Evening and mourning; the first day.

3:00am, January 2, 2015

I came home from dinner my dad’s house at 11.  It was obvious I’d been crying.

I came upstairs after saying goodnight to Mom and Dan-o.

My mother came up a bit later, knocked, entered, sat down, and, looking sort of pained, asked if I was OK.  

I didn't really know what to tell her.

I admitted why I'd been crying, mostly about wanting Grandma to stick around, and feeling selfish for it, since her sight and hearing are almost gone.   And that her life has gotten so hard and painful.   (I didn't admit the sadness over seeing papa’s lost child written down on the calendar he gave me, nor that Betsy told me how common miscarriages are, or that I didn't answer when she asked me how I’d save the world.)   I just talked about how it was so sweet seeing pictures of Great Aunt Catherine and Paul together – especially since she'd prayed so hard for him, when he was 2 and a half months premature and in the NICU... and the beauty of the strength of her faith from the stories mom had told me about her made me tear up again. 

“Well, I’m glad to hear that – you wrote something pretty cold about her when she died.”

What?!?  What the heck could I possibly have written?  I have no concept of, no connection to, no real idea who I was then… what?

“Mom, oh god, what on earth did I write?”  I squinch up my face in stomach-knotting anticipation of the flood of self-reproach that will undoubtedly come; I cradle the little mes of the past, and pity and have compassion for them even though I no longer understand their motivation.   Still, I stretch out their wrongdoings like tattered, translucent black banners behind me, a shroud of things to remember not to do again.

“Yeah, you wrote that this old woman died and you felt nothing.  And you wrote for your kids that you’re a Christian, but you don’t participate in religion, so I don’t know what you believe. … “You mentioned that I did all these things right in raising you without having to be told; well, my parents weren't experts, they just tried to teach me to do what’s right.  And that’s what I tried to teach you.  But then, when you were growing up, you would do all of these things and I would wonder, What the hell is wrong with you?”

I put my hands up to my mouth to make sure I don't speak until she is done, but also because I am flabbergasted.   How… what…. Why… what possible reason could you have had for telling me that?  What the hell is the point she is trying to make?   What…?   My brain comes up with a big ol’ “Does not compute,” and I show my confusion on my face.

… and then I asked.  Good job me, good habit, reinforcement, yay… even though it was uncomfortable; I asked my mother right in that moment if that was what she meant, that she thought I was a bad kid and that she didn't know what the hell was wrong with me. 

She got angry. “That’s NOT what I said,” she spat, half venomously.    Perhaps it is from my mother that I inherited my proclivity for unforeseen, spur-of-the-moment mood swings?

“No, you’re right,” I start, just barely keeping from voicing …you just said to a crying daughter… “You said, ‘I would wonder, what the hell is wrong with her?’”  

I try to take the incredulity of my voice, but I have totally failed, and I’m sure she can hear the sarcasm thicker than molasses in my brain: yes, mother, you’re right, that’s so much better.

A pause.

Oh my god, I wish I could show her that “Explaining depression to my mother” slam poetry video without her dying.  She doesn't even know why that offended me, nor why she should be in the wrong for just saying something that’s true, and that she thought about me at the time this true thing happened.   I actually believe that she has no idea that bringing up a past discretion against a now-dead woman, which I committed in my adolescence or late childhood, would be an unsympathetic or unhelpful thing to do.

Ugh. 

I don't like having to take care of my mom in this capacity, while simultaneously worrying that she wonders what the hell is wrong with me.    Not just don't like it.   Resent it.   But even in admitting that resentment, I realize that I wouldn't know how to make a friend better, either – and it’s not like mom has Hyperbole and a Half lying around, or would know what to do after reading it together.    She’s unequipped, and saddled with a weird, broken model of the exemplary first-born child she must at least used to have thought was hers.  So… oh well.   With a last pat to the side of his chestnut brown neck, I dismount from my high horse of offense and huffery, and then lead all three of us (horse and all) down what I hope is the higher road than yelling.

…I apologize.

I try to explain it, slowly but hopefully not patronizingly, that that’s just what my brain does.  It hears a whole bunch of stuff, but it’s so afraid of being disliked that it takes the worst of it, takes the part where my mom said “what the hell is wrong with [me]” and hears only that.  I explain that that has become a coping mechanism, a thing I started to do so I could anticipate the worst anyone could throw at me.  “Hope for the best, be ready for the worst, you know.”  Because if I can overcome that, overcome the worst, then there’ll be nothing left, nothing left to hate or be unworthy or disappoint or worry anyone – if I can overcome the worst of it, then I’ll be accepted and love, and I’ll be free.

I see that this is either painful, or I’ve lost her, so I mention that it feels like we’re walking different paths, and that it sounds like hers is simpler and maybe straighter, and mine’s a little twisty, but we’re both getting there.

And then I try to explain about the crying.  About how when I can’t cry, or don’t realize something’s up, my brain protects me by deflecting attention from what’s wrong – I say inappropriate stuff, get a little crazy, make jokes at bad times, have a hard time listening; it’s just my brain trying to cope with a thing it worries about me looking at directly.   So, until I recognize I’m being a little weird and out of control (like I did tonight – again, kudos to me!! -- I took a lap around Papa and Betsy’s stairs!  Two, actually!), I feel manic and weird and don’t quite know what’s wrong with me.

But I'm working on noticing that, and calming down, and crying when I need to.  And I say “need to” because when I cry, it’s not actually always just sadness, mom; it helps me to clear my mind of the turmoil and debris just to see what’s wrong and then figure out what to do about it.

About how I am doing a better job about getting sleep and getting bills paid and getting the skills I need to not have to cry in order to reach catharsis, to not have to get to fall-apart crisis mode before I can start to make it better.

Because, I think to myself, “it’s 10 times harder to put yourself back together than it is to fall apart.”   Thanks, Finnick.

… Apparently, this is a bit much?   As I came to that last bit, I recognized I was monologue, and stopped to see if mom was still with me.   She was looking a bit distant, and had kind of scrunched up her mouth, so I realized I should stop. 

Oh, that’s right, guy from that TED talk or video I once watched – you’re right, people don’t want to wake up to see uncomfortable reality.   A wonderful wife of mine once told me that people don’t want to do the work.  Don’t want to take the path once they've seen it.  

Gosh, I wish I’d realized this as I was speaking; at the time, I just worried I was going crazy.   Are mom and Pat right?   Do I just take things too seriously?   Are the things I just discussed today with KJ, and the topics I can sometimes discuss with Rowan and other friends actually just… proof that we’re too much in our own heads?

So, what I did instead of stopping or checking in or making sure she’s with me is launch into another monologue.  This time, it was try to prove that I am not, in fact, insane, and that crying and talking things out is actually helping me feel better more often.  I talked about spending New Year’s Eve with Pat – modified the story; mentioned that it was a weird night, but leave out the part that I slept miserably.  I focus on how I enjoyed talking to people, enjoyed engaging and listening to how they felt about the evening.   I was genuinely proud of myself, that I stuck up for myself and what I wanted – I was myself, I insisted that we go out, I got to be talkative, got to be a bit sassy, probably annoyed Pat a little, but I didn’t accept just watching movies at his place all night, or that we had to do anything he wanted just because he wanted.   I know I don’t owe him anything.     I’m not the little girl who sat and watched the boys play video games for ever and ever just to gain acceptance – I needed to do that, maybe, to learn a lesson (though maybe not for so long).   But I’m getting there, I really am!  

Mom smiles, but seems… distant?    This pep talk schtick, while all true, doesn’t seem to be working.   So, finally, I check in – “Mom, you doing OK?”

“Yeah,” she muttered, utterly unintelligibly.    God, I must get it from both sides of the family.

“What, mom?”

“Yes.   I just… I don't know why you feel like you have to act happy so much of the time.   Like, why do you think you have to fake it?  Just be yourself!  Just… just get organized, and be yourself.   You don’t have to pretend to be happy, if that’s what you think you need to do.”

I want to scream, or go away, or tell her to leave, or pull at my hair, or petulantly insist, “YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND!  I HAVE ALL THE FEELINGS!”… but I actually do take a breath this time, and realize that… actually… I’m doing a much better job at being myself lately than I have in days past.    I quickly gather evidence of this from the last few days, and try to present it cheerily to her.   (Interestingly enough, it just occurred to me that this was exactly what she was talking about – acting cheery – but it was literally the only thing I could think of to do.)

Instead I just say, softly, “But mom, I’ve spent so much of my life trying not to be myself, I need to get the habit back first.”

The conversation, we both realize, is over.

Sigh.  “Goodnight, Katy.”

“Goodnight, Mom.”

I stand up from bed and hug her.   She’s short, and insists she’s “shrinking.”   It is difficult, in this embrace, in this position, to feel as if I am some of the weight on her shoulders that is pushing her down.   That if I could just hurry up and get back into the habit of “being myself”, she’d brighten up, and things would be OK.   Our paths would line up better, and I’d be closer to “being there” and “bucking up” and “just dealing with it” like she has so often and so sagaciously suggested I do.

But it’s not the matter of getting into the habit of being myself.  That’s not nearly all of it.  She’s walking out of the room now, and I know not to mention that the reason I’ve spent so much of my life trying not to be myself is that, in taking the worst of things that people say, I have been trying to figure out what and who I need to be in order to be likeable, to be worthy of love and attention, and make it so there’s nothing the hell wrong with me.   I’ve been trying to make it so I don’t lie and stumble like a clumsy kid into doing the wrong thing again.  I know not to even try to express that rumination, while it has often been a stumbling block, has also been a defense mechanism.  That I ruminate on my mistakes and have often thought myself unlovable because it hurts ten times worse to get yelled at by an angry external source from whom I have expected – and needed – to provide love (and be disappointed) than it is to just take up as a mantra, “That was bad, very bad, don’t do that again.” 

And the fact is, yes, Mom.  You’re right.  I need to get into the habits of caring for myself better, of getting organized, of getting enough sleep, of just being myself.  I will love when I get to do those things, even with the knowledge that I will likely have to teach myself those habits again or a few times more in this lifetime. But, momma, please; I need to do all of this work – all of this crying, and thinking, and talking, and writing, and pill-taking, and beautiful, hard-to-watch mistake-making –  just to get to know and fully love myself before I can even dream of “just being” her all the time.

I fight the urge to cry again.   I know she'd hear me.

So I do what I often do, and browse Facebook for some semblance of acknowledgement that there is love in the world, even if it’s not directed right at me.   That there’s meaning, even though my grandma suffers and my mom may never understand even the first thing about what it is to be inside my head.

And, beautifully, mercifully, as if sent down by the angels that mom mentioned that she knows her father saw as he was dying – this while she was talking about how maybe I need to get back to religion – I saw this picture, and, then, the little caption over the album it's in.

 

                                                                                                             

And somehow, there is peace.   Just like I calmed myself from the tears about to be shed as I latchkey-kidded my way inside the garage door, looking up at the moon and making my breath match the clouds that drifted silently, silently over it... this little caption from the father of a little boy who is half a world away gives me the peace I didn't even remember I was searching for anymore.

And suddenly, it's OK, too.   Oh, little brain.   Goodnight, my dear.  I can hear Mom's soft breathing from the room across the hall, and my heart unclenches, letting go of a tension I didn't realize had been there.

Oh, oh, dear gray little brain.  Don't take away from that that she worries what the hell is wrong with me.   Take away the worry for me, and her hug and the little smile and the shared pain of loss and the shared hope that the future’s not totally shitty and the glimmer of understanding that while we are different, it's going to be OK.