ramblings-of-1-mad-woman

[ramblings-of-1-mad-woman]

First week of January, 2024

1/1/2024

What is the first thing you remember? And is it actually your memory, or did you see a picture and hear a story and fill in the blanks? I can hardly remember anything from when my parents were together, from when I spent half the week as an only child and half as the youngest of three. But the first four years of my life are a murky mystery. I have a couple memories from when I was five, but these are the kinds of memories backed up by pictures and stories -- not ones that I truly know are mine. 

Did you know that intrusive thoughts can disguise themselves as memories? Memories that come unbidden, that overstay their welcome, that send you back to a place of shame or fear. 

Recently, I’ve had a memory popping up -- it’s a great white shark that rockets to the surface and clamps its jaws around me. This memory is from when I was very little -- it might very well be the earliest thing I can remember. It might have been the first time I felt real fear. 

I was about three or four, buckled in my car seat, and it was the summer. My dad always smelled like sunscreen in the summer, and my mom always complained about the varicose veins in her legs. I can’t remember where we were going, but we were on the highway. It was either I-90, I-91, or I-84. 

My dad sat in the passenger seat of the car -- It was a Ford Taurus station wagon. And now, I have to pause to go on a tangent about the car. Trust me, it’s important, I think. To maybe give you some context. 

Back in the days when I lived in a double income home, we had two cars. They were both Ford Taurus’, my dad’s was green and my mom’s was blue. I thought they were cool as heck. I always wanted to name them, but never felt like any of the names I came up with quite fit. They had these cool trunk seats that folded up and faced the back. I loved riding back there when I was old enough to not need a car seat. It was so much fun to watch the cars turning around me, to take in all the neon signs and concrete and brick. 

One day, though, my mom told me I couldn’t sit there anymore. That no one could sit there ever again. This triggered quite the tantrum -- I couldn’t sit back there and listen to Silver Apples of the Moon and pretend I was a princess riding in a chariot. I couldn’t watch the geese flying into the horizon and wonder about when they’d stop. I couldn’t sit back there with friends and watch the world whoosh by. 

When I asked her why, she said it was because on her way home, she’d seen a horrible accident. Someone had been rear-ended, and the whole back half of their car looked like an accordion. 

“What if you’re sitting back there and that happens? How could I live with myself?” I think those are the words she said. I can’t be certain, because that’s not how my mind works, but I’m pretty confident that was it. 

As I went to sleep that night, I thought of being buckled into the trunk seat, a tractor-trailer turning off the highway to where we waited at a stoplight. It wasn’t slowing down off the ramp, and it collided with our car, and my little body was crushed between car parts, shattered like the glass around it. I wondered what it would be like to die. I wondered what it would be like to see my body like that. To be a ghost, hovering over my broken form, watching my mother lose her mind and scream scream scream. How I would be responsible for her pain, how she would have to live the rest of her life without me and carry a hole in her heart. 

As an adult, I realized that these were intrusive thoughts. For me, intrusive thoughts mostly come as images. I guess this is just one of the ways the human brain is quirky and unique -- for some, it’s mostly words, for some it’s images, and for some, it’s a mix. These thoughts come with intense emotions -- namely terror and shame. 

In this instance with the whole getting turned into a scrap metal and human sandwich, the intrusive thought was all hypothetical. It’s so much worse when it’s a memory because it’s something that actually did happen. 

To recap: I’m about 3 or 4, my mom and dad are driving with me in a car seat in our station wagon, and we’re on the highway. Great, on with the story! 

I’m crying. I don’t know why I’m crying. Sometimes a girl just has to cry. I might have been over-tired, might have needed water. I probably had a good reason, but maybe I just wanted attention. Regardless, my mom’s attempts to soothe me with her voice did not work, so she asked my father to turn around to investigate. I was sat directly behind my father, and he moved his seat up so he could have more room to turn his body around and look at me. I kept on crying all the while. 

Maybe he took too long or maybe he just couldn’t do what she wanted him to, because she tells him to take the wheel and turns around to attend to me. 

We’re still on the highway, guys. My dad is yelling at her, asking her if she’s lost her mind, and she snarls at him. She does what she thought she needed to to get me to stop crying, and turns back to the wheel. I don’t remember if I stopped crying, or how long she was turned around for.  

But I do remember the heavy silence that hung in the air like humidity, making the car feel too small. 

This intrusive memory is a bolt of lightning, and pure terror is the thunder. Reliving that memory sends my heart racing and my stomach freefalling. We all could have died. My fault. My fault we all could have died. 

Now, you wanna know something about me that isn’t surprising? I have a hard time asking for what I need. It’s a people-pleaser thing, if you know, you know. Just as I’m not a scientist, nor am I a psychologist (because psychologists are scientists, duh). But it’s not hard to see a connection between me expressing my needs as a child and subsequently being put in a life-threatening situation and having a hard time asking the waiter for a refill. 

1/6/2024 

It’s snowing today. This was the storm that my uncle was so concerned about avoiding. He and my aunt arrived on Wednesday and surprised my mom with a visit. Of course, the whole point of them being there was to take her out of the building for the day so that my husband, my aunt, and I could move my mom without her knowing it. It’s funny how people get about driving in the snow -- they worry about things like the weather, and it seems as if they almost want to come out victorious against Mother Nature. Is it too punny to call this paragraph of random observations a “cold open”? Get it? Like cold weather? Nevermind. 

The past 24 hours have been strange. Typically of all the various mental health issues I’m facing, OCD is the most annoying. It feels constant, like a needy toddler holding onto your pant leg, tugging, tugging, tugging. Always doubting, always asking what if, always gnawing on my fears and desires. But lately grief has been center stage. An overwhelming, heavy coat of sadness, nostalgia, anger, disappointment, loneliness, and fear. I don’t want to wear it, but it’s always on. Suffocating me. 

Yesterday, I moved my mom without her consent. She knew she was moving -- in the sense that people would ask, “Oh, I heard you’re moving! When is it?” and she’d say, “No, I’m not moving.” -- but she didn’t know when. So while she was at the museum with my uncle and aunt, my family and some movers worked a miracle. 

The days going up to the move, I was so scared. I played through all the possible reactions my mom could have to being moved without her knowing. She called me a traitor, she said she hated me, she said she wanted to kill herself. But in reality, she ended up just being confused. She’s still pretty confused. “Have you seen my new place?” she asked me on the phone today. “Yes,” I replied, “I set it up for you!” And I had. I had gone through all her things, decided to get rid of some of the things I figured she wouldn’t notice were missing. 

My mom is a deeply sentimental person. She saves almost everything that has made her feel something. She has a whole file cabinet, I think for stress. The bins and bins of photos and birthday cards and other momentos are for loneliness and love. The cookbooks and cake tins for hope. 

Whenever she’d get me a present, it’d mean I couldn’t get rid of it. Every time she came over to my apartment when I was an adult, she’d point out all the things she’d given me, as if those objects anchored her to me, to my life. And she would get me a lot of things. Almost every time I saw her as an adult, she’d have things for me. Random things she saw on sale and thought I needed or could use. Measuring cups, snow shovels, beach towels, cartons of organic soup, smoked paprika, and a stuffed animal for my cat are just a few. 

Now she doesn’t remember that. She has barely any recognition of the things she got me. When she would give me these things, if I tried to politely decline, she’d only insist all the more. She would pout and complain until I relented. All of that effort, only to not even remember it. I’m scared to pull on that thought. If my sanity is a game of Jenga, then pushing or pulling on that particular block -- the one postulating that eventually I won’t remember any of my life, any of my feelings, any of my actions -- will send the whole tower crumbling. 

In 12th grade, my English teacher said my creative nonfiction essay which wove in various metaphors about my life was “fatalistic.” As if a 17-year-old could be anything but fatalistic. My mind has evolved since then. I can appreciate nuance, I enjoy being spontaneous, and serendipity is one of the most beautiful forces in the universe. But perhaps at the core of some of my fears, at the core of some of my obsessions, is fatalism. The idea that all events are predetermined. That we as humans have no control over anything, least of all our own lives. It terrifies me to think that I have no control, but it also terrifies me to think about the control I do have. 

I am in control of my actions. That’s about it. I can’t always control my thoughts or my feelings, but I can listen to them and react how I want to. I’ve developed that skill over the years. But everything else in the whole world, I have no control over. And in a way, it makes me think of that scene from Fleabag where her therapist asks her if she wants to fuck God. 

I don’t believe in God, and Fleabag is agnostic at best, but I do. I do want to fuck God. I want to fuck whoever came up with this whole thing. Whoever created this world and my sentience and my expiration. I want to fuck It and have It tell me everything is okay. Have It soothe me, caress my hair, hold me tight. Rock me to sleep in Its arms. 

Doesn’t the idea of cosmic comfort sound divine? I just want to feel a primordial peace settle over me, stripping me of my grief coat and letting my skin breathe in the air of deep space. 

I don’t believe in anything, but I want to. I think I’m too afraid to believe in myself. But I need to. The only one I can have faith in is me. 

I know I should probably talk more about my mom. Talk more about the move, about the family secrets my aunt spilled. And I will, but I think right now, I need to let the universe know that I need comfort. I need comfort and peace -- please tell me how to get it. I feel lonely, and I know the cure to that will be self- love, but I want something to fill that void. 

Am I praying? Is that what this is? Has it really come to this? I don’t believe in anything, okay? It makes me feel pathetic to do this, to reach out into nothingness and hope something latches on. There isn’t some wiser being watching over me typing into my laptop going “Hmm yes well this girl has had quite a hard time lately, shall I throw her a bone?” I’m not praying to a God. I think I’m praying to my fellow humans. Please, friends, look out for me. Be kind to me, and show me love. I will return it, I promise.

[ramblings-of-1-mad-woman]

Last week of December 2023

Ramblings of a Mad Woman 

12/28/23 

Hi, and welcome to Ramblings of a Mad Woman. I’m a woman, and I'm mad. Today I’ll be taking you through my headspace -- Are you sitting down? You might want to sit down. Maybe grab a cool drink. Here we go. 

I woke up today at 5:30am, and I was hungry. The kind of hunger where your belly feels like it’s running on the fumes of stomach acid and water vapor. So, I got up and made myself a bowl of Frosted Flakes and moved to the couch. As soon as I sat down, a deluge of thoughts washed over me. 

Youdidn’tsleep,tsktsk,andyouevenhadtwoMelatoninlastnight.MaybeyoushouldgetAmbienagain. ”Sheturnedoutbig,butIstillthinkshe’sbeautiful.”Theonlyconstantischange.That’snotcomfortingatall.DidIchangethelaundryover?No?Fuck!ShouldIreallybeeatingallthissugarrightnow?”She’sbig.”        ”Please,pleasedon’tleaveme.”

I turned on my video game, desperate for a distraction. While it loaded, I scooped heaping spoonfuls of cereal into my mouth, oat milk running down my chin. I wiped it with the back of my hand before it could fall onto my naked body. That’s right, I was naked. So what? 

What if I’ve cursed myself with eternal hunger?! The thought spiked my adrenaline. 

For context, let me explain what “hunger” means here. Last week in therapy, I made a real-life connection to a book I had read. My reading teachers would be proud. By the way, this book was so good, I still think about certain scenes, certain lines. Don’t you just love stories like that? In this story, the main character’s father had been cursed by a witch (but don’t worry, he kinda deserved it). She cursed him with hunger -- she cursed him with chronic, inescapable dissatisfaction. He’d eat and eat and eat and never feel full. He would never feel the sleepy haze settle over his body and drag him to sleep, he’d never feel the joy at unbuttoning his pants to let his overstuffed stomach expand--confineless. He would never feel the satisfaction of eating a delicious meal and savoring it with those he loved. 

You see where this is going? 

I spoke this thought into being last week. “What if I’m cursed like him?” I’d asked. “What if no matter what I do, no matter how much adventure and self-care and intentional living, I’m cursed to be unhappy forever?” 

Since voicing this thought, hunger has haunted me. Nothing sounds good, nothing sounds like it will fill this void inside me.

And so we have the terrifying thought that I cursed myself to eternal hunger by asking my brilliant what-ifs last week. 

I may need to explain to you why that thought terrifies me. You see, cursing someone, in the sense of casting a malicious spell, implies that someone with ill-will toward me wished me this eternity of suffering. And if I cursed myself, then I would be that person, the one rooting for an eternity of suffering. For me. But if I did this to myself, then in theory I could stop it, right? 

The only constant is change. I say that to myself sometimes when I’m feeling low. Because I have to have faith that this won’t last forever. But sometimes, I don’t know what’s scarier -- the thought that I am in control of my life and my happiness and just don’t want to be satisfied, or the thought that I have absolutely no control over much of anything and everything could come crashing down in a heartbeat. 

Talk about a rock and a hard place. 

Also, that whole time I was mulling that over? I was munching on my cereal. I’m an excellent multitasker when one of the tasks is letting your thoughts off the leash. Run free, little guys. 

I finished my cereal and took a few sips of coffee, praying the coffee would make me feel full. Some days when I woke up starving, I’d chug a glass of iced coffee and then not need to eat for a few more hours. Today wasn’t one of those days, but I was feeling too tired to get up and get more food. Instead, I just sat with the pain. The cramped feeling right below my ribs. The rumbling behind my bellybutton. 

You wanna hear something funny about hunger? Hunger is a cue from your body that it needs something. My stomach is stomping around, demanding something, but I’m not sure what to give it. I can’t make a decision like that. It’s too much. So I let it have its little temper tantrum. I drink some water, hoping that that will do something. 

I learned that trick from my mother. 

I’d always hear her say, “Drink a full glass of water before dinner, sweetie. It’ll help you not eat so much, okay?” 

Did you gasp? Are you outraged at a mother telling her child to ignore her bodily cues, to doubt that her body knows what’s best for her? You may also be outraged that I was taken to Weight Watchers when I have 10. I was forced to join a gym when I was 12 and I needed special doctor’s permission for it. I also needed special permission to join a cardio kickboxing class when I was 13 since it was for adults just getting off work. They just needed to get in a bit of cardio before continuing to lead their lives of success, yet here was a pimply 13-year old klutz fucking it up.

I wasn’t even that fat, on the grand scale of things. I hit five foot five (165cm for all you non-Americans) in 4th grade and have been the same height ever since. Around age 13, I was about 215-220 pounds, and wore a size 16. See, like not that bad, right?

I say “not that bad,” and then catch myself. That’s not my voice saying that. I am trying to slash through the weeds of Fatphobia with the Scythe of Self-Love, but sometimes that battlefield is dark. 

I’m in a place now where I accept my body. I do think it’s beautiful. And the ways I want it to change have nothing to do with being thinner. I want to be more flexible, stronger, to not feel like I’m inhabiting the fragile frame of an octogenarian. 

“She turned out big, but I still think she’s beautiful,” is something that my mother said to my husband last week. To be fair, my mother now has pretty advanced dementia, and she mostly rambles off nonsense. I doubt she even remembers my husband informing her that she couldn’t talk about people, especially her doting daughter, like that. 

All I hear is: “I tried really hard to make her not be fat, but I failed. Despite her size, she’s still beautiful. You know, for a fattie.” 

My stomach rumbles, and I eye the half-eaten bowl of breakfast pasta (it’s leftover from last night, and it’s not as satisfying). The red stretch marks on my stomach glare at me, and a blaze of self-hatred rushes to my cheeks. Maybe if I wasn’t so hungry…

A few hours and one more bowl of flakes later…

Do I use ellipses like a boomer? What if I just like that they build suspense? 

Anyway, I think I had a breakthrough in therapy. I have existential OCD, which if you don’t know what it is, you’re lucky. It’s a type of OCD that obsesses over existential questions. What happens when you die? Is there a God? Is this a dream? Do I have free will? Is everyone I know and love a figment of my imagination? You get the idea. And then come the compulsions, which for the longest time, I insisted I didn’t have. But asking for reassurance? Googling things like, is there a Hell? Pinching myself to make sure I’m alive? That’s a compulsion. No different than running home to make sure the stove isn’t on. I don’t trust myself to know. I need someone, something else to tell me what’s true. 

What is my purpose? I’ve asked myself this obsessively for a few years now. And at various points, I’ve had various answers. A few years ago, my answer to my therapist was “My purpose is to make people happy.” She pushed back gently, and at the time I didn’t understand why. That felt like a perfectly acceptable answer to me. (Go on, ask me. Ask me if I’m a people pleaser. You already know the answer). 

But I’ve known for a long time that my purpose is not to be a caregiver. I literally realized only this year that I was parentified hard as a child. And that left its mark. I’d already been a parent. I’d argue that I still am a parent to my mother. So a few cuts and ties later, I was a sterile 22-year-old woman. (Thank you to the r/childfree subreddit). 

As my mom continues to decline, as more and more of her is eaten away, her brain rots like spores of mold on bread. (The image isn’t helped by the frequency with which I find moldy bread somewhere in her kitchen). I really do have to take care of her, though. As a kid, she made me responsible for her emotional well-being. That was the purpose ascribed to me. Be her best friend, be the person she can brag about, be her whole world, be her maid, be her therapist, be her mother. 

Why was I brought into this world? My parents divorced when I was 5 -- I wasn’t here for their happiness. My dad even admitted once that he really doesn’t like kids. No, I was here for her happiness. I was going to fill the void inside her, I was going to make her feel understood, make her feel a sense of belonging, purpose, worth, and unconditional love. 

And so what happens when I failed and continue to fail at those tasks? Because those sure are a lot of expectations to put on a person. To put on a child. When I fail, I feel completely worthless. 

She had me so she could have a perfect person to fix all her problems. When I can’t do that, I feel worthless because I’m supposed to be her perfect daughter. I’m supposed to provide a community’s worth of love to someone who was unknowingly abusive. It’s a tall order. 

12/31/23

You ever have a thought in the middle of the night that you think is incredibly brilliant? So you write it down somewhere only to look at it in the sober light of morning and realize it’s utter crap? I wonder if that light somehow missed Stephanie Meyers, since after all it is lore that she thought of the story for Twilight in a dream. We all know this girl just had a vampire wet dream, and to that I say, join the club. Water’s fine. 

But yeah, that was me last night around 4:45am when my little furball Owen hacked up a hairball. 

My thought? 

What if mad became an acronym: MAD. I’m a MAD woman. Because I’m not really a mad woman. I think I’ve burnt through my reserve of fury coals, my logs of frustration. Now I’m running on fumes. More often than not, I’m a sad woman. 

But I am mad in the sense of crazy. Not right in the head. A little bit coo-coo. Which is why I thought of this acronym: 

Mothers 

(with)

Alzheimer's 

(and)

Dementia 

The little words don’t count, okay? 

So, what do we think? Cringe, right? But last night, it seemed so funny. I’m a crazy woman in part because of my mother with Alzheimer's and dementia. In part because of how she raised me, and in part because I have my own issues that are triggered basically every time I interact with her. 

I think that anyone would have been pretty rattled if they’d gone through my interactions with my mom. I think that, and yet I can’t stop myself from feeling like I should have been more patient. I should have been nicer. But I was just so frustrated. 

The scent of human excrement was overpowering when I walked in her door. I could tell it was coming from the kitchen garbage. I frowned, also scenting a dirty litter box. The cat’s dry food was overfilling from his automated food bowl, and I knelt down to scoop up the gritty kibble. 

“Can I help you take out the trash?” I hedged. 

“The trash… oh, the trash? Take it out?” 

“Yeah, it smells a little bad in here, I think if we take the trash out it will smell better.” 

“Well, yeah, I was going to do it, I’ll do it later, don’t worry about it.” 

I tried not to roll my eyes. The stench was horrendous, I couldn’t understand how she didn’t smell it. 

“I think we should do it now, okay? Can you put a new bag in?” I gathered the bag, tying it extra tight before bringing it to the door. 

“So we take this down… down the hall, right?” 

“Nope, the trash chute is right around the corner.”

“Trash chute… what’s a trass jute?” 

“No, TraSH CHute. It’s where you throw away the trash.” 

“Ohh…” 

We repeated the same conversation once more before finally sending the trash down the chute. There was a second box, full of her take out containers from the dining hall. 

“Wait is this trash? Or?”

“It’s in a trash bag, it’s probably trash,” I said flatly. 

“Probably trash…” she mumbled. “Oh yeah, this stuff. Yeah, this is trash. It was something awful.” 

She asked if we were going to have dinner together, and I said no. It was 2pm, and I was planning on leaving by 3:30. 

“What? So we can’t have food together?” She sounded like I’d told her her cat died. 

“Not today, no, but soon, okay?”

“Alright…” 

I took a deep breath and listened as she complained about her hair. It was light brown, the roots almost completely gray. She insisted on continuing to dye her hair even though she couldn’t do it by herself last time. “It’s so awful, I want it shorter, I think. Can you take me with you to get a new… a new, you know.” She pointed at her roots. 

“A new color?”

“Yeah, didn’t you suggest something? I thought it was a good idea.” 

“Yes, I suggested you stop dying your hair and just embrace going gray.” 

She dismissed it with a wave of her hand and a frown. 

“No, no, that wasn’t it.” 

She continued to ramble about her hair, and it made me mad. It made me so mad that she was so obsessed with how she looked. Why did it matter? 

I offered to trim her hair, voice tight. 

I guided her to the bathroom, and she looked in the mirror. Her face crumbled, and she sobbed out, “Oh god, I’m so ugly.” Her chest heaved as deep sobs shook her fragile frame. It felt like something broke inside me. Like my heart was caught between two magnets, being squeezed by a force I couldn’t control. 

“No, Mom, no, you’re beautiful.” The words made her cry harder, and she looked around -- I could tell she was worried her neighbors would hear her crying. Always concerned about the opinions of others.

To be fair, she isn’t beautiful anymore. Her bones jut out on her collarbone, and if you touch her back, you can feel her spine protruding. Her hair was greasy and flat like it hadn’t been washed in a week. She seems to be wasting away, her skin sagging off of her since she’s constantly dehydrated.  

She looks like she’s dying, and death is ugly. Death is the most hideous thing I can imagine. It’s the opposite of life, it’s the absence of life. And life is beautiful. Or at least, it can be. I do try to hold on to the few pieces of optimism I can. One is that life is/can be beautiful. 

At my wedding, my mom read the quote, "The world is full of beauty when your heart is full of love." And I certainly agree.

But I realized that the beauty I'd seen in my mom before all of this decay came from my love for her. She was so generous, so giving, she had a big heart and was very sensitive. She had a laugh like mine that was both easily recognizable and often heard. But my mom has no love in her heart for herself, so she sees no beauty.

As a teenager and young(er) adult, I had no love for myself. I had internalized all the comments about my snacking, snide remarks about my outfits, and hatred of fatness. The way she spoke to me was just an extension of how she spoke to herself. My foundational relationship to myself had not been built on respect or love. It had been built on disappointment, guilt, shame, and hatred. Sometimes I feel like it’s the reason I found myself in so many situations where the hair on my arms was raised, where I could sense the malintent, the manipulative ambition. I still catch myself thinking like that. 

We all inherit our parent’s shit to some extent. Whether it’s literally an inherited mental illness, or just some sort of thing that sets us off, every human alive has beef with their parents about something. It’s a people-pleaser’s worst nightmare, to be a parent. No matter what you do, you’ll fuck up somehow. It’s a guarantee. 

Yesterday, I had to deal with my mom’s shit. Literally and metaphorically. I am going to have to continue to deal with her shit, both literally and metaphorically for a while. Eventually, I won’t literally have to deal with it, but that means that she’s dead. The real her died a long time ago, I think. Maybe even before I was born. She had a whole life before I was in it, and sometimes I feel guilty for being the opportunity cost of freedom. Maybe she would have been happier if she’d waited, met someone else, adopted on her own, or just didn’t have kids. We’ll never know, but my brain loves those questions. Those questions are bones for my brain to sharpen its teeth with. 

So, this New Year’s Eve, I’ll be toasting to one day feeling at peace with the shit I have to deal with, and hopefully one day, it’ll just be my own.