Dissociating Life

I have been on a run of bios and autobios lately. I don’t read paper books anymore. While they are my favorite, my ADHD brain no longer allows me to sit and get lost in a book. Pages go by before I realize I have taken in no words on the paper because my brain is off doing 20 other things. This has brought me to audiobooks and podcasts - I can listen AND do the 20 things that haunt me.

Anywho. “I’m Glad My Mom Died” by Jeanette McCurdy. Can we talk about this for a bit. Maybe a long bit.

I truly did not expect a book about the life of a young girl I raised Gabbie watching on Nickelodeon to open a door I had bolted shut in my brain. To take me back to places in my life I locked away. Some traumas just need put to rest - revisiting them, well, it doesn’t do anything but hurt over and over again. This technique I have mastered leaves gaping holes in my memory, but I am ok with that. Those holes are deadbolted behind heavy doors in my brain.

I am going to do my best to put this to words because I don’t think I ever have before.

The family I was born into, the “role” I was given, is complex. I don’t remember when my perception of it got tainted by hearing other people’s perception from the outside but at some point we were as normal as all the TV show families. That didn’t last very long.

Most of my childhood was spent with my parasympathetic nervous system in overdrive. Fight/flight/freeze was just life. I didn’t realize it then, lots of therapy has allowed me to put a name to it. This was normal to me.

My parents were born in the 40s in Pennsylvania, they had one sibling each. I think there was once a large family but, again, I am not 100% sure what happened by the time I was born in 74. My mother was very close with her father but had a very hate/hate relationship with her mom. I often heard the horror stories of how she and her sister, my aunt, were treated. Her father passed when I was 5 and was a constant provocation of emotions from my mother for the rest of her life.

Just the mention of her dad would bring tears. And my dad, in turn, would roll his eyes, get frustrated and claim oh yes the man who can do no wrong. As I sit and think about it, the comment would just roll past, I guess because I felt the same way about my dad.

My dad, this one is hard. His mother passed from breast cancer when he was 8 I believe, and his father ended up drinking himself to death by the time my dad was 10. Or so the story goes. Lore tells it that dad and Aunt AnnMarie were wards of the state. Both parents deceased, no family members stepping up to raise them, they would be orphans. Until their grandmother stepped in and, begrudgingly, raised them.

Of my extended family, as I sit here and type this, I know my Aunt AnnMarie and Uncle Mike are still alive (last I googled), in their 80s and in assisted living in Wisconsin. I believe they had 3 kids, 2 boys and a girl. Their last name was Chick, but I never met or talked to any of them.

I did some online research when my kids were little and am fairly certain I made contact with one of my cousins but they stopped communicating quickly. Just silence.

My mom’s sister passed when I was young. Gah, I don’t even know when. I could google it, but it really isn’t pertinent. When we would have holidays and I would say how much I wished we had a large family, my mom’s reliable retort every time was “well get busy digging because they’re all dead, you can find them in the grave yard.”

She thought she was hilarious.

I just learned somehow, at some age, to just not ask. To do as I was told, to understand what was expected and surpass it, and to not let anyone down. Do not drop the ball Mis. If you say you are going to do x, then you damn well better do x plus y and z while you are at it.

Being in my mom’s good graces was something I sought every minute of every day. I don’t know why. But her approval, her kindness was my lifeline. If I made her angry or disappointed or spilled water or, God forbid, forgot to do something she told me . . . the silent treatment and nasty looks were enough to forever haunt me. 51 and they still haunt me.

My first childhood memory goes something like this. My crib was in the room I spent my later years in, second floor of the house. It is literally above the dining room. The memory I have is being ripped from a peaceful sleep because I heard a sound I couldn’t quite identify. I remember my little heart racing and being so so scared. I yelled out repeatedly for my mom, the adrenaline from the fear still racing through my body. I remember the hall light turning on and my mom rushing into the room. She was a force. I was standing at the side of the crib, the side that lowered, crying and needing reassurance. She picked me up, laid me down roughly , tossed a bottle in the crib and told me to knock it off and go back to sleep. I was fine.

She left. Hall light off. My little heart racing, my feet sweating in my footed pajamas I both loved and hated. As my heart rate started to slow down, I recall hearing voices downstairs. No more monster sounds. My memory ends there.

Oh sure, yeah, whatever - I know someone is thinking that as they read this. BUT - I confirmed it. In my late teens/early 20s, sitting on the famous North Avenue porch with my mom I said, hey did I dream this or did it actually happen? I went on to tell her my memory. Her face fell and all color faded. I knew then it was real. “You actually remember that?!” Yes, I stated, very clearly. Turns out, I was 18 months old at the time. The sound that so scared me was a laugh produced by the husband of a couple my parents used to hang out with. He was a very tall and large man, so his laugh fit. And it scared the shit out of me in my sleep. Don’t question those seemingly impossible young memories - verify them first.

That heart racing rush to freeze or fight (I never did master flight) seems to me to have been a consistent state I existed in for most of my life. Living like that is awful. It is battery draining and self defeating. You can’t enjoy anything when you are always waiting for the other shoe to drop. But the problem was, I wasn’t exaggerating - the other shoe always did drop. And I guess my little self realized it was better to already be in that state of mind to go oh yeah, look at the fire over there instead of being blindsided by something.

As I listened to Jeanette retell her story all I could think was holy shit, my mom raised her too. She put into words so beautifully all that I had felt for so long and still struggle to say. It is hard to explain to someone who actually had a healthy set of parents the damage that can be done to a child raised by people like my parents. And I know I am not a unicorn, I know there are others. It is just now that it is safe to talk about it. Mom is gone. I never would have put these words out there until then. The fear of her backlash was that strong - it’s actually insane when I truly think about it.

When mom loved you - oh my god, did she love you. She was a feeder - she’d cook all your favorites and take you shopping and buy you every single thing you wanted. Make you feel like the luckiest kid around. We’d traverse the mall adding bags as we went, her smoking her non-stop Virginia Slim 120s and me just following along. The well behaved little pup doing as commanded.

We’d go home and, if it was summer, dad would likely fire up the grill. Our neighbors would cook out with us, the kids across the street would come swim and everything felt so good and normal and right. Deep down I carried this social anxiety (again, didn’t have a name in the 70s/80s).

My mom was the MASTER of death looks, goodness was she. My dad, me, my siblings. I know now everyone else saw them, too, but if she gave you a look - you were done. If you were in public God help you when you got in the smoke filled station wagon that would be taking you home. She’d yell and yell and yell. She knew how to get to each of her kids - ok, so I was the easiest target. My sister laughed back at her, they physically fought, she ran away. My brother, well, most of my childhood my brother is absent from my memory. Dissociation or him just not being around - I really don’t know. But me, well I was a pliable little ball of clay that Annette could just do whatever she wanted to. If I made her angry? SMACK - flat smoosh of clay. Leave it on the table and act like it doesn’t even exist.

To this day I cannot stand the silent treatment. This was not a cool off period for two people who had a disagreement. This was a mother who knew that her youngest child, the one whose entire worth was measured by the approval of her parents, was tortured by being ignored. Not a word, no eye contact, unanswered questions. Just sitting in one of her two chairs smoking like a chimney, drinking coffee and picking at her fingernails.

I would forlornly relocate myself - room, basement, back yard, front porch. Never feeling comfortable or right anywhere, least of all in my skin. Mom was mad at me. I usually didn’t know or understand what had set her off nor how I could fix it. Apologizing was pointless, but also necessary because NOT apologizing was worse. It was a literal no win situation. The thoughts raced through my head, I remember like it just happened - why does she hate me, why am I so dumb, why doesn’t anyone like me, I don’t have any friends, I don’t blame them I am so weird why would they like me, mom is right I’m stupid/dumb/clumsy/forgetful, I don’t even fit in my family, I don’t fit in at school, God why am I so dumb. Nobody is ever going to like me, heck I don’t like me. I have to try harder, do better, be better, be the best, hit the bar that perpetually raised and was impossible to get to but I was going to. If it killed me.

As time went on, my anxiety and self consciousness grew with me. Anything that might make me excited or nervous would invoke a vomiting session (I’m still so sorry Beverly). Instead of trying to help me or figure out why I was the way I was, they just never told me anything and would drop things on me like asteroids out of the sky. BLAM - blow up my life. And there I’d be - tossing my cookies. Unable to regulate and enjoy the situation. Total freeze. I realize now I was the master of the internalized panic freeze. Still am.

Somehow, through my entire childhood, knowing things were not good didn’t open my eyes to the fact that they were also not normal or healthy. I was so busy analyzing every single thing around me and was it good, was it bad, would I get in trouble, would mom be upset, what would mom think, oh god if mom finds out…. exhausting, simply exhausting. I didn’t really take the time to look around me at my friend’s families. How they acted or behaved, how sibling relationships functioned, how parents interacted. I just knew my mom disliked everyone and their mothers and hated having to take me to their houses.

I wish I had a writing assistant or co-writer or whatever the hell you call it. There is such a flow to this story and a basis for who I became through my life. Memories keep hitting me as I write, then I panic I am out of order or I am forgetting something. See - still internally punishing myself - ha!

The only thing that I am not forgetting - the feeling. I still feel it. My heart rate increases and adrenaline releases if I let it. I can take myself back in time to how very small and useless and dumb and stupid she would make me feel. Always too much or not enough. Hair too short, too long, too dark, too light. Too fat, too skinny, grades not high enough, grades not good enough, progress reports awful, teacher notes not glowing enough. DO BETTER MORE MORE MORE MORE MIS, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU. DON’T YOU KNOW WHAT MOM WANTS, WHY CAN’T YOU KEEP HER HAPPY. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU……..