Old People Get Paranoid

I swear that the older people get, the more paranoid they become. I'm not sure if this is simply a matter of brain chemistry gone bugfuck, medication overload, faulty nutrition, spiritual bankruptcy, fear of death, contrariness, just desserts, revenge, or some other factors that I am too unimaginative to categorize. A case in point is my elderly neighbor. She used to be very friendly and chatty, but for the past two months she has stopped talking to me and snubs me whenever we are both in the same outdoor space. This morning, she left a voicemail for me accusing me of putting my trash bag on her property. Of course, I had done no such thing, but she thought I did. Why she thought that I cannot fathom. It's paranoia, I think.

I have a friend whose mother is in her mid-90s, and the stories I hear also lead me to believe that this elderly woman is becoming more paranoid the longer she lives. I'm not saying there isn't enough to be paranoid about in this world. As the saying goes, just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get me.

My dad was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and I think that was a misdiagnosis, but it's instructive all the same. His paranoid delusion that someone was going to sue him and take away his farm and all he had worked for because he was involved in an accident on the county road that ran past our homestead was the tipping point for him. He was on the road at dusk with two horses pulling a seeder, and a car going much too fast ran into the back of the seeder because my dad apparently didn't have a reflective triangle on the back of the machinery. That part was his fault, of course, but the driver of the car was also to blame for not having his automobile under control. After that accident, my dad went into a whirlwind of paranoia, and all he could think about or obsess about was the fact that this man was going to sue him and render him penniless and homeless. That never happened, of course, because no real damage was done in the accident, except to my father's sanity. He spent several years after that in a state-owned mental hospital, underwent 50 electroshock "treatments," and never recovered his equanimity.

As I said before, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. Whatever was out to get him, got him. I am only sorry that it was all inside the walls of his skull. If he could have just let go of the paranoid thought, he might have lived and been happy.

I hope my crazy neighbor can get help for her paranoia before it kills her too.