escape from limbo

*Some years ago, my mother was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder.
The following should make more sense, knowing that.

Pictured above is maybe two square feet or so of my bedroom wall, here in my mother’s apartment. Most of the wall used to be covered in a collage-mural thing I did back when I was in high school. A couple months ago I tore this thing down, rice paper and photographs and mirror-pieces and scribbles and drawings all– but because I apparently used some incredibly strong adhesive when I was putting it up, it was impossible to do so cleanly. So this is my wall now, all deconstructed-looking.

My mom and I actually did the tearing down together. It was late, maybe two in the morning or so, when she popped her head around the corner as I worked my thumbnail under a particularly stubborn corner of rice paper. With a “That looks fun!”, she joined me. That was a nice thing, a nice moment. And so we stood side by side, chatting and smoking and ripping and tearing for well over an hour until we were nearly ankle deep in little scraps of color and faces and handwriting and the occasional shard of reflective glass. It was, indeed, fun.

As the weeks go by, though, that hour  is also turning into a dishearteningly apt metaphor for our daily lives. Only without the fun. Because, in this scenario, I am pretty much the wall.

We have become more alike, my mother and I. By this I don’t mean that I feel any more or less unhinged than I usually do, certainly not in any chronic way. What I do mean is that I find myself matching her when she goes unhinged, blow for blow. I find I am less willing than I once was to just hunker down and ride out her manic episodes, to try and let her words move through me. Instead I keep engaging, pointing out that, no, there is no causal relationship between X and Y, and, besides, X happened nine years ago, and is therefore completely unfair to bring up, as we are both different people now than we were then, so Y, the accusatory Y currently being hurled at me, holds no water. I keep arguing that feeling N is irrational, as presentiment A, which has just been presented as its foundation, is totally fallacious, and therefore cannot be supplied as evidence of anything, let alone the validity of something so outrageous as N. I keep asking Why, Why must we do this, again? Why can’t we just enjoy this time together? Why must we be so resentful and dissatisfied and Why must everything be so wrong, so constantly?

None of this helps. If anything, it makes her more angry, more irrational, more out of control. And yet I keep doing it. I honestly don’t know why. It’s like I just can’t help myself, as if some part of me can’t stop believing that this time, this time, reason will somehow win the day. Like if I can just explain things better, everything will be okay. Even though the greater part of me understands that it never will, that chemicals, not lack of reason, are running this particular circus.

It was easier to be philosophical about all this when I was at a safe remove, to just sit back and process the old material into narrative, to maintain some level of equilibrium. Now, back here in the trenches, I am mostly just exhausted. It is exhausting. And unpleasant. And hard. Because now, now that I have inexplicably started giving as good as I get, the conflicts occur almost nightly. Almost every single night, now, my mother and I sit across from one another, and our chatting and smoking turns– sometimes gradually, sometimes in an instant, a single unpredictable instant– into ripping and tearing, until we find ourselves once again neck deep in shreds and shards. Everything is dangerous, every topic, every phrase, which makes me feel small, and frightened. But also defiant and self-righteous. Sometimes in turn, sometimes all at once. Left unchecked, this might actually be a good recipe for triggering my very own special kind of madness.

We love each other very much, my mother and I. That’s what makes it harder, I think, for either one of us to accept from the other anything that even resembles bullshit. Though maybe that should make it easier, instead? Easier to overlook, to knowingly embrace instead of challenge? Why this insistence on accuracy, honesty, on the raw and the naked? It’s so much trouble. Very possibly more trouble than it’s worth. Maybe I just need to rethink my understanding of what love entails. That is very possible, too. But it is also probably a project for another, less exhausted time.

Three days ago I got on my knees, the second time in my life I’ve done so, and begged my mother to go back on her medication. She’s been off them for almost two years now, I think, if she’s telling the truth. Which, you know, I’m sure she is. I don’t even know why I said that. She is many things, but a liar is not one of them. Anyway, she agreed, moved. I wept, relieved. Tomorrow we go to see her doctor, together.

This will, with any luck, be a turning point, the kind of time I can point to in a few months or years and say, Yeah, it was bad, really bad for a minute there, but then we pulled it together. We always do.

Here’s hoping.