thefrowninghour

[thefrowninghour]

Diet

By the time I was 11, I'd been ill for 2 years, and none the wiser why. I was still medically underweight and jaundiced. Claiming that modern medicine was at a loss to treat my chronic indisposition, even after the antibiotics had cured what was most acutely and obviously wrong, SHE had gone back to her arsenal. Naturopaths, Homeopaths. Thick tomes full of Latin names and numerals. Powders and pills sold at tiny grocery stores that smelled like patchouli. Cotton wads dipped in water that went on the soles of the feet white, and came off grey and dripping with the elusive "toxins" that had always lurked inside me. The most omnipresent cure was always some new diet. The toast diet. The rotation diet. Frutarianism (or a mockery of it). The Specific Carbohydrate Diet, still the worst I remember, was the one that finally stuck. An extremely limiting plan, especially for a child already underweight and growth delayed, where foods, endlessly listed, were categorized as LEGAL or ILLEGAL. Combined with fasting to "give your digestive system a break" my weight dropped precipitously. My longest fast, enforced for the benefit of my Health, was 8 days. 1, 2, or 3 day fasts I'd already undertaken, under different pressures from my mother, begging, negging, guilting and general duress, but even for a seasoned faster as I was by then, looking down the barrel of a week and a day with no food was daunting. "But remember from your last fast? My mother, always dieting herself, though never able to stick with anything for long, cajoled me "The hunger goes away after the 3rd day, you said so yourself"

[thefrowninghour]

the illness

By the time i was in the 4th grade, my mother's wishes had come true. Possibly manifested from her conviction that there was something wrong with me, I was actually ill this time. Provably so. I was losing weight, the whites of my eyes had yellowed, and i had stomach and joint aches all the time. I was stressed, trying to hide the condition from her, so as not to provide more proof of my inadequacy, my burdensomeness, not to put more of a strain on the family's limited resources. She was delighted, glowing with a secret glee as she uncovered my symptoms. Shooting my sideways looks when i grimaced or touched an aching joint. Covertly following me on my many trips to the washroom. I was diagnosed with Claustridium Dificile, and given 2 round of antibiotics, to be taken every few hours. The drama of waking in the night to administer medicine seemed to delight my mother. However I was still ill. More doctors, more tests. Whispering. I'd previously been a practical and sturdy child, and wanted to be involved, wanted to know what was going on, but to relinquish me back any measure of my power would have spoiled the fun. A diagnosable illness, curable by modern medicine, would have seemed pedestrian, would have spoiled the victorian drama, the vision of a beautiful longsuffering mother, fretting and wasting away for worry over her child. My illness was really *her* illness. My plight nothing compared to the one she was experiencing by proxy.

[thefrowninghour]

6

I realized my mother no longer liked me. Or maybe had never liked me.

Possibly, I was simply too young before to notice, still in the early childhood dream state where no line exists between the end of self and the start of the world outside, the textures, feelings and thoughts of other people. My personality and preferences were developing, and i was to be under no illusion that these were acceptable. Complaints started, first conversations on the phone held within my earshot, detailing my substandardness (she hides in the SHOE CLOSET) or my excess (she goes upstairs and puts on ALL HER CLOTHES AT ONCE) To this day, I examine my smallest habit and quirk for pathology, for harm to others, offensiveness. It's taken decades to realize the idiosyncrasies that brought me, time and again, to waiting rooms of child psychologists, naturopaths, homeopaths, none of whom could find a single diagnosable thing about me, were simply the symptoms of the curious condition of being 6 years old.

[thefrowninghour]

Before

Before the total breach, there'd been a time of relative calm. What we pretended was a truce, but really the eye of a storm, respite before the destruction began again in earnest. I was 18, and had been for a short time legally, though we all knew I'd been that way for longer. I wondered how much to her advantage my mother might have known this clerical error, deliberate or otherwise, might have been, and how much she might regret it now that it wasn't to her pecuniary advantage. The extra months she'd had to wait to collect her long awaited due. I paid my rent weekly, a small detail that added a layer of shabbiness and impermanence to my feelings. Like I was staying in a cheap motel. This at least, I knew to be a deliberate manipulation on her part. Even from the time I was 16 and home for a few days from my "OtherMother's" house, her mantra was always "you don't HAVE to live here, you know." And how I knew

[thefrowninghour]

A stronger girl would shake this off in flight

Moving into my first apartment, a month shy of my 19th birthday I'd cleared my savings account to do it, the one marked "don't die destitute" in my banking app by june i'd been in a sleeping bag in the small patch of woods beside an electronics store, near an overpass, hearing the rush and swish of cars sweeping past all night as I lay sleepless. in may and april i'd been living in my car, parked in the lot outside my job, until the cops started waking me up, tapping their maglights on my windows in march i'd confronted my mom about her involvement with a domestic terrorist organization. a church calling themselves "army of god"

she and my brother stood, staunch, backs to the exit their conviction was strong. those against them were the enemy, and this was a holy war. like all wars, force was justified, even murder my body had understood the threat while my mind was still processing. it had backed away, sought the exit, the back door, blundering. grabbing a laundry basket, my keys. driving away, any direction