Ironically, my need to write here today comes wholly unexpected but with equal urgency as that which drove me to write back in 2002 or so, but this time, I'm not afraid.
The urgency to communicate sooner rather than later is not due to what drove me to write in 2001. I put those events behind me long ago, though I will maintain my domain and site at jbhfile.com as long as I can pay to register the domain each year. It's become a totem-object of sorts, if you can imagine such a thing ... but I've moved on and grown from that period.
The content that follows in this post and those that will inevitably come after is something else entirely though.
At Least It's Something...
I am writing again because I lack any other proper legal venue to address these ancient and, most importantly, very recent concerns. This time, however, I'm addressing a different dilemma, which is, in many ways more painful than those in the past.
I expect this venue to become as important a tool as it became decades ago—essential in fact.
I'll place bullet points here; each point deserves a page or more, and all are important. But for now, this small group should suffice:
I've lived with my father since around 2017, since moving away from my previous residence when my friend and housemate passed away unexpectedly; I wrote of that event in 2017, a few posts down.
Since that time, I've worked for my father (manual labor) occasionally at our family company; otherwise, I was either involved in, or between "stints" working at an Amazon FC Warehouse (another blog entirely but fun and informative and hard)
In very late 2022, my father sold his entire legacy company property to another company, which was set up and running there by early 2023. My father has stayed at the property, leasing a small portion of the front building, ever since. He is obviously having the fight of his life trying to leave the chair he's sat in for 60(!) years. It is very difficult to watch, and it hurts as it's over a year now, with every month him coming home enraged or angered by "having to be there." Each time, ad infinitum, I have told him, as tactfully as possible, that there is no reason for him to go in and that he can stay home, and I'll go in for him so that he can see to all the medical stuff which has been put off for a year or more as well. But he simply cannot.
In July 2023, our twice-per-week office manager was let go. I then became responsible for all of the company's administrative work as well as the construction of a proper home office for my father Our plan (I thought it might help in way of easing the move) was to have a fully functioning office at home and ready when he decided he was able to make the transition; all of this was completed by myself (home office, new CC processing company, new VOIP phone service with legacy number ported, setup of 3 machine home LAN system with redundant, data critical backup routines in place, and too much more to get in to here; I'll be covering all that later.
SINCE July 2023, it was requested that I take over all of our company administrative/book keeping duties. I took to these tasks happily because I have the skills necessary to "hit the ground running," and it immediately resonated with me as just something I could do for my dad. It felt good. I also like data, so it was not to problematic to learn things.
I currently manage and keep track of all of his medical documents and archive/secure storage of the same in digital format
I have full trade authorization over his entire investment portfolio with his personal brokerage; that approval process took about two months when I started this work. Without getting into details, it's what could be called of "notable worth." All of this is going well.
I have full authorized access to every one of my father's personal checking/banking accounts, both company and personal, and I log in and interact with all of them daily. All of this is going well.
I look after anything of any consequence, such as auto registration renewal, health research, rides here and there, and/or anything and everything. More later...
AND ... for highly innocuous but oddly understandable reasons, on 12/11/23, the Houston Police Departments Mental Health Division (MHD) of the Houston Police Department (HPD) was called by some other person, not my concern, to conduct a welfare check on me wherein my father told the lead field officer that I "had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia."
I have already begun requesting all data related to the event as I feel it is necessary to at least TRY to address this serious and highly damaging claim that he quite clearly made that day. It's ugly, admittedly. But if I get the data, then I can at least try and make him understand what I've been saying for 20+ years, and that is that I've never been diagnosed with any sort of mental illness at all. I've never even seen a psychiatrist, which somewhat makes a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia impossible.
Those are just introductory points, which will be covered in more detail in the days following this post. I sped through those loose points to express the urgency of my situation now.
That frames the situation quite adequately.
Therefore, I mention the immediacy of my actions here and the complex, delicate nature of the problem in general. But I believe it's something manageable and something I can personally address.
Thank the 'verse, I consulted with a gazillion state and local resources when first trying to figure out how to document some of the more worrisome "accidents" my father has confided in me over the past few months, all of which were never reported to his physicians, some events being potentially very harmful to him physically, and easily fatal had certain variables not played into the event at just the right time.
But I won't go into all of that here as it's not important and would not be appropriate.
I've also, quite uncomfortably because it requires conversation and he literally loses it within the first 30 seconds if anything is detected as slightly being aimed at him, anything really, any comment, ends some kind of anger event within the first minute.
So there to, I began audio recording, specifically as a recommendation from online resources specializing in how to approach escalating situations like I'm in where it's straight up impossible to speek to the man.
Suffice it to say that, with recorded approval from my father, I began documenting everything around our household a good while ago; this was the first thing EVERY resource on aging and the elderly instructed me to do immediately.
They also pointed out the uniquely critical fact that he and I live alone together and how that made my documentation doubly important as nobody is witness to any of the troubling stuff I deal with daily; it's manageable but to the point as he realizes he's now 1.3 yrs after selling the property and sill compelled, for obvious and sad reasons, to still get up every morning and drive to that old property and sit but then returns home to immediately go into rants about how he hates being there, etc.
I understand now why they lead with that suggestion to document because it's a scary thing to do when I know I am having to attempt normal, peaceable relations with a man I've known my whole life and for all of which, the driving characteristic of his personality, unfortunately, is just pure rage.
I have been doing this documentation thing for a good while now and retain all such content in both digital and hand-authored notes.
The 12/11/23 HPD Mental Health Welfare Check
But the greatest factor influencing him now, and especially our current highly sensitive but productive professional and living arrangement, is this:
My father is still very much 100% internally convinced that I have actually been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and has believed this complete falsehood since I first made that claim abundantly clear when authoring jbhfile.com in 2006! This, of course, has spread like some ebola-gone-wild episode for two decades, throughout all of my family, but of most concern is that my siblings hold this to be true as well.
The importance of the above statement will become clear in the following posts/pages here.
Here is the lead officer's handwritten field report; I've respectfully blurred this officer's identifying information because it's just the right thing to do. I also blurred the incident report number. Also, though it's not important here, it should be mentioned that the guy I spoke with was impressive in how professionally and calmly he handled the entire fascinating event.
Credit where credit is due; I enjoy obvious skill no matter the circumstance, and that day, I saw plenty of it, at least in the lead. The other dudes looked a bit bored, frankly. ;-)
Anyway, since day one at jbhfile.com, I have written repeatedly about this vexing, world-ending (but a moment), and highly damaging claim regarding my mental health. This false belief, which bloomed in my father's mind for whatever reason around 2001, is alive, thriving, and well.
My concern is that his negative emotions attached to me and our history are, tragically and hopefully temporarily, about the only mental stimulation he has access to at the moment. This causes a problem considering my handling of his personal affairs, as should be obvious. At the same time, I know what he’s going through is totally normal, especially the obvious part which is that with me here, at 56 years of age, and he 81 and confronting Nemesis, that I would definitely become a focal point simply to have something to feel or respond to mentally or emotionally.
In short, my father’s embedded notion that I am mentally or, in his own words, “have been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia was directly related to and discussed during that welfare check on 12/11/2023.
The reason for the welfare check is unimportant and wholly innocuous; the field team confirmed that easily enough during their visit. I will, however, post content associated with that but for now the point is that the “incident” was determined to be a benign situation so I have set that down and am not concerned about the hows or whys at this point.
The attending HPD/MHD team and I had a polite dialogue, and then they left, telling my father there was no indication of threat or otherwise observed cause for alarm due to anything they could discern during the interview and regards to my behavior or mental health.
I knew this already, but it was quite nice to hear them ask me those first questions.
Working daily…
This becomes exceptionally important considering that I currently manage and have full authorization on every single financially important asset my father owns. This arrangement was all put in place and the process was managed by myself as requested by my father who was present and involved in all of the many phone conferences required to facilitate this access and clearance.
Not to mention, I had to become a basic, semi-informed investment advisor within about a month, a role I still serve and enjoy daily. It's the most toxic field I've ever dove into but it's data and lots of it, which is something I’ve considered “fun” ever since I was a kid so it was not intimidating in the least.
But to me, this is a massive problem when considering his age and my very complicated daily processes managing his affairs which I intend to continue until I can't.
Furthermore, I LOVE DOING this work for him and feel glad daily that I landed here, so coincidentally, and with exactly the skills necessary to jump right into the investment/trading world (unexpectedly toxic but fun) as well as everything else I've taken on, just because it was put in front of me.
When I started this work, which now has turned into 100% management of his entire critical personal and financial matters, I knew a concise and detailed log of activity would be necessary in the future. I knew that the very day I started moving my stuff from my previous residence to our current home in 2017.
So thankfully, I have that and I’m right about to hit the 100 page mark. As it turns out, this is the one thing that now makes me feel very confident in making these public statements.
What I must do...
It's not attractive or fun to pursue, considering my father's current crisis (leaving his 60 years of sitting in the same chair) and making whatever internal adjustments necessary to relocate to the home office.
But it's already very difficult; even though I only see him an hour or two a day, I chose to invert our schedules long ago.
I also knew that I would absolutely become an emotional "hook" of sorts whenever I was even within view since he is so locked in the endless spiral of driving to his old work location every day, having spent not a single day here at the house on any regular work day, that I’ve become like a constant opportunity to become engaged with him and it’s always unpleasant, angry and very typical of just about everyone who has to go through that tough time (retiring).
I’ll say this over and over because I am writing about a man that is dear to me and it’s confusing, odd and very uncomfortable to do and I’ll be quite happy when I’m through with this part at least.
It's tough (very) to witness his understandable situation because I understand why, and I cry over seeing it so plainly every day. I think that moment of separation is difficult for any person who has maintained a rigorous schedule, much less for 60 years, but it's acutely difficult for him and infinitely more problematic doing my work due to his distress and being a constant, present opportunity to avoid it, which always begins angry and ends much angrier.
Somewhere along the way, I discovered the infinite value of simply being 100% away from the house in 2022 when I got my first position at the AMZ Warehouse. It was a specifically chosen shift that saw me working there from midnight to 11:45am the next day, four days in a row. It was an incredible relief to say the least. I honestly did not know that just getting away was the right thing to do, even though I knew it would quicken the distress already churning inside but I had to go and do it for my sake and I welcomed the opportunity to do so.
That said...
He will soon be working full-time here at the home office I completed work on some 6 to 8 months back.
I think it will be impossible to coexist with him and work with him unless I first attempt to adjust/redact his claims made during the above referenced 12/11/23 welfare check on myself.
I have no clue if such an option is available to me, or if I’ll even be told that it’s of no concern. I really don't know and honestly don't care either way.
But I’m very much interested in obtaining the data associated with the event. That’s valuable. I could care less about the claims made regarding my mental health, I like my brain well enough and that’s enough for me.
The data will be helpful, though, if to no other person than myself.
I haven't done much for myself in about a year and a half when all of my days became committed to seeing to his personal affairs (10 to 15 hours per day). I’m not complaining about that and I’m immensely grateful for the opportunity to do that strange, new work and learn a whole lot along the way while doing it.
That's something I know I can do for him, so it's good. My main concern is being able to assist my father while being able to live in the same house with a person who is obviously somehow attached to this notion of my having been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. It’s become a problem that I can somewhat address in the way of publishing the incident data; this will not be aimed at anybody or make unseemly claims about any other person. I’ll just be presenting some important facts that might make some person somewhere pause for a moment and think.
And there, too, when I carefully publish any data I obtain, I expect this not to be well received by my immediate family.
I have no clue why this is. I would expect the opposite but that’s far from the case.
Frankly, I could care less and just want to get on with my own life while putting my father's concerns first because I CAN DO THAT, and I enjoy doing it. In other words, I will go work somewhere else soon, but I will make every effort to put my father’s situation first as I simply consider it far more of a crisis than anything currently going on in my own life.
And for once, at least for the past year, I’ve felt that I’ve been afforded a unique and lovely moment in which I can assist a family member in genuine need of assistance. And I’m thankful that I’ve had the training and possess the skills to do just that if at all possible.
The important part...
The important part of this entire gush is that central to that welfare check, no matter who initiated it (I could care less), is that upon first having a dialogue with my father and before their visit with me, the lead field officer had an in-depth discussion wherein my father claimed, quite plainly, that: "My son has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia."
In those exact words.
It's probably hard to understand, impossible, I'd imagine, but I, personally, couldn't have been more pleased once the field officer started the dialogue with me because his first words, leaning close to ensure a proper recording, was:
"Your father tells me you have been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Is that true?"
Again, quite calm, not a bit bothered, and already enjoying the conversation for my own personal reasons, I said:
"No, officer XXXX, I've never been diagnosed with any mental illness whatsoever. And with all due respect, that's absurd as I've never even seen a psychiatrist."
This was a known and truthful statement that I made to the lead field officer that day, and it’s been provable as fact for many, many years.
But for whatever reason, nobody has ever even slightly considered the many facts I’ve presented to the contrary. Even after writing (what amounts to) a few long novels regarding these events starting way back in 2001!
What my father and many known others have claimed of my mental health, however, according to a rough understanding of laws around “Cease and Desist,” be that a letter or order (there is a difference) was absolutely not true, and to use the proper legal term, “unlawful.”
I mean, here in my personal office, was a police representative of the Houston Police Department, much less from the MENTAL Health Division of said entity, standing right in front of me, camera rolling, due to a "mental health welfare check" and straight up STATING what I've been trying to make clear for over two decades!
Moving on…
For all I know, there'll be nothing I can do about the claim made clear in the incident report data and by my father (perhaps more).
For all I know, I might find there will be no reason for me to be concerned that such a claim was made to a mental health law enforcement representative, and that will be fine.
I would never seek any claims against this man I love, ever. That can stand as a matter of record despite this not being a legal document.
And I am not here to throw stones or sling arrows; I hate that fucking shit and at this point, that seems to be what the entire world is really into. But perhaps that’s just me, dunno.
But, ugly as it is, I must treat my father as a very real threat to myself, simply due to his highly stressful situation in trying to accept and separate from a company, unsuccessfully for over a year now.
And most importantly, it was made very clear on 12/11/23 that my father genuinely, to the core, believes it when he makes such claims regarding my mental health. The troubling thing is that all of my extended family has been quietly believing and propagating what amounts to the most harmful and defamatory claims any person can make of another. How that can be true? Now some 20+ years later? I cannot say.
What I can say is that I've presented volume upon volume of medical/scientific and even information from the Psych circles themselves (journals, periodicals, etc.) showing in very simple language the rather extensive process that typically occurs when/if one is ever actually diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia (or any other serious mental disorder).
I am also sure he has no clue how much damage that such information can cause or what happens in communities when such rumors run rampant. And I’m not even going to mention the far worse claims made of my character in 2001, when I was literally forced to write what I now call “a book” as the content there could easily be “retooled” for that media. I loathe the thought of putting such information on real paper; frankly, something in me feels it would be an affront to both the idea that a book represents and the fact that 2001 is long behind me.
…
So please pardon the wind. I wrote fast and with minimal proofing, so the above may be a mess, but I think it’s clear enough to state what I needed to say.
I will be adding to this narrative as time goes by, but won’t be making any of my family aware of the publishing until after my father completes a few very important surgeries in the next few weeks as I prefer not to introduce any new "trigger" material to upset him in advance or post his procedure on 06/26/24.
I will eventually start a separate blog to move my ongoing daily work log to as it’s just 100% work and personal process data and a lot of it. Still, it at least will give an informed eye (certainly none of my family) an undeniable glimpse into the work I’ve done here and why I would like to continue it.
Having that ongoing, year-long journal of my daily work life public will also, to the informed eye, make quite clear the magnitude of the effort, especially considering I was dropped into the whole project (moving an entire 60-year old company to a complete new location and new business type/designation.
It’s fun work. It’s for my father. That’s enough for me.
[END]
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This post supplements the facts made public on my main website, http://www.jbhfile.com/; it probably will not make much sense to you if you have not already become aware of the legal and personal efforts discussed there. Please see http://www.jbhfile.com/ for a necessary introduction to why this blog exists. Or, if you just like reading weird stuff, then don't. And, enjoy.
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