E says things sometimes, things that I think she says just to be shocking. So when she said maybe two and a half years ago, “Mom is Bi-Polar,” I was so furious that if it was a movie, I WOULD HAVE GOTTEN UP AND SLAPPED HER ACROSS THE FACE and then the director would cut back to me and I would be sitting on the couch. (The “slapping of the face” being a fantasy sequence because I never act on my emotions.)
In real life, I probably just walked out of the room and didn't speak to her for a while. Maybe six months. That's usually how long we'll fight before someone gives in. It sounds unreasonable BUT PEOPLE WHO SAY SUCH PREPOSTEROUS THINGS such as, “Mom is Bi-Polar,” THEY MUST BE PUNISHED.
Because then maybe they'll learn to keep such preposterous things to themselves.
I don't want to really talk about the day we took my Mom to the hospital until E will sit down with me. Her memory is unparalleld. I think I chocked down enough stolen Klonopin and Shiraz Yellow Tail (not stolen) during that time, that I might need my memory JUMP STARTED.
But I will tell you this one thing.
When we were sitting in the Emergency Room hospital room this time last year, and when E sat on the floor because she was literally shrinking from the weight of the secrets my mother was spilling to the Psychiatrist at such a fervent pitch it was as if someone was holding fire to my mother's feet unless she CONFESSED EVERYTHING RIGHT HERE AND RIGHT NOW, the Doctor turned to my mother and said:
“How long have you known you have been Bi-Polar?”
My Mother said, “A long time…. My whole life, I guess.”
Is there another expression for, “My jaw dropped?” It doesn't fit WHAT I WAS FEELING at all. And it feels dated. No, it does not capture the moment at all.
You know those old “LATE NIGHT WITH DAVID LETTERMAN shows? The good ones where he would drop things off the roof of his building? I felt like the TV on the sidewalk just seconds after he released a bowling ball into the air. My guts were everywhere, even though they were still inside me.
Just that, in one moment, MY LIFE WAS BROUGHT TOGETHER AND SPLIT APART. Somehow so many things made sense but in a really sad way. Now we could never SWEEP IT UNDER THE RUG. Because a Doctor said it, and E said it and Mom said it, so now it must be true.
I looked at E. She looked so small sitting there on the hospital room floor. We made eye contact. But she did not say, “I told you so.” Which is weird, because she's kind of an “I told you so” kind of girl.
But she knew it was not the day for “I told you so.”
