Chapter 2 #2
When I began primary school, I also began a recurrent habit of slamming my forehead against any and all hard surfaces I could find.
Concrete was preferable, but plaster or glass would also suffice.
There are still indentations on the walls in my bedroom, though they are hidden now behind frames and photos and drawings.
It was anxiety, I suppose. It was embarrassing, Mum supposed.
And she was right; it must have been hard for her.
So, when my anthropomorphised soft toys disappeared, one by one, I managed to internalise the anxiety enough to stop the head-banging, and then there they were, back on my bed as though they had simply taken a brief and unexpected holiday.
See, isn’t that better? And it was, and it wasn’t.
Unfortunately, the condescension now hiding in her tone strikes my anger like the patellar reflex.
‘Well, perhaps you should have worried about me a little earlier – maybe you could have done something to get me more support,’ I kick out in reply.
I don’t want to be this way – insolent, dysregulated, tightly wound, rude. If I could find a way to slow time down, or speed up my own processing of said time, things would be easier. The guilt and shame only doubles the work.
‘Of course it’s my fault, because I’m the worst mother who ever lived.
I made you blow up your life and abandon your responsibilities because you can’t commit to anything, is that right?
At some point you’ll have to stop blaming me for everything, you know.
’ Her voice has gone up an octave and rapidly increased in speed, so I know it is already a losing battle.
I retract my tongue, swallow my words, shake out my wrists, and rearrange myself, trying to hold it all in like lightning.
The ease with which I prickle my mother is matched only by the comfort she finds in assuming the most malicious interpretations of my words.
Clarifying questions are personal attacks, and the sharing of information that might contradict her in any way is an outright declaration of war.
We have walked along this path for so long, it feels natural for things to be difficult, and hard for us to find any ease at all. I must go to a calmer place.
Elsie uses these walks to tune in with me, to ask me about how I am feeling and to tell me about her own experiences growing up.
‘I’m so sorry I didn’t see it sooner. I wish I had been more aware and gotten you the support you needed,’ she says, maintaining a comfortable, ambling pace.
‘It’s okay, it was a different time. Who knows if there even would have been help available, there was so much stigma.’
I have learned that it would not all have been sunshine and rainbows if I had known earlier, and I am trying to come to peace with the divine timing of the universe.
‘Yes, but knowing yourself would have been helpful, you could have given yourself more grace. We all could have done that . . .’
I look over, and Elsie is wiping away a silent tear.
‘Sorry, this isn’t about me. How are you going? It must be a lot to process, especially when you’re so burnt out. Recovery will take some time.’
I take a moment to think about how I am, without pressure for an immediate response. ‘I’m working on it,’ I reply. ‘I’m a work in progress.’
‘Aren’t we all? You know, I do wonder about myself, with everything you’ve taught us. As a child, I was so –’
A car flashes past, too close it feels, and I am in my body again.
Walking helps – the rhythm of the steps.
The tension eventually dissipates. It is a stunning street to walk down, with the sun only just starting to bite, and when we get to the junction, we can follow farmland all the way to the coffee shop with the view.
The Glass House Mountains are in the distance, and on a clear day, the sea as well.
It is unsurprising that I took the beauty of this place for granted, growing up, underappreciation being practically a teenage rite of passage, but it feels a waste of something worthy just the same. Time, I suppose.
There is no queue, so I ask for an iced latte to go and join Mum standing to the side as I wait for the stressed-looking barista to get to my order. I feel kinship with her hunched shoulders and tight-set jaw.
‘It’s fine, I didn’t want anything anyway.’
‘There’s still time – did you want something?’ I ask, my own shoulders rising to meet my ears.
‘No thank you. I just thought you would have offered to get a coffee for your mother; that’s something people might think is a nice thing to do.’
‘You said yesterday that five-dollar coffees were a waste of money, were why no young people could afford to move out of home anymore, so I assumed you wouldn’t want me buying two.’
‘That’s not what I said.’
She does not provide me with another version of yesterday’s comments, to show how I came to misunderstand them, and I know better than to ask.
‘Iced latte for Nora,’ the barista quietly shouts.
We turn and head for home. My knees ache only a little.
I alternate sips from my coffee and my strawberry vape.
Elsie has turned a blind eye to this particular habit, for which I am glad.
I am almost able to relax. Substances paired with silent motion seems to be the winning ticket during daytime hours.
Nicotine, caffeine, nicotine, caffeine. My brain is no longer on fire, no longer being boiled alive in its own juices.
Elsie is talking at length about which gifts she has purchased for everyone, and how much she has spent on each.
She buys expensive things with little to no meaning for the people they are intended for, other than to signify that she has spent a lot of money on them, and they should be grateful.
Elsie is perhaps keeping the luxury candle and cashmere throw industries afloat in this cost-of-living crisis, though I cannot complain as she is also keeping me afloat, financially speaking.
Despite our assertions to the contrary, this has been a comparably lovely walk.
I will need a little recovery time before I am able to be with others again, but it is possible today as I have no plans other than lunch and dinner.
My lack of plans since arriving home has felt crushing, vacuous and unending, but now as I approach a week of time so fully accounted for, my insides twist in apprehension.
It has been an age since I have been able to enact acceptable personhood full-time, especially with those who know me well.
I cannot remember the last time we were all under one roof.
My parents and I have only thus far really congregated at meals, each one its own somewhat fractious event.
Planning, preparing, cooking, serving, and cleaning up from meals is where Elsie expends most of her time and energy, and she is, of course, incredible at it.
Food causes me nothing but stress – another attribute I now have a new understanding about.
Avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder, the proper name for my embarrassing tendency towards fussy, picky eating that does not seem to dissuade anyone of the idea that I am simply choosing to be difficult.
I survived my time in Melbourne on packet noodles, ice blocks, and Granny Smith apples, with occasional bank-breaking food deliveries for the times I could not put together a sentence, let alone a meal.
The substances helped; I forgot how to feel hungry after a while and that saved me effort I did not have to give.
Despite what people were saying, behind my back and eventually to my face, it was never about how I looked.
I lost interest in that long before I lost recognition.
Again, capacity and expectations – the diminishing of the former leaving me near-obliterated by the latter.
Neither should be set in stone, and both have to be self-determined, that is what would be fair.
This thought rages inside me like a protest, but what good is internal rebellion if I am not able to convert it to words, or actions?
Elsie has long bestowed the fruits of her kitchen labour like honour, so my pickiness has always been personal for her.
Like so many elements of how I am. I want to retcon her conceptualisation of me, or at least fill it with caveats and footnotes, but right now all I seem to be able to manage is avoidance or confrontation. It runs too deep, both ways.
Giving my mother an emotional wide berth has been my first choice of coping mechanism since I was small.
Olivia would appease, Luke would gather evidence and present it like he was the closing speaker of a winning debate team, and I would avoid, avoid, avoid.
All of these methods had their merit, though I have not until now considered the internal ramifications of my siblings’ differing approaches.
I only know their public selves, perhaps.
Between her and I, Elsie seems to recover a lot quicker, the rise and fall a more comfortable part of her routine.
I have, until recently, still been working as hard as I can against all emotional extremes, a natural counterpoint to the times I have found myself on the ugly apex of a fury or devastation so extreme it has seemingly never before been reached.
I questioned, at various times, if I was a sociopath, or an empath, feeling always too little or too much.
Perhaps it would be smarter to embrace these feelings, to honour them and let them pass.
I type ‘emotional extremes’ into my notes app so I remember to talk to Dr Montague about it on our next Zoom call.
There are now thousands of words written in the ‘my weird brain’ note, as fragments of thoughts, theories and memories float down into my consciousness like falling leaves.