On the present

My dad's illness is a lot better than it was. Schizophrenia often has a spontaneous remission later in life. This is what happened with John Nash (who was the subject of the film "A beautiful mind"). You can have a conversation with my dad now in which he will touch on the government agents he believes are still watching him only once or twice. Their role nowadays is mostly to cause him computer problems. Other people don't have the same problems I do on their computer he says. Rather, it's the spooks fucking with him. I don't know how he knows other people don't have similar computer problems. He never asked me for instance.

He knows I don't believe that stuff anymore, so he has taken to saying that the harassment comes from "wherever." That may come across as an improvement, but actually to me it is just him being an arrogant prick. I mentioned an image of myself stabbing outward in a previous post, but it occurs to me that one of my dad's primary modes of communication is needling other people. I've seen him do it to other relatives as well. Telling me that he is still getting harassment from "wherever" is a symptom of him needing to dominate with his world view. Similarly, after I stopped being a Christian, he would start talking about God as "whomever." I'm content to let our differences drop on this one. I told him I don't care if he talks about God. It doesn't bother me. But I think the problem is that he is not content with us having differing views. He feels a need to establish his own views as the correct ones, so he ostentatiously draws attention to the fact that he is mentioning God. When I've pointed out to him that it seems pretty arrogant to think you have a monopoly on the truth, he responds by saying that his spiritual insights come directly from Jesus, who he actually talks to like a person. That's great. Why does Jesus tell him to be such an asshole?

These verbal affectations say a lot about his mental model of me, now that I think about it. Either he thinks I am an idiot and won't know what he's talking about, or he is deliberately pushing the boundaries in an attempt to needle me. I don't feel bad at all about avoiding him now that I see this. Why should I subject myself to it? I used to give him a pass and blame all of his negative characteristics on his illness, but now that his illness is significantly lessened, it has become perfectly clear that many of these traits were simply his own nature.