Chapter Three #2
“Okay. I’ll take a picture after my break. Mordecai is watching him right now. He’s still fishing to find out why I was away.”
She tuts. “Oh, Mordecai.”
She’s never met him, but I talk about work enough for her to know who the main players are.
I say, “He’s so nosy. It’s uncomfortable. I was thinking maybe I should pretend I was sick with something else just to shut him up.”
She asks, “Like what?”
“I don’t know. Like, syphilis?”
She laughs. “You’d be less embarrassed to say you have syphilis than to admit you had a psychological break-down?”
“I’m not embarrassed. I just—” I pause. “I don’t know.”
I hear a lot of lip service about mental health at my job.
Leadership preaches about the importance of mental health in staff meetings ad nauseam.
We’re often reminded about our employee support resources and how important it is to reach out and get help.
There are posters about managing stress on the back of the doors in the staff washrooms. But ultimately, the topic is discussed at arm’s length, as something significant, yet impersonal and anonymous.
I worry if I said I was off work because I had an acute stress reaction, people would see me as an unreliable and less competent employee.
I think when really faced with it, my coworkers would be unlikely to consider my sickness a legitimate medical condition.
At best, people would see me as a dramatic faker, and at worst, as someone fragile and inept.
Joy says, “I’d prefer you not tell people you have syphilis, if that’s cool.”
I laugh. “Okay, fair. I won’t. How much longer will you be on your train?”
“A little over an hour.” She’s speaking quietly so she doesn’t bother other passengers. “I’m worried about Sophie, but I’m excited to see the baby.”
I’m still running my finger over the I HATE brAD carving.
“I’m excited for you to see her too,” I say.
When I hang up with Joy, I see my mom left me a voicemail.
“Hi, Darcy. I’m just calling to say I’m disappointed to learn you didn’t call your Aunt Cathy on her birthday—”
I wince. My mom cares a lot about social graces.
She taught me to call relatives on their birthdays.
To remember the anniversaries of any couple whose wedding I’ve attended.
To keep track if they divorce. To send thank-you notes after receiving any gift, no matter how trivial.
Thank you for this opened box of dryer sheets. Thank you for this rusted frying pan.
Despite believing this is unreasonable, I try my best to accommodate her expectations.
I can’t help but feel like a disappointment to her in many ways, and I’m willing to make minor concessions in certain areas, such as manners, to appease her.
Last year I called Cathy—a woman whom I haven’t seen in roughly a decade—to awkwardly wish her a happy birthday.
I also called my Great-Uncle Jed; our old neighbors, the Watsons; and a slew of other distant relatives and acquaintances.
Unfortunately, I spent the last two months incapable of working, temporarily sequestered to inpatient care, and adjusting to my new antipsychotics—so I forgot to call Cathy.
“Now, I understand that you’re a grown woman with your own opinions regarding how you operate in this world, but I raised you to be polite, and I occasionally worry that you don’t look outside yourself enough—”
I don’t look outside myself enough? That’s funny. My therapist told me I have dissociative tendencies, that I find it hard to look inside myself. My mom’s diagnosis contradicts my doctor’s. Maybe I should get a third opinion.
“It’s important for you to consider other people, and while I understand that you think you need to exist in this world as unapologetically yourself, it would behoove you to take a touch of advice from me. Believe it or not, I do know a few things.”
I make the same face I would if I’d just swigged curdled milk. I’d like to meet the version of me my mom thinks I am. I have a feeling she and I have very little in common.
I feel terrible about the negative ways I’ve impacted people. Even now, listening to this voicemail, I feel sorry. Did Cathy wait for my call? She must have told my mom I didn’t call. Was she upset?
My mom doesn’t see me as the person I truly am.
For instance, she thinks I went to college to assert myself as better than her.
That I think I’m a higher-class lady. Uppity.
That I think I’m so smart. That I rejected the life she wanted for me, the one that looked more like hers, because I think I’m better than her.
I chose to live far away, become a lesbian, marry a woman, and have no children because I’m selfish.
It would never occur to her that I didn’t call Cathy because I was mentally incapacitated.
She doesn’t understand that I went to college because I wanted to learn something.
I’m a lesbian because that’s the hand I was dealt.
She has no idea that I considered her, and other people, so much that I deluded myself for years, sacrificed a significant portion of my life, just to win her and other people’s approval.
I worry she’s witnessed some snippet of a Pride parade, associated it with me, and decided I must be operating in this world how she imagines the kinkiest parade participants do—with no apologies.
Shamelessly. I have no care for anyone but my own primal desire to have sex with people of the same gender.
I do things like go to college, marry Joy, and gain weight because I’m just living for me.
I think it’s unreasonable that she expects me to call Cathy, and I think this voicemail is over the line, but nonetheless, I wish I’d called.
I wish I were someone who didn’t disappoint my mom.
I’m never deliberately trying to disappoint her.
Unfortunately, disappointing her is one of the unavoidable side effects of me existing.
It troubles me that I can’t find a way for her, me, and for everyone to be happy.
If my mom were a more reasonable person, I’d tell her that my consideration for her, and for everyone else, has tortured me. I’d explain that I do exist as myself, and I am living my life for me, but I’m not unapologetic about it. I am myself with many, many apologies.
Sadly, my mom isn’t a reasonable person, and I’ve learned the only way to respond to this sort of message is to ignore it.
“To replay this message, press seven. To delete it, press eight.”
I press eight.
I’m crying in my car. The voicemail my mom left me, the man who came into the library, Joy being away, the baby missing fingers, my grief, and the fatigue of returning to work have all compounded, leaving me depleted and run-down.
The orange cat is sitting in my passenger seat watching me.
“I’m okay,” I say to him. I know he probably doesn’t understand, but he’s staring intently at me, and I feel compelled to explain myself.
I look at my reflection in the rearview mirror and wipe the tears off my cheeks.
It’s normal to cry. It doesn’t mean I’m having a breakdown. I’m just exhausted. This is cathartic. Crying is healthy, I think.
I sniff. This isn’t my first struggle with mental health, but it is my first time going to therapy or taking medicine.
I was a depressed teenager. I dealt with a lot of conflict with my mom.
She was unreasonably strict, and I was always getting in trouble for trivial things like hanging out with kids she didn’t approve of or eating too much refined sugar.
It really weighed on me that I wasn’t the person she wanted me to be.
I felt similarly when I broke up with Ben.
I wasn’t the person he wanted me to be either.
More importantly, I wasn’t the person I wanted to be.
The mess of our breakup left me feeling anxious and lost. There were no clear steps forward.
I remember googling “how to be a lesbian.” Unfortunately, the search results were all essentially porn.
I close my eyes. I was hoping the medicine and therapy would miraculously cure me, and that I would stop crying in public, but sadly, resolving my issues seems to require more effort.
I remember lying with my head in Ben’s lap, feeling the rough pads of his fingertips touch my face while we talked about what we would name our hypothetical baby. If it was a girl, he wanted to name her Rosemary, after his mom. We liked Franklin if it was a boy.
I open my eyes. The cat is still looking at me. I reach past him, open the glove compartment, and grab the wad of McDonald’s napkins I’ve stowed away there.
I blow my nose. My recent breakdown felt different.
This wasn’t something I could push down into the soles of my boots, then put on a brave face and step out into the world.
At one point, I found myself sobbing in the produce section of a grocery store while I dropped oranges on the tiles around me.
I was disoriented and confused. I wasn’t sleeping.
I’ve always carried this heaviness for Ben.
For years I tried to repress my thoughts about him.
When I learned he’d died, I felt like a rabid animal in my chest woke up and started thrashing, clawing at my insides, and foaming at the mouth.
I felt anguished for him, his dad, and his friends.
Intrusive images of his face kept flashing in my mind.
He had these faint laugh lines by his eyes.
Unkempt eyebrows. Calloused hands. I could hear his low voice calling me “dove.”
I still feel that animal in my chest, but I’m trying to subdue it.
Before this happened, if someone told me they were off work on stress leave, I might have been judgmental too.
Now I understand that issues intensify when we smash them down into our boots.
If I could go back in time, I’d go to therapy sooner.
I’d try to treat the issues I was compacting earlier, and then maybe I’d be more resilient.