Let me start by saying that this is going to be a very odd entry. The reason is, this article is about people I knew in the past and various incidents that happened, and my recent thoughts on the same. However I do not feel that it is appropriate to name people that I used to know or discuss incidents that were meant to be private. Therefore I will be being quite cryptic in my writing this time (some would say that this is no different from most of my articles :) ). Those who this article is meant for will already know what I am talking about.

I have been thinking a lot lately about the past two decades.  As most of you know by now, in August 1998 my father had a medical problem (and it is still debated whether it was genuinely a medical issue or had a darker explanation, but that is another story). For whatever reason, he decided to use his extensive professional network within the hospital system to resist any attempts at recovery and rehabilitation, and worse still he used those same connections to actively prevent the medical system from providing assistance to either my mother or I during this time. The end result was that he was sent home to me to be cared for, in spite of the fact that I was away at university at the time and was very soon to be traveling even further away. The hospital system promised they would have him in a carehome before the end of January 1999, but by April 2007 when he died he was still languishing on the waitlist.

However I have already discussed those dark times too extensively, and I really would prefer not to return to that horrible nightmare even in my memories.

The reason for this article is that I owe many people apologies and explanations. I hope that those affected might one day read this and perhaps understand a bit of what I was dealing with at the time, and hopefully understand that I never meant to cause distress or problems for anyone. In many cases I wasn't even aware that some of those connected to me were harming friends and coworkers for their own selfish purposes, and yet I still feel distressed that people who were kind to me may have been hurt by the monsters in my life. I never meant to offend or be rude to those around me, but with the stresses and the abuses that I was subject to at the time I fear that I wasn't always as kind and polite as I would like to have been.

So this is my first of many attempts at apologizing and explaining some of the events of those dark days. I am certain that I will have forgotten and overlooked many incidents, so I am certain that there will be more of these articles in the years to come.

And once again, I am not going to give identifiable information when it can be avoided because I do not feel it is my right to involve other people without their consent. Those who are affected should be able to recognize themselves in this writing.

I will start by apologizing to a young lady who tried to bring me out of the darkness with invitations to a certain social event. I have always regretted turning down the invite, and even at the time I wanted desperately to accept it. I regret even more that my rejection, though not mean or rude, was probably colder and less considerate than it should have been. All I could think of at the time was my father waving a loaded rifle around and threatening to kill anyone girl that I went out with. And the time he showed up at an after school event with a loaded rifle in his truck and wouldn't leave until I left the event with him. I will also wonder what fun times we could have had that night, and regret not taking you up on your very kind offer. 

Worse still is that that last paragraph actually applies to three different young ladies over a six year span. It was a very lonely time for me, and you so kindly tried to help me through it. I wish that I had accepted.

I also apologize to the coworkers and managers at one of my earliest jobs, for not being there enough to form a proper working relationship. I was so excited to be working with you, and I was eager to join in fully. Unfortunately this was also a span of time when my father was at his most abusive. I didn't know then that my father had sent an anonymous letter to the local landlord associations warning them not to rent to me. In fact it was a full fifteen years later that I learned of this trick - and learned that I was not the first person that he had anonymously blacklisted for selfish reasons. I was also unaware at the time that more than half of the work related emails that I had been sent were intercepted and destroyed by my father. Somehow though he was supposed to be paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair at the time, he managed to climb two flights of stairs to access my old computer which still had my accounts connected to it. It would be another seven years before a hospital doctor confided in me that much of my father's paralysis had actually been an act meant to gain sympathy, and that he could actually walk far better than he had let on.

And on a related note, I apologize to my friends and coworkers for having to leave two different professional conferences early and for missing out on many dinners together for similar reasons. In one case I had just arrived at the conference and checked in when I received a call on my cell phone informing me that my father was getting violent again and I would have to come home right away. The hospital staff had told me that I had to keep his condition a secret due to privacy issues, and so I could only tell you that there were problems at home. I wish I had explained it better.

Another time I was forced to miss a lecture session I was giving due to yet another false medical emergency on the part of my father, and once again was ordered by hospital staff not to violate his privacy by telling anyone that I worked with why I was late. And again, in hindsight I wish that I had ignored his drama and ignored his privacy demands and protected my own reputation and the kindness of my coworkers and students.  You deserved better and I am sorry.

I also learned fairly recently of a number of other disturbing incidents that I feel the need to apologize for. For example I learned that two different school counselors tried to protect me from my father and his network, and both lost their jobs as a result. I also learned of other people who received horrible anonymous reviews and abusive threatening letters from my father because they stood up to him on my behalf. I discovered that my father had borrowed or otherwise owed huge sums of money, secured with collateral that he never owned and falsified documents showing a nonexistent financial fortune. For what its worth, my father actually died in debt and I had to pay some off several of his debts myself out of my own meager income. I know that there are some individuals who believe that either my mother or I used some legal trickery avoid paying his debts, but it simply isn't true. 

I also learned that a dear friend from school was told to never contact me again, by someone claiming that it was my wish when I knew nothing about it. And there are some family members that I was estranged from for more than a decade because of my father and other relatives lying and manipulating for their own personal gain. I knew nothing of any of these incidents, but I am truly sorry that they happened.

And I am sure that if I thought about it I would quickly remember a dozen more such incidents over the past two decades, but the hour is late and I need some sleep. I will surely write another of these apologies later.

For now, please accept my apologies for everything that happened in those years. While I was also a victim of my father's mental illness and obsessive nature, I still feel a certain guilt at exposing other's to my own demons. There were so many people in my life in those years who tried to help me, and were made to suffer as a result.

And for that I can only apologize and hope that some day, in some way, I can make amends for all that happened. 

I am truly sorry.