I Don't Like The Shining

I can't be the only one that has ever experienced a moment which forever changes how you look at someone. Most people can easily talk about that day when they realised that they're parents weren't perfect. I never really had that moment, I might have but I probably just forgot it. However, I can remember the night that actually made me realise that not only are my parents not perfect, but they can actually have serious problems.

My dad has always been quiet and passive. He's a lovely and funny guy but he could never really take control of a situation by himself. My mum has always been there to deal with their problems. The only thing my dad had to do was go to work, come home and cook dinner for all of us.

A few years ago my dad decided to start his own company called Site Zero. It did something with servers or databases or something like that. My dad was really good at the technical side of the company but he was never good with clients. He would go out and get clients, set up whatever they wanted but would always have trouble getting paid for his work. My mum and him decided to get a business partner, Richard, who could run the 'business' side of the operation while my dad focused on the 'technical' stuff.

Long story short, Richard was an asshole. He bullied my dad for months. My dad was blamed for everything wrong with the website, business and clients. This guy's nature ranged from passive agressive, to just aggressive. My dad took all this abuse and didn't know how to respond. If I ever meet Richard again, I would call him a 'cunt' and let him know that he hurt one of the nicest people I know.

All of this abuse culminated in an evening during the middle of my eighth grade Easter holidays. My twin brother and I were pretty bored that school holidays. I can't remember much from that week besides the fact that I had some homework that I was putting off.

My dad comes home from work like usual but today he's a lot more excited. For the last few weeks my dad actually had a spring in his step and wanted to actually do things with everyone. Usually he was content with coming home and watching Spicks and Specks while drinking a beer. My mum was doing a late shift at work so it was just the three of us for the evening.

He decided for us that we're going to watch a movie. He had rented out the Shining and kept talking about how it was such a great film. I believed him. I had heard that Stanley Kubrick was pretty good at directing and was actually a bit excited about watching it. It turns out that there's a bit of miscommunication. He was glued to the screen and seemed to be watching a totally different movie than what me and my brother were watching. He mentioned a few times throughout it just how it is such a meaningful film. He was slightly too focused and excited about the whole situation. I did the only thing I could think at the time to diffuse the intensity in the room and started doing some of my homework.

However, it only got worse. It got to a point in the evening where my dad started to mention something about a 'hidden meaning' or 'truth' to The Shining. He was gleeful at the fact that he had seen something in the film that no one else had noticed until then. He was intent on making me and my brother aware of this too. At this moment I was actually scared of my father. My dad has always been too predictable and now he was this person in our living room who had spotted an underlying truth that explains everything about the universe in a very good psychological horror movie.

I called up my mum in the middle of her shift and told her about what was going on. It took her a while to get home but when she arrived, she was just as shocked at what was going on as me and my brother. She went absolutely ballistic at my dad for trying to push a horror film - it was a legitimately horrifying film - onto me and my brother. That was when my dad decided to go all out and try to explain to her exactly what he was doing. He never managed to explain himself. It was just key words like 'truth', 'meaning' and 'life' thrown together to sound like a philosophy lecture. This was when my mum immediately moved the conversation to another room and out of earshot. After about ten minutes of yelling and ranting they emerge from the room and my mum explained to us that they're going to take my dad to hospital.

I found out later that my dad has an undiagnosed case of bipolar disorder. The stress had simply gotten to him and he just slipped from reality. In retrospect it was a pretty minor manic episode. Things could have gone a lot worse if we didn't pick up on it at the time. I learned that during his university years he became so stressed he saw a portal to hell.

It only took one visit the hospital to diagnose him and get him on the proper regime of pills. He took a few months off from work and stayed at one at this resort styled complex for people with mental health issues. My mum and father contacted a lawyer and managed to make SiteZero pay for all his medical bills and time off for a hostile work environment.

That evening jarred my opinion of my father. I knew he wasn't the greatest dad in the world but I never thought he could have problems just like anybody else. His disorder totally turned my family's life upside down and it will never go back to the way it was. I don't think less of him. I actually think he's better than he was before. That event completely shattered him, but he managed to rebuild himself and move on.

Edit: This assignment got a 5 overall.