The Journey Through Hell
There's humor in The Fall
It's been stressful and sad scheduling my life for the weeks of October 14-27. I took 2 weeks off, unpaid. The plans changed a few times - for good and for bad. This first week has officially become the week my mom visits.
I haven’t seen or spoken to my mom much since February, because I am avoidant and I am isolating. My mom isn’t a bad mother; she has never been judgmental. In high school, when I got too depressed or overwhelmed, she would clean my room for me. I think you can psychoanalyze a lot of me just from that small piece of information.
I guess sometimes I hate to look at or interact with my mom because it hurts. I feel weird when she pronounces jalapeño as “halehpin-oh” and asks to identify what it looks like and where it is in this pho I ordered. Yes, I'm embarrassed of her. And I feel awful for being embarrassed, because what? I’m some fucking pinnacle of culture myself?
No, I'm entirely pedestrian but I'm trying to make you think I am not. I started The Secret History but couldn’t finish it. I tried to write a bit more academically and couldn’t do that either. I get anxious in galleries, there’s too much to be studied. If you could see me at The Met (which I fucking hate), you’d see a blur of motion. I would be running, running, running. There’s not enough time, there’s never enough time.
My mom’s birthday is October 17th and she loves the ocean. It’s a bit ironic, because we didn’t ever travel growing up; I don’t know why that wasn’t in the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. My mom will be 62 years old on October 17th and she has booked us a hotel in Long Beach, New York. Her dream is to wake up the morning of her birthday and be greeted by the ocean.
Renting a car is too much logistical work for me, taking public transit is too stressful for her. We charter an expensive Uber to take us an hour away from Brooklyn. Our driver is nice and his car smells like chemically altered cherries. He’s playing the worst music you’ve ever heard from the 80’s. At first I think it’s for us, because we’re two white women and he’s a big Latino dude, but then Chicago’s You’re the Inspiration comes on and he belts out every line.
As we approach our hotel, I take a good hard look at Long Beach. It’s desolate, cold, lonely. The businesses are kitschy - which could be charming, if not for the ghostly feel. I guess this is the off-season and we are the only ones who bothered to show up.
There isn’t much to do, except marvel at the ocean. Everywhere we go plays more of that terrible 80s music for some reason or another. It feels like an episode of Goosebumps, one where we get stuck in an empty town from the past.
I’m excited to watch hotel TV until I realize all the channels are playing endings. Friends, The Office, I feel sick.
I am sick. Physically and mentally, but more physically now. Everywhere is too cold. On our first day, I decide I need to find a salon to cut my bangs. What else are we going to do?
We trudge through the off-season wind and darkness, my throat hurts. There's a swollen lymph node that’s like if my throat had a testicle that suddenly descended. I'm wearing my SSENSE scarf, my mom is wearing an indiscriminate hoodie. We’re both hunched and hobbling toward the salon. We look like fucking Grey Gardens.
When we arrive, it’s empty. Surprise! A woman talking on the phone and reclining in a loveseat is not a customer, but a hairdresser. Okay, sure. She has a thick Long Island (Long Beach?) accent and motions for me to sit in one of the tens of empty, spooky chairs.
Long Island Accent holds the scissors directly to my eye; she gets so close I think she’s chopped some of my eyebrow hair off, but I can’t really determine that until I'm home. She gives me what looks like a half bowl cut; I say thank you.
When we say we’re from Ohio, she gets visibly excited. She seems to be obsessed with the Amish, said she just got a Havanese from Millersburg. Millersburg is notorious for puppy mills. I'm triggered by some memories and it all sort of sucks for a minute.
She mentions Breaking Amish - she saw that girl Mary in Saratoga Springs. Then she makes a joke about how we’re eating the cats and the dogs over there, over yonder in Ohio. Haha!
My mom and I sit down at a cafe and I try to rack my brain for all the stuff I should ask her about. I think we end up talking about the same things we usually do. She reminds me of the hospital I was born at, she tells me I was really sick as a baby so that’s why she decided to raise me in a protective bubble.
In the hotel, I wear a sweater, a hoodie, and a huge scarf. It probably looks like I have a fatal disease. My mom goes out to see the ocean again, I ruminate and shiver.
I think I've been confused by people and their sparks. I used to believe people with an immediate spark had opened up, just for me. But that isn’t true; these kinds of people are energy whores. They like to parade around and share everything with everyone. It’s disingenuous - they can make you think you really matter, or that you could really make an impact in their lives. These people will just breeze through no matter the weather or the person, though. I guess I was just a vessel, then - for someone like that to bounce off or extract sympathy from. And I'm great for that. I’ll give sympathy to whoever, it’s free. It’s not a fucking knife, you idiots. Except now I don’t think I should give so much of that kind of thing. Whatever the case, I fantasize about opening someone up now. Like there’s a person with a shell, the way I've got one. I want to see all the parts of someone that they won’t show and maybe that’s evil - because it’s possessive - but I don’t really care.
We have another full day before my mom’s birthday, but we both know we can’t stay like she wanted. I feel bad, but it’s fitting. My mom hasn’t ever gotten what she’s wanted; I’m beginning to recognize the same will probably happen to me.
We have an hour to kill in this hotel room before the scheduled Uber arrives. I did an incredible job of sleeping through most of the day. It’s been like that a lot; I would rather sleep than deal with anything. It's efficient and can be beautiful.
My mom goes down to the ocean for the final time. I watch her from the window, in a world alone. She's had a lot of bad in her life and I feel ashamed that I've started to have the same. I told her finally what happened to me - something similar had happened to her. I told her I'm afraid of repeating the cycle. She told me that I'm younger than she was when she realized how to walk away.
Maybe that’s true. A full stop and a door shut on all the awful scenarios you’ve managed to live through.
As I'm writing this, I learn from Mackenzie that Liam Payne is dead. It's eerie and nostalgic. It's like an omen. The one everybody hated had to go. To make it about me: am I the Liam Payne? There are a thousand analogies to describe the feeling that everyone is in on the joke but you.
When I'm livid, I bare my teeth like a dog. I speak like I'm snarling and would probably bite, too. I recently learned that even this primal rage isn’t enough. It doesn’t change a person’s ugly soul into one that is standard; it won’t give me years of my life back. So why do we feel this? Why is anger here?
I could see myself finding the answer neatly wrapped up like a present for me in a podcast. The hosts would go into the evolution of fight or flight responses, or something. I guess I don’t really need to know, but I am angry.
Back in the city, we have to do errands to prepare for my next stop through Hell. It’s my mom’s birthday and I want to take her somewhere nice for lunch. We’re in SoHo and I decide we’d both be happy at 12 Chairs, but when we step inside, my mother retreats. Since the pandemic, she’s become increasingly germaphobic and agoraphobic. It used to really piss me off. I know I should be kinder, I should be a lot of things.
There’s an open table, but it’s too crowded for my mom. She says we should sit outside. I ask the gay waiter if we can sit outside and he scoffs. You actually want to sit outside? I say my mother is agoraphobic and walk out the door. We sit at a table that has a used espresso cup - it’s chilly and we are in the shade. I begin to get angry because here I am, physically and mentally sick, and in the cold again.
I start to feel that familiar feeling of being trapped. I’m like a dog and now I’m in a cage. I have to bite. I start to argue with my mom because, in truth, I’m disappointed. I’m disappointed that my mom won’t actually ever care where we eat. That she’d be happiest at a Chili’s or an Applebees. That she probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between cuts of meat or glasses of red wine. That I’m her daughter and I’ve been trying so hard for so fucking long to be anything other than that.
The gay waiter finally arrives to give us our menus and I bolt up. I tell him we’re leaving, as normally as I can muster. He gives a bewildered look - I thank him and start to walk the sidewalk. My mom follows behind me and it’s at that moment, I say to her:
You’re being a fucking freak.
I tell my mom she is a fucking freak on her 62nd birthday.
I am a bad employee. I am a bad roommate. And now I am a bad daughter.
My mother doesn’t really speak to me the rest of the day. We go through more stressors, like me being too neurotic about food to successfully go anywhere other than Cava. When we get back to my apartment, she goes into my bedroom and I sit deflated on the couch. I tried apologizing to her when we were still in the city, but the damage had been done. So I sit with myself and I scroll. And I see other worlds I’m no longer part of, and I predict the future but only the bad endings.
At some point, I slip out to hunt for a piece of birthday cake and a card - something I should have done as a tribute rather than the consolation prize it is. I walk down the street listening to the new Charli XCX remixes.
And you make me
You make me so sad, so sad
And you make me
You're making me so sad, so sad
I start to cry, which is so typical. It’s like, Jesus, another day where I’m walking and crying - get some new material!
I present my mom with the cake and card and she’s not really happy. She asks me if we’re still going to that show; she doesn’t really care either way. I tell her we are and we do. Even though she still possibly hates me and this day, she does have a great time at the play I bought tickets for. She thanks me for the experience and I can at least feel like it wasn’t all the worst.
Today I wake up and go online, like I always do. Serenity posts about a podcast in which Andrew Garfield talks about loss. Here is his quote:
“It acknowledges that we don’t get to be in charge of what we lose, how we lose it, and when. And I think I fight loss all the time. I try to resist loss all the time.”
My anxiety is all about mitigating potential loss, but this year has been another slap in the face. A reminder that I have no control over what I lose. Instead of this deep and sick obsession with losing, I intend to start thinking about what I can gain. It feels self-help-y, woo-woo-y, and too sentimental to be closing on a note about self improvement, but I don’t really feel like scraping the rocks at the bottom any more. You get tired of the sludge and the shit you surround yourself with - you realize there’s no glory in someone else calculating your demise. You want to be better, you want to actually want to hang out with your mom. I’m not asking for much, just the other half of my brain.
