The Tangled Web

When I returned home as a child after living abroad, my father placed a large welcome sign written in Arabic above the living-room doorway. Although it may have seemed harmless to my family, I felt that it immediately marked our home as unfamiliar to any potential friend, which significantly limited my social life during junior and senior high school. After I turned 18, my parents became increasingly involved in having me evaluated and treated for occasional previous sleep difficulties and other concerns, and I was pressured to take medication and placed in treatment numerous times—approximately seven to ten times—despite most not believing that I was dangerous or needed that level of intervention. I have not been in treatment for about 20 years, but I feel that the diagnosis recorded about me was stigmatizing and inaccurate, and that my family’s actions damaged my reputation, career, finances, and relationships with authorities. I was eventually placed on welfare at age 40, despite having graduated from a respected private university and wanting to work, and I felt that this decision restricted my independence and future prospects. My parents both benefited with their own health issues being unknown publicly and also from the community sympathy from having sick children. I also believe that information about my mental health was used against me during a probate dispute with my sibling, including threats of arrest and legal action, while my concerns about the work I had done for my parents were dismissed. What has been especially painful is feeling that medical, legal, and government systems accepted my family’s account without adequately hearing mine nor caring about the truth of my good nature. Now that my parents have died and my sibling has received half of the estate, I feel economically and socially isolated, without close friends or anyone I can talk to, and I worry that the history attached to my name continues to affect my employment, music career, reputation, and ability to live independently. My sibling used abuse of process to control probate decisions and the claim I made for work for parents. My parents benefited from this in that they were released from liability for possible neglect or abuse. These individuals spread stories around me to control the environment for their benefit. The government and police backed these family members also, which is very hurtful to think about. Thinking that people entrusted to administer fairly not endorse abuse nor neglect or cover it up were not doing so is extremely distressing. Alone and perpetually volunteering in the U.S.A. until it becomes great volunteer work.