My life started getting bumpy my junior year of college. I have now been graduated from college for 1 1/2 years. This all started when my granddad decided to quit smoking. He had to take medicine in order to do this. He was once a generally happy person, and he didn't get upset at all really. However, when he stopped smoking and got on his meds, he became irritable and easy to upset towards some people.
My grandmother thought he was becoming a completely different person. They started getting frustrated towards each other. To this day, my granddad doesn't have many nice things to say to my mother (my mom, grandmother, and granddad live in the same house) I was quiet for a long time and didn't feel like I had a lot of control in the matter.
This has all been very odd because up until the past few months, my granddad and I didn't get in many arguments. It was mostly just my family arguing amongst themselves, and I was sort of a mediator. At times, it felt like they were trying to get me to be on their side (I didn't want to pick a side because I loved them all). My granddad probably has the most sense in my family, but he can still get irrationally angry with people. Almost to the point of being juvenile.
His transformation has been hard to watch because I really looked up to him before he started changing. Now he is grumpy and condescending all the time, and I don't really feel like I have anyone I can go to like I used to. We used to talk about politics, religion, things of that nature in a relaxed way. He was definitely one of the people I was closest with in life. Now he thinks republicans should be burned at the stake (not his exact words, but he was completely serious). I don't think he'd actually harm anybody, but he spoke with a lot of hatred when he said it.
Here's an example of a conversation we had the other day. We were looking for another car for my mother (there is a story behind this, but I'm writing a lot more than I thought I would about my granddad alone). On the way in to the dealership, I spotted a Tesla. I asked him, "What do you think about those Tesla's?" He said, "I think it will be a sad day when the only thing on the road will be autonomous cars." I said to him, "Sad? I guess I don't understand why it's sad." Then he responds with, "See, that's the problem with your generation. You don't do anything." I was pretty upset by this I thought, wow what a classic old and bitter thing to say. So I responded with, "We're making autonomous cars, so I guess we're doing something."
By the time I said that, we were in the dealership and he marched off in to the car lot. His face didn't change. We were walking beside each other, and he just started walking a bit faster than I was into the car lot. I don't know if this was because he just didn't have anything else to say or he was genuinely upset. Anyways, that's enough for this post. I was also going to talk about some new things that have happened with my mom and sister, but this has gotten much longer than expected. I'm not sure if this was coherent or not. If you made it this far, feedback is much appreciated.
And I say I'm not sure what to do because my granddad is the person I used to do a lot of mental processing with. Now I feel like I can't anymore. I'm not sure if I should go to a therapist to process other events that have happened in my life. One of the main things I might need therapy for is because of what happened with my mom and sister. My sister's dad and granddad died on the same day. Now I'm in this odd family role where they're asking me for fatherly advice, but I'm 2 hours away and they don't always follow through (they do most of the time thankfully). I will get more in to that on my next post.