[Present Day]
Jen: So, basically, I'm editing the conversation that we had in the car. The conversation we had in the van.
Vida: I was going to say that. Right, okay.
[Flashback]
Vida: In 82, you know, I met your father, and we moved in together late 82. After you were born, I was ready to walk out on him. When he was on tequila, he lost control.
Jen: You know, they say that, everybody says that about tequila, and I find it so interesting because it seems like bullshit.
Vida: Well, it depends on the person.
Jen: Is it the sugar as well?
Vida: I think it can be triggered or triggered.
Jen: Right, and if he had some sort of mental disorder.
Vida: Right, he had schizophrenia.
Jen: Although, I kind of think, so when I was diagnosed bipolar, I kind of thought that maybe he had bipolar with mania and hallucinations.
Vida: Could be.
[Present Day]
Jen: So, you brought up a particular incident where he was violent early on, like he broke stuff because he was drunk on tequila, you said?
Vida: Yeah, when he gets drunk on tequila, he would do weird shit, knocking things over, and I tried to stop him, and I bent over to touch his shoulders to pull him up because, I mean, he was not facing me, and he turned around and he put a fist up, but he did not swing. When he realized who it was, he stopped.
Jen: Where do you think he was emotionally or mentally?
Vida: Possibly because of you. Not negatively, but that he was worried, you know, how maybe this is a macho thing. You know, how am I going to take care of this little girl? I think he was thinking, what are we going to do with her? How are we going to do this? I think it was more that. I think that’s where that came from.
Jen: So the anger didn't really have to do with the schizophrenia then? I was thinking that maybe he was triggered by something.
Vida: Maybe so, I don't know.
Jen: How… You said that you thought that he had schizophrenia to evade Vietnam, right? You thought that that was something.
Vida: I remember, or this is what I remember, that… He told me he had used schizophrenia as an out, that he had a doctor sign a paper that he had schizophrenia to have an out for Vietnam. So he didn't make it sound like he really had schizophrenia, just that he was using it as, like his father found somebody that would sign the paper instead of being an out.
Jen: How did this come up?
Vida: I don't remember. I don't. I mean, we probably were talking about, I mean, we met in 82, so that was well after Vietnam was over. I might have asked him how he didn't go to Vietnam or what his number was, his lottery number, because they did, like Joni's was number one for that year. I might have asked him what his lottery number was, which I think it was pretty low or pretty high, I should say. But he told me he still got paperwork. It's just the impression I got. I'm not saying it could have, it's what I understood.However, obviously I didn't understand what he was trying to say.
Jen: Yeah, I was just curious about how that even came up. Like, okay, because I thought I remembered that there was a point where you told me that he would hear like radio transmissions or something and he thought it was the government. Can you explain that to me?
Vida: I don't remember about the government. I know he was hearing noises and he was thinking our landlord was doing stuff, but I was hearing the noises too. But whatever he was hearing… I don't, honestly, I don't remember anything about the government. But I do, I know he was paranoid about the government, but I don't remember him ever saying he heard from the government. And anytime anything negative happened around us, like that firebomb in the South Side, he just, any little thing, he felt it was personal or against him. So whatever the paranoia was came from the schizophrenia, I'm sure.
Jen: Paranoid delusions…
Vida: And I didn't realize he was really schizophrenic because, like I said, the impression was that it was just used as a ruse to get out of Vietnam. So I just thought I was not going to put up with it after a while. I said, no more, I'm not doing it. I'm not moving every time you get scared. And he didn't like that I was not listening to his fears.
Jen: Can you tell me more about that day? I don't understand that.I don't know about that situation at all.
Vida: Well, the firebombing was one o'clock in the morning and it was on Laurel. And a couple of doors down from us, the other side of the boys that lived there, so next to them there was another duplex or something. There was an old codger in that building and nobody liked him. He was a get off my grass kind of guy. And nobody liked him. And I guess he was always fighting verbally, arguing and whatever. So he must have pissed somebody off. And they came by and threw a Molotov cocktail at his car. Now his car was parked in front of the…
Jen: South Side of Chicago.
Vida: Towards that side, you know. And Bernie looked at me when he came back in from looking around. And I looked at him and I said, I'm not moving. And then he started drinking again after that.
Jen: Oh, fuck. Was that the most serious or violent thing that had happened? Were the other things that had occurred that he was worried about much smaller? Or what were some of the other things he was worried about?
Vida: Oh, yeah. He was worried like the landlord, what he was blaming the landlord for, which was the place we lived in when we had you.He thought the landlord was poking at the ceiling, making noises, trying to get us out. Now I heard the noises too. I basically said, okay, because I heard them too. Now I didn't approach the landlord. It could have been a heater issue or a piping issue. It just sounded like, I'm going to make a noise here, like it felt like it was a pounding from the landlord who lived below us. I said, okay, I didn't ask the landlord. Because I think I had said I was going to ask the landlord, and he didn't want me to… A year and a half or whatever. So we could get out of the lease no problem. And then when we moved to the next place, and I was working not too far from there, so I used to walk to work. The upstairs people were making noise. However, I believe one of them was using a cane.And that does, you do hear that on the first floor, if they're walking above you with the cane. And we went to the management company, because this was a big building, that was management. We complained about the noise. Again, he probably thought they were doing it on purpose. I don't think they were. But he had that, so again, we had to move. And that's when we applied for the house on Laurel. And we had to wait three months to get in there. So we were staying with Lydia. Now, living at Lydia's didn't bother him, maybe because it was the three of us plus you. It was Lydia, Bernie, and I, and then, of course, you were there.
[Later]
Jen: Honestly, the delay is what's bothering me the most.
Vida: Okay. I'm trying not to talk because of the delay and letting you finish out.
I mean, I could do something, you know, we could work something out.Because I'm trying to wait and watch your reaction as I'm speaking to see if you are getting, and then occasionally go like that, and I go, okay, she's got it.
Jen: Oh, my God, stop talking. Okay. Well, the delay is getting to me now, so I got to edit this. Thanks for talking again.
Vida: Are you okay? I'm trying not to talk because of the delay.
Jen: It's literally like 20 seconds. It's really bad. I got to go. She's doing all these, like, gestures. I don't. She's doing, like, baseball gestures. I know it's, like, baseball gestures. But, like, see. Okay. Bye.
Vida: I love you.
Jen: Now she's shrugging. You can talk. We just can't talk at the same time. All right. I'll see you later. Thank you.
[~*guitar solo*~]
