatment, my mother having received treatment
for over 50 years. The only common thread between their conditions
might be symptoms of depression but it’s hard to say what my
grandmother really had as she was so withdrawn that no one would know
if she was depressed or what. I never had an actual conversation with
her if you’d define a conversation as two people exchanging more than a
handful of words. From the description of her behavior I could guess
that she might have been Schizoid. She was institutionalized for a
while but no one in the family knows what her official diagnosis was.

My mother has Borderline Personality Disorder which means that she
rages and worries, rages, gets depressed, does self destructive things,
sees everything in black and white terms and alternately demonizes and
idealizes people, especially me. My grandmother was withdrawn. My
mother was emotionally all over the place. Other than my mother and
grandmother the only people who have been diagnosed and treated for
mental illnesses are a couple of cousins who have Bipolar Disorder and
their father who suffered from clinical depression.

I’ve asked relatives in Finland if there were others in the family
who had had something seriously wrong mentally but they had no reports
of others who had a problem.

Perhaps my daughter has experienced something personally that makes
her wonder if she has inherited what she sees as the "Family Curse"
although there isn’t any Family Curse. Most of my relatives are
productive, successful. creative people, even those who have been
treated for Bipolar Disorder and clinical depression.

A friend gave me a good quote that she heard years ago when she took
Psychology 101: "We are all abnormal on a continuum of abnormality."
Makes sense to me! From what I’ve seen of people I believe that we all
at one time or another in our lives experience a little bit of
craziness.

In the movie Proof, the character played by Gwyneth Paltrow is
almost convinced by her sister that she has inherited the "Family
Curse" but finally she realizes that this is something that her sister
needs to believe. It is not her own problem.

People can be like that, like the sister in Proof. They want to
believe that someone else who is creative, intelligent, living a life
that is different than theirs … there must be something wrong with
them. As though lifestyles are created in just one mold and any other
mold is a flawed mold. A factory second.

Funny … or not really funny … but I thought recently that my
daughter is like that sister in the movie Proof. She must be
disappointed that I have never been self destructive as she predicted
that I would be eight years ago. You might think she’d be relieved that
I have never done anything harmful to myself or ever threatened doing
anything harmful to myself. Even now when she makes a point of telling
me that she doesn’t love me and will never end our estrangement, if I
had a truly suicidal bone in my body I’d be thinking of something along
the lines of self destruction but I’m not. No way!

It might be that she hates to be wrong. She’d rather be right and
have me being suicidal? Then she’d have been proved right in her
prediction that I was going to be just like my mother. This would have
made my daughter happy. She’s like the sister in Proof who wanted to
believe that her creative smart mathematician sister was ill just like
their creative smart mentally ill mathematician father.

The Proof in the title of the movie was a mathematical proof and the
proof of Paltrow’s sanity. The only people in my life who would like to
believe that I am crazy are my mentally ill mother, my bitter
ex-husband, and my estranged daughter. All three undoubtedly suspect
that each other is crazy too.

In the movie I began to wonder if the sister was the one with the
problem. At the least she had a control issue. She wanted to control
Gwyneth. Controlling Gwyneth seemed to be something that she was
comfortable trying to do. Convincing Gwyneth that she was sick and
needed looking after was her mission. I have to wonder what kind of
relationship the sisters would have after Gwyneth took off on her own
and took charge of her own life.

Why would someone be happy if someone was mentally ill but unhappy
if the person turned out to be sane? Obstinately sane? Is sanity
dangerous? Some kind of threat? Why would someone need to believe that
another person is mentally ill when they aren’t? The rest of the world
that knows me on a day to day basis has no need to make me prove my
sanity.

Snicks