my thoughts in bare

Earlier today, we visited my father in the mental hospital. I thought I had prepared myself for what I might see but nothing could have prepared me for what was actually there. The image of him, in his current condition, is something I know will haunt me for a long time. Photos and videos aren’t allowed due to the hospital’s privacy policy. Because of his fragile medical state, they wouldn’t let him out during visiting hours. Instead, they allowed us to step inside the ward for a brief look. It felt like walking into a prison, metal grills lining the hallway as we made our way in. We weren’t allowed to go near him. We could only see him through those metal bars, his bed about twenty feet away from where we stood. He was lying there, arms and legs restrained for his safety and because of his behavior. His body looked so thin, so frail. So unlike the father I knew. I asked a few questions to the nursing attendant assigned to him, trying to steady my voice. Then it was time to leave. We h...

Watching your father slowly lose pieces of his mind is a different kind of heartbreak. You’re torn between holding on tightly to keep him safe and wanting to let him wander freely — even if it scares you — just to give him a sense of peace, or to momentarily silence the chaos in both of you. Some days, exhaustion whispers, what if I just let go and stop caring? What if I allow myself to feel nothing for once? What if I stop fighting so hard, stop worrying every minute, stop carrying the weight of what might happen? It feels like you’re constantly pulling a rope back and forth — duty on one end, helplessness on the other. You endure, you adjust, you try again. And in the quiet moments, you ask yourself how long this season will last… and how much more our heart can carry.

I hesitated before posting this. But sometimes you really just need to let things out—to rant a little, to breathe—so you can keep going. I guess this is my way of coping. The past few months, since October, have been spent going back and forth between clinics, hospitals, and diagnostic centers, searching for answers. Until now, we still don’t fully understand what’s happening to him. The doctors say it’s a rare condition. At first, they thought it was Dementia, then turned out it was not, then it was due to stroke but then it was not. Then multple possibilities keeps coming in and yet to be confirmed, might be a stroke, brain infection, brain parasite, or undefined disease.  Living in this kind of uncertainty has been a constant rollercoaster of mixed emotions—fear, exhaustion, hope, frustration, all tangled together. I’m not a perfect daughter. We’ve had many differences, and our father-and-daughter relationship has been toxic for as long as I can remember. Still, I stayed. Throu...